1979

Completion of the tenth full year of the life of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provides a natural occasion to review the growth of its resources and the record of their use over the decade. It also offers an opportunity to comment on the principal directions of the Foundation's efforts as they have persisted or evolved in the 1970's.

I. FORMATION

The Foundation was formed in mid-1969 by merger of two separate foundations: Avalon Foundation, established in 1940 by Ailsa Mellon Bruce in New York, and Old Dominion Foundation, established in 1941 by Paul Mellon in Virginia. The new Foundation, legally the successor to Avalon, was named in honor of the donors' father, Andrew W. Mellon, who had served as Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932 and later as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.

From their founding through 1968, the predecessor foundations had received gifts of $167 million, realized capital gains of $119 million, collected net income of $90 million, and disbursed a total of $148 million in grants. At the close of 1968 their combined assets had a book value of $228 million and a market value of $273 million. After the death of Mrs. Bruce, on August 25, 1969, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation received, from trusts established during her lifetime and from her estate, distributions of $396 million in 1970 and $29 million in subsequent years, through 1976. These funds, added to the $273 million from the antecedent foundations, have provided the basis for the Foundation's charitable programs.

At the end of 1970 the Foundation's assets had a market value of $698 million. In the decade since, they have grown in current market value - to about $827 million at the close of 1979. The affairs of the Foundation have been so managed that it has been able to increase its income, its appropriations, and its grant payments each year since 1975; and these payments have regularly exceeded the five-percent-of-asset-value required by law.

Although the increase in the level of grants, from $34 million in 1975 to almost $51 million in 1979, has enabled the Foundation to maintain its philanthropic program in constant dollars, it is clear that this goal cannot continue to be achieved if current rates of inflation persist. While U.S. foundation giving as a whole grew in nominal terms from $1.8 billion 1969 to $2.2 billion in 1978, the purchasing power of the latter figure was reduced by inflation to approximately $1.2 billion in 1969 dollars-an actual decline in real value of more than half-a-billion dollars. It is worth emphasizing at the start of this report that high rates of inflation loom as perhaps the most pervasive single threat to the kinds of institutions for which the Foundation as been particularly concerned.

This opening statement will review the major programs of the Foundation as it expanded the scale and scope of its activities during the past ten-and-a-half years-in higher education, the arts, medicine and population, conservation and the environment, and public affairs. The pages that then follow provide a report of grants and accounts for the year 1979.

II. PROGRAMS

RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES, CENTERS, AND LIBRARIES

The Foundation's largest commitment, in both number of grants and total dollars, has been to higher education. After two decades of expansion and relatively ample funding, U.S. universities and colleges emerged from the disturbances of the late 1960's to face abrupt changes in demography, revenue, government policy, and public understanding-and an alarming, accelerating rate of inflation. In a prefatory paragraph to the Foundation's 1971 Annual Report, its then new president, Nathan M. Pusey, highlighted problems to which major Foundation programs in higher education have since responded:

The stringent financial conditions now confronting the academic community are prompting useful re-examination, justification and control of expenses all of which can be expected to produce long-range improvement and future strength. Nevertheless, the immediate adverse impact of such conditions is alarming. In many institutions, young faculty members who in recent years were encouraged to embark upon careers in higher education now are being let go. For others completing, advanced study, opportunities for appointment are frustratingly few. Sabbaticals and other aids to career development are being sacrificed. For the future, funds needed to recruit a new generation of young people to scholarly careers are again in short supply, while funds to support publication of the results of scholarship have been sharply reduced. More serious, at a time when the traditional disciplines need to be revitalized to capture the attention and stimulate the imaginations of young people impatient with old ways, there is too little opportunity to revise curricula, create new courses and experiment with methods of instruction.

The programs of the Foundation, which varied in form and focus as the decade progressed, have had as their underlying intent to help colleges and universities sustain the strength and morale of their faculties and improve their educational and scholarly programs, especially in the humanities. The Trustees have shown a particular concern for maintaining a strong private sector in higher education as an independent source of talent, ideas, and advanced training and research. Within this sector the Foundation has been especially attentive to the problems and needs of research universities. Recognized in this country, and perhaps still more abroad, as one of the impressive achievements of the modern United States, these universities constitute a critical resource for the generation and transmission of knowledge-a capital resource that must not be allowed to deteriorate. For that reason they have received a higher percentage of Foundation funds over the years than any other single group of institutions - some $130 million out of the decade's total disbursements of a little over $400 million.

Chairs and Discretionary Funds

In its early years, continuing a tradition begun by Avalon and Old Dominion, the Foundation endowed 16 chairs, principally in the humanities, at leading independent universities around the country, with funds totalling almost $12 million. From 1970 through 1972, another six chairs were established at a group of outstanding liberal arts colleges, mostly independent women's colleges, at a cost of $4 million.

In 1971, the Foundation awarded eight private universities presidential discretionary grants totalling $9.5 million for use as endowment or spendable funds to improve the performance of the institutions. Two characteristics of these awards continued to mark the Foundation's subsequent policies: a belief that the fundamental purposes of educational institutions must be sustained and a sense that their administrations should have as much latitude as reasonably possible in Judging how best to use funds made available for designated needs.

Faculty Positions for Young Humanists

More scholars earned Ph.D.'s from 1960 through 1970 than in the whole previous history of higher education in this country. In the 1970's the careers in teaching and research for which they had prepared themselves seemed increasingly out of reach. (For many the 1980's may prove even more painful and frustrating.) In 1974, with career prospects for even the best young humanists in steady decline, the Foundation announced a program which, over three years, placed more than $22 million at 24 independent universities that help set standards in higher education, research, and training. The purpose of these grants was twofold: to provide opportunities for the next generation of humanists at a time when the prospect of a static and steadily aging academic community was suddenly vivid; and to contribute to graduate schools and universities the energies and fresh perspectives that younger scholars can bring. The grants, combining endowment and expendable funds, allowed the institutions to make a few additional appointments either to Junior-faculty positions or to special postdoctoral opportunities. In subsequent related grants the Foundation has awarded universities close to an additional $4 million, including $2,250,000 in 1979, for postdoctoral or non-tenured faculty positions in the humanities.

Following support for these appointments, the Foundation sought to improve the prospects for a certain number of able humanists to advance toward permanent positions-advancement that seems essential for future academic leadership and the flow of scholarly achievement. It initiated a program, with appropriations totalling $13,225,000 to 12 major private universities in 1978 and 1979, that will allow these institutions to appoint, retain, or advance to tenure over the next seven to ten years some outstanding faculty members in the humanities, at intermediate career levels, in instances where these appointments could not otherwise be made. The grants require the universities to raise substantial matching funds in the form of endowment, at ratios up to 3:1, to assure the continuity of the program.

Scholarly Publishing

The Foundation also sought to counteract some of the consequences of budgetary cuts by university presses, which, by curtailing publishing opportunities for less-known scholars especially, affected both career advancement and the larger enterprise of scholarship. In 1972 and 1975 it awarded grants totalling $3,765,000 to 25 universities for use by their presses-and to the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for allocation to smaller presses-to subsidize the publication of books in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, particularly a scholar's first or second book. In 1975 the Foundation joined several others in launching, through the ACLS, a National Enquiry into Scholarly Communication, to analyze the network linking individual scholars, research libraries, university presses, and learned journals and to recommend how it might function more effectively for all sectors.

Libraries

Recognizing the indispensable contribution of libraries to higher education and scholarship, the Foundation has undertaken major commitments, amounting to more than $23 million, to sustain and enhance the effectiveness of the library function in the years ahead.

In the early days of the decade some $5 million went, chiefly to college and university libraries, for construction and renovation or for the expansion of collections. Assistance to facilitate scholarly use of their collections was given to a group of the nation's outstanding independent research libraries (among them the Newberry, Morgan, Huntington, Folger, and the American Philosophical Society) and leading private historical societies (including Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia)-principally through two rounds of grants amounting to almost $6 million in 1972 and 1976-1977 to support new curatorships or additions to staff, research aides and indices to uncatalogued collections. In addition, The New York Public Library received grants over the decade totalling $2.2 million - to endow the position of director of The Research Libraries; to help rehabilitate its monumental but physically deteriorated card catalogue; and, in 1979, to begin building a national on-line data base of information about microforms held by research libraries.

Library Networks

Research libraries - even the richest and most resourceful of them - can no longer act independently and must devise rational and complementary strategies for developing, sharing, and preserving their collections. The Council on Library Resources, which has won the respect of the library community for its many contributions, seemed a natural organization to help coordinate national library efforts. Following a grant of $1 million for its general support in 1976, the Foundation gave the Council $1.5 million in 1978 toward the costs (shared by a consortium of foundations) of bringing into being a national computerized bibliographic system over a period of several years.

Development of the system will require the cooperation of the various library networks that have emerged around the country, and the Foundation has contributed to two of these. In 1973, it awarded the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET) $600,000. The following year, the libraries of Columbia, Harvard, and Yale universities and The New York Public Library formed the Research Libraries Group (RLG). In the ensuing six years the RLG has undergone significant transformation and, with its headquarters now at Stanford University, is in the process of building a nation wide partnership of research universities to provide them with the organizational capability to mobilize their enormous collective library strengths and research resources, in all subjects and languages, in ways hitherto not possible. Since 1974 the Foundation has contributed $2.5 million to the development of the RLG, including an appropriation of $1 million in 1979, and an additional $2 million to 17 institutions to facilitate cooperative planning or networking activity.

Area Studies

In an effort to counter the dangerous underfunding-by government and other sources-of advanced language instruction and area studies, the Foundation in recent years has allocated $15 million to leading centers of Asian, Russian, Canadian, and Latin American Studies.

The first awards, in 1973, helped a dozen private and public universities acquire and catalogue materials for their East Asian library collections. Additional grants assisted these and other libraries by funding central procurement and cataloguing services at the Center for Chinese Research Materials of the Association of Research Libraries. To advance national competence at the higher levels of scholarship and training in the field of Asian Studies, the Foundation has made other awards of $7, 241,000. That figure includes endowment grants of nearly $5 million in 1977 for 12 distinguished university based programs in East, South, and Southeast Asian Studies; a grant of $750,000 in 1974, to be administered by committees of the ACLS and SSRC, for the advanced training of specialists in Chinese Studies; an award to the University of Michigan to train specialists on the Chinese economy; and grants totalling $400,000 over the years to maintain the Universities Service Centre in Hong Kong.

To reinforce two major centers of Russian Studies in this country the Foundation in 1978 provided $600,000 to programs at Columbia and Harvard universities.

Recognizing the need for more sophisticated understanding of other nations and cultures in the Western Hemisphere, the Foundation has assisted Canadian Studies programs at Duke and Johns Hopkins universities ($500,000 in 1976); most recently, it initiated a program of support for Mexican and Latin American Studies at a number of leading centers ($2.4 million in nine grants during 1978 and 1979).

Centers of Advanced Learning

In addition to these efforts, which may further America's ability to comprehend and cope with the contemporary world, the Foundation has extensively supported research and scholarly training in classical humanistic and historical fields, making well over $10 million available during the decade to certain specialized centers of advanced learning and research. Among them were the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, the American Academy in Rome, the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, the Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, Florence, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Center for Early American Studies in Philadelphia, the Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William and Mary, the new National Humanities Center in North Carolina, and the Program in Early Christian Humanism at Catholic University. In 1978 the special role of the American Council of Learned Societies in promoting humanistic learning was recognized through an endowment award of $1 million at the start of its capital drive, the income to be used as fellowship support for recent recipients of the Ph.D.

Research Editions and Resources

The Foundation has appropriated well over $5 million for various scholarly editions, papers, publications, and bibliographic resources. The following is a partial list of these: the Middle English Dictionary at the University of Michigan, a fundamental work that has been under way for more than 60 years; the Dictionary of American Regional English at the University of Wisconsin; the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae at the University of California, Irvine, a project to enter all that survives of ancient Greek literature into a computerized data base; separate but complementary projects at the American Antiquarian Society and Louisiana State University contributing to the Eighteenth-Century Short-Title Catalogue; and a project of the College Art Association of America that has created a computerized bibliographic index to current literature in the field of art history in the major Western languages.

COLLEGES, CURRICULA, AND SPECIAL PROGRAMS

Mindful of the values and vitality that lie in the diversity of American higher education, the Foundation has undertaken a series of programs to assist several other categories of institutions to nurture the kind of broadbased humanistic education that encourages imagination, perception, judgment, and the capacity to respond to changing circumstances.

Liberal Arts Colleges

The Foundation has seen the free-standing liberal arts college-a uniquely American institution that for two centuries has played a distinctive role in our culture and in the settlement of a continent-as a visible symbol and important repository of these values. During a period when converging pressures have diminished the primacy of liberal arts education as preparation for life and for widely varied careers, the Foundation contributed $11.8 million in 1972-1973 for faculty salaries at 61 of the nation's academically stronger independent colleges. Then, from 1974 to 1979, looking ahead to a sharp contraction in the number of eighteen-year-olds (which ill fall by nearly 25 percent, or more than a million, through the 1980's), and to a consequent reduction in faculty recruiting and mobility, it helped 58 colleges establish patterns of faculty development and curricular revitalization. Institutions of regional or national leadership, with enrollments generally of at least 1,000 students, were assisted in launching their own plans-among which are models of use to others-at a cost of approximately $12 million.

To help sustain beneficial activities thus set in motion, a program of matching endowment challenge grants has just been initiated Jointly with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Over the next several years, we expect that approximately 50 liberal arts colleges will each be awarded between $100,000 and $250,000, to be matched with other endowment gifts at ratios of 2:1 or 3:1, to provide a presidential discretionary fund for institutional renewal and faculty and curriculum development. In the past several years the Foundation also provided almost $2 million to enable seven universities, private and public, to offer professional growth opportunities to faculty members teaching in the many liberal arts colleges in their states or regions-a pattern we hope will stimulate similar efforts elsewhere.

To assist larger numbers of both institutions and individuals than the Foundation's small staff could deal with directly, grants were made to such organizations as the American Council on Education, the Association of American Colleges, and the Consortium on Financing Higher Education-for training programs, consulting services, or the analysis of problems common to all sectors of higher education, such as the effect of new legislation on faculty retirement plans.

Urban and Other Doctoral-Granting Universities

Between 1972 and 1975 almost $6 million went to twelve universities located in major metropolitan areas-among them Fordham, Marquette, Northeastern, Temple, St. Louis, and the University of Detroit-which serve large numbers of students, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college. The grants focused on strengthening liberal arts teaching and curricula for students with high vocational interests. During the City University of New York's fiscal crisis in 1976 presidential discretionary grants of $100,000 were made to each of its four oldest senior colleges.

The Foundation also awarded almost $3 million in the past several years to nine other doctoral-granting universities-among them Baylor, Notre Dame, Southern Methodist, and Boston College-to expand professional growth opportunities for faculty members and to revitalize curricula in the liberal arts. Several other private universities have come forward with proposals to revise their undergraduate curricula and provide greater coherence among disciplines, particularly in the first two years of study. These efforts reverse a trend of the 1960's when distribution requirements were largely abandoned and increasing numbers of young faculty members became narrowly specialized in their graduate training. Ten awards, totalling nearly $5 million, went to fund changes of this kind.

Science and Humanities

In order to improve the linkages between engineering and technology and the humanities, the Foundation has allocated approximately $3 million since 1974 to a number of institutions with special commitments to technological education-among them Carnegie-Mellon, Clarkson, MIT, Rensselaer, Stevens, and Worcester Polytechnic. With these funds they have expanded their humanities faculty and curricula and integrated them more fully into engineering and technology programs, chiefly at the undergraduate level.

Theological Education

The Foundation committed over $6 million to the field of theological education, primarily in the first half of the 1970's. These funds supported efforts to make the role of the church more vital in society, most notably through strengthening its recruiting and training for leadership in the ministry, including the training of minority clergy, and through increased opportunities for continuing education.

Educational and Career Opportunities for Minorities and Women

During the past decade the Foundation has appropriated over $22 million to provide opportunities for various underserved populations. Funds have gone to programs for minorities, both students and faculty members (blacks predominantly but Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, and American Indians as well), for women, and for colleges in Appalachia.

These programs have included about $9 million for the older black colleges and universities. In addition to substantial contributions to the United Negro College Fund, the Foundation awarded $5.2 million in the early 1970's for faculty support to twenty-one of the academically stronger private black colleges and universities. These institutions have continued to provide important opportunities for many, despite increased minority access elsewhere. In 1977, in response to severe vocational pressures on these campuses and the relative lack of funding for the humanities, a program was begun to improve the humanities offerings in a number of leading private black colleges. Thus far there have been 10 awards in the program, and more are in process.

Increasing the number of qualified entrants into such fields as higher education, medicine, engineering, theology, business, public administration, and librarianship has been the Foundation's other major effort on behalf of minorities. It has committed almost $8 million for this purpose to more than a dozen organizations and institutions such as National Medical Fellowships, New York Theological Seminary, Illinois Institute of Technology, and the American Library Association.

In the past two years the Foundation has also awarded $1.4 million to nine colleges and universities in Appalachia committed to serving their region. Grant funds are intended predominantly to strengthen teaching and curricula, while smaller amounts may be allocated to scholarship pertaining specifically to the Appalachian region.

Grants directly relating to opportunities for women have totalled approximately $4 million. These grants have included support to seventeen liberal arts colleges (most of them women's colleges but a few of them coeducational) to increase faculty members' awareness of the career patterns and life alternatives emerging for women. Research awards to three leading women's colleges (Radcliffe, Smith, and Wellesley) were intended to increase understanding of the changing role of women in various times and contexts, including our own, and to develop materials for college and university curricula.

Other Educational Programs

Though limits on time and resources have prevented substantial entry into the enormously important fields of elementary and secondary education, or more than exploratory grants in the community-college field, the staff have tried in the past few years to find ways of reversing the decline in educational standards and in reading and writing skills among American youth. Grants totalling well over $1 million went to the Council for Basic Education, the National Humanities Faculty, the Economic Development Council, and International Baccalaureate North America for work in this area; and to the University of Michigan for an unusually comprehensive effort to advance writing levels at the University and in a cooperative program with more than 200 high schools. The problem is fundamental, and our nation must address it more systematically, imaginatively, and effectively than in the 1970's.

THE ARTS

Cultural organizations and the arts held a prominent place in the Foundation's activities during the 1970's, and appropriations in these categories-apart from grants to the National Gallery of Art-amounted to more than $60 million. The Foundation has supported both the visual and the performing arts, with grants generally going to leadership organizations of demonstrated strength and quality, and usually for stated project and program purposes rather than for general support. Though a special interest persists in major New York City cultural institutions, there has been a shift toward a more broadly national program.

Music

In the field of music, matching endowment grants totalling $8.6 million were made to 31 major symphony orchestras in 1977-1978 in a five-year program carefully designed to enable them to improve their net current positions, to develop or confirm patterns of budgetary solvency, and, over the longer run, to increase the income available to them for general program purposes. Music education was assisted in 1971-1972 with grants of $3,850,000 to help strengthen and develop the programs of seven independent music conservatories, and again in 1978 with matching endowment awards of $2,350,000 to the same institutions. In addition to support of the Metropolitan Opera Association and the New York City Opera, awards totalling nearly $2 million were made in 1979 to 12 major regional opera companies to assist them in increasing earned and contributed income.

Theatre and Dance

In 1974-1975, 14 regional and New York City theatres received $2.4 million to establish artistic directors' discretionary funds to assist and stimulate creative activity. A second round of awards in 1979, totalling $1.8 million, will assist 19 theatres in producing work that has become an important part of the theatrical literature or that, though less well known, merits revival. In 1975-1976, discretionary grants of approximately $3 million went to ten modern-dance and seven classical-ballet companies to give their artistic directors a flexible resource for enhancing the range and quality of performances.

Conservation

Over the years the Foundation has recognized the need for a coherent national program in conservation of works of art that will provide serious training for prospective conservators, a number of properly equipped and staffed regional treatment laboratories (to serve museums and other institutions too small to maintain their own services), and scientific research on basic problems of the field. It has also recognized needs for the preservation of books and manuscripts.

In art conservation, grants of almost $8 million have included three rounds of assistance to the three principal entry-level training programs and to two other programs that provide more advanced training and related services to the field, as well as assistance to nine museums to permit them to conduct advanced conservation apprentice-training programs in which younger practitioners can develop their skills; to three regional laboratories to help them in their early years as they develop toward a self-sustaining base; and to the Carnegie-Mellon Institute of Research to enlarge the scope and impact of a research program, which the Foundation and its predecessors have now supported for 28 years, on varnishes and solvents, the stability and durability of organic materials, damage by light, and characterization of pigments.

In addition to providing funds for the training of some paper conservators in the above programs, the Foundation in 1979 encouraged the Council on Library Resources to initiate a systematic study of current practices in the manufacture of library-quality books and of what might be done to increase use of more durable papers and bindings. We have also begun to assist libraries in their conservation training programs and are undertaking a wider review of preservation efforts and training opportunities in the field to determine how they might best be strengthened or extended.

Public Broadcasting

While the Foundation has no formal program for public broadcasting, it has been able to respond on a highly selective basis to occasional projects of exceptional merit that fall within its interests in the arts and humanities. Altogether, some $7 million has been appropriated for this purpose. Among the individual programs or series supported in the 1970's have been the following: "The Adams Chronicles", as a contribution to the Bicentennial; a tribute to American Ballet Theatre; "Live from Lincoln Center"; an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"; and, to appear in 1980, "The Voyage of Charles Darwin" and "Life on the Mississippi", the pilot program for a series that will dramatize works of Mark Twain. In addition, grants were made in 1978 to four major public television stations and to the Public Broadcasting Corporation to establish at each a research and development fund for programs of quality in the arts and humanities. In 1979 awards for the same purpose were made to four public radio stations and to National Public Radio.

Museums

Continuing an interest of the predecessor foundations, and recognizing the impressive upturn of public attendance in the 1970's, the Foundation awarded more than $10 million during the decade to museums other than the National Gallery of Art for a variety of purposes: to strengthen and develop educational programs; to enable museums to provide fellowships; to support exhibitions, publications, and curatorial services; and in certain rare instances, for renovation or for endowment. Of this total $6.3 million went to institutions in New York City and $4.3 million to museums elsewhere.

Reflecting a long-standing association of the founders, grants totalling almost $37 million went to the National Gallery of Art during the past ten years. In addition to ongoing assistance for such activities as the Andrew W. Mellon Lectures and the Finley Fellowships for training future museum curators, the Foundation contributed, between 1973 and 1977, about a third of the construction costs of the Gallery's new East Building, which stands at a critical site in L'Enfant's master plan for our national capital. Dedicated in June 1978, and widely acclaimed as an imaginative addition to the Washington scene, the new building provides the Gallery with expanded exhibition, curatorial, library, and service areas. It also houses facilities for a new Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, which has received funds from the Foundation for its initial appointments and for the further development of its program.

MEDICINE AND POPULATION

The Foundation's awards in health, medical research and education, and population during the decade totalled $55 million. Of this, $30 million went to schools of medicine and $3 million to schools of public health and allied health sciences. In the early years of the decade, when the Foundation's grants in these areas reflected prior interests of Avalon Foundation, hospitals received $4.7 million. Annual-support grants in amounts ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 were also continued to a number of institutions, most of them in the New York area; and several substantial construction grants were then made, including million-dollar awards to Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston and to Presbyterian and Roosevelt Hospitals in New York City.

Medical Education and Research

From 1973 on, grants for buildings or general support were phased out in favor of the present emphasis on medical education and research. Our largest commitment has been $13.7 million in three series of grants to fifteen leading privately supported medical schools to enable them, in a period of financial stringency, to encourage a number of their most promising younger investigators to continue their development as research scientists. The individuals were to be chosen from among those most likely to contribute to the advance of medical science in the years ahead and to form part of the talent pool needed for the next generation of teachers in the nation's medical schools. A review of this program in 1978 indicated that it remains a primary need of medical education to support the ablest young research scientists until their known work and publications make them eligible for continued support from government grants and other major sources of research funds.

Among other grants in support of inquiry into the basic mechanisms of health and disease, $4 million has been awarded to Rockefeller University for its program of research and training in cell biology. Cornell Medical College received $675,000 for the combined research and training activities of its Hypertension Center, as an effort to integrate sophisticated research techniques with diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation, and with the training of clinical investigators in the "categoric" approach to a specific disease. The Foundation has supported medical education in other ways and places as well. Grants of $1.2 million have been made to the Dartmouth Medical School in recognition of its special role developing medical services for a rural region with a widely dispersed population and few health-care centers. A total of $2,650,000 has been awarded to black medical schools (Howard and Meharry) and to organizations that facilitate entry into the study of medicine by members of minority groups.

Population

From 1969 through 1976, $2.8 million was appropriated to institutions working on problems of population, an area to which both Avalon and Old Dominion had an earlier commitment. The funds went chiefly to the Population Council and local and national Planned Parenthood organizations. Since 1977 the Foundation has expanded its effort in this field, in the belief that hunger and many of the world's other problems cannot be resolved if explosive rates of population growth persist, and that present means of restraining that growth are neither technically satisfactory nor effectively available or used. The difficulties appear to range from the inadequacy of basic understanding of reproductive biology to the failure to make family-planning and birth-control efforts reasonably accessible and acceptable in many regions and circumstances.

In 1977 the Foundation increased the level of its support of the Population Council with a grant of $1,350,000 and made grants also to the Alan Guttmacher Institute and Princeton University's Office of Population Research. It also made substantial grants to Harvard and Columbia toward costs of research on reproductive biology, in the latter case assisting both biomedical research and an allied program in the social sciences. These awards were the first in a series that now exceeds $7 million and includes Baylor College of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, the Mayo Foundation, the University of California, San Diego, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Most of the grants support Junior scientists and thus can be seen as contributions to medical and public-health education as well as to the field of population. The Foundation's total grants in population during the decade were $15.5 million.

Other Health Programs

Recent grants have also encouraged schools of medicine and public health, as well as other institutions in the health field, to direct interdisciplinary research efforts toward problems of environmental health, preventive medicine, and formulation of health policy. Concerns in this area were reflected in grants to the Harvard School of Public Health for its Interdisciplinary Programs in Health; to the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health; and to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, initially for examination of the competing political, economic, and social values inherent in decisions about health care policy, and more recently for the creation of a Division of Health Sciences Policy to help guide the tide of public and private funds which now flow into this field.

CONSERVATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The growth of human numbers on this planet and the unprecedented demand, of modern industrial economies on natural resources and on the intricate, interconnected environmental systems on which life depends have brought forward problems to which the Foundation has responded with total commitments of nearly $27 million.

Land Acquisition and Land-Use Planning

In the early years of the decade, major expenditures followed Old Dominion Foundation's prior interests in "organizations concerned with increasing man's understanding of his natural environment, his relation to it, and the effects of his activities upon it," and in the acquisition and preservation of particularly valuable and vulnerable natural areas. The first of these interests led to sustained support of the Conservation Foundation from the time of its founding in 1948, as well as smaller grants to the National Audubon Society and others. Grants from Old Dominion and Avalon for the second purpose, together with North Carolina state funds, enabled the National Park Service to acquire the land to establish Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the first such recreational area in the United States, and later to add the Cape Lookout National Seashore and to fund the feasibility study for the Cape Cod National Seashore. Old Dominion Foundation was the largest contributor to development of the Nature Conservancy in its early years and made a number of grants to other national and international organizations in the field.

In further extension of these programs The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1970 and 1971 appropriated more than $6 million to enable the National Park Foundation to purchase most of the largest of Georgia's coastal islands, making possible the present Cumberland Island National Seashore. Lesser grants for land acquisition went to the Smithsonian's Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies and to the National Audubon Society. To reinforce a continuing capability for selective acquisitions the Foundation contributed $1 million in 1978 toward the Nature Conservancy's $20-million revolving Land Preservation Fund; and to design and develop rational, consistent, cumulative procedures for state-by state review of land use and protection of vulnerable areas, the Foundation has given the Conservancy $850,000 in a series of grants for its State Natural Heritage Program. To date more than 20 states have established such programs.

Environmental Research and Training

Since 1974 the Foundation has moved toward support of research in energy, natural resources, and the environment, including the oceans; toward the strengthening of important institutions working in these fields; and toward the training of young scientists, engineers, resource managers, and potential policy makers better qualified to make informed and balanced judgments in the years ahead.

With the passage of fundamental environmental legislation in 1969 and the early 1970's, it became necessary to settle down to resolving specific problems- a difficult task requiring vast increases in knowledge and a search for reasonable ground on which to reconcile conflicting interests and goals. First-quality objective research is essential in this, and to it the Foundation has committed approximately $10 million since 1974. Including the Nature Conservancy, eight important independent institutions have received grants to support specific projects and to contribute to their long-term strengths: the Conservation Foundation, for several programs, among them a sustained effort to bridge the gap between industry and environmental representatives, focusing initially on toxic-chemical issues; Resources for the Future, for a major analysis of U.S. energy alternatives, partial support of a series of environmental studies, and quasi-endowment to help assure its independent future; the National Audubon Society, to create a new level of scientific capability on a wider range of environmental issues; the Carnegie Institution, to support research on the basic processes of photosynthesis; the Blo-Energy Council, for a directory of present practical methods of using a larger part of the 200 billion tons of green growth the sun annually brings forth on earth, and to fund promising new research projects; the Marine Biology Laboratory, to establish a year-round program on ecology in association with several universities, and to strengthen its exceptional marine library; and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to support its work in public policy and, in 1979, to launch a new coastal studies center and provide a permanent and flexible fund for support of innovative research in oceanography.

Additional support for research on critical conservation and environmental issues has gone to the Environmental Law Institute, to enlarge its library and documentary services to the entire field of private and public users; Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology, for studies of hazardous wastes; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for studies of energy resources, the ozone question, and the effects of changes in the earth's albedo; the National Academy of Sciences, for studies of international significance, including planning for its new Climate Research Board.

Some of these projects have been at the forward edge of inquiry, some designed to reevaluate existing knowledge or relate it to policy, or to define what further investigations seem most needed. But beyond the specific projects, the Foundation has sought to strengthen the continuing capacity of a key group of independent institutions to provide objective research and critical assessments on issues whose significance can only increase in years ahead. To that end, exclusive of grants made to universities, we have invested a total of almost $15 million in the eight important environmental institutions listed earlier, and lesser amounts elsewhere, partly in program support but in several cases as working capital or revolving funds, or grants functioning as endowment.

Most of these commitments have inherently long-term objectives, but for the still longer future we must look to the quality of education and training offered those who will be making environmental judgments well into the next century. In the last few years the Foundation has markedly increased its support of specific education and training programs. These range from summer environmental intern programs for college students to programs at more advanced levels run by the National Academy of Sciences, the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, and SCOPE (the Scientific Cornmittee on Problems of the Environment of the International Council of Scientific Unions). We believe that these programs taken together can increase our national capacity to understand, and even anticipate, the impact of expanding economies on the continued health of the earth's natural systems.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

During the first five years of the Foundation's existence under its present name, its grants in "Civic Programs, Community Services, and Youth Programs" reflected the legacy of the Avalon Foundation. From 1969 through 1974 construction and general-support grants totaling about $4 million were made to more than 100 health-care agencies, settlement houses, and other social-welfare organizations, most of them in the New York metropolitan area. In 1972 many charities which had received support on an annual basis were awarded larger terminal grants as the Foundation shifted its efforts from local and regional charitable activities-historically and naturally supported by individuals, families, and the general public-to a public affairs program emphasizing support for centers of research on questions of national import.

Such centers typically lack a natural support-constituency. Although some of them receive substantial contract or grant support from government agencies, they must look to foundations for the special resources that permit early investigation of problems not yet widely recognized and research that reaches beyond the limits of contract funding or the proper sphere of government. These institutions may also have to rely on private philanthropy for a continuing capacity to respond promptly, flexibly, and independently as circumstances alter and new problems emerge. In the years 1975-1979 we have accordingly made grants of $8 million for research on issues of public policy, either within one of the Foundation's substantive areas of program interest or on more general problems of political economy and public management.

The American Economy and Government

Although the Foundation has not supported the discipline of economics as such, it continues to make substantial grants for studies in which economic issues and methods of analysis loom large: $450,000 to the Committee for Economic Development for a study entitled "Improving the Long-Term Performance of the U.S. Economy"; $275,000 to The Brookings Institution for an analysis of inflation and employment in the 1970's and for a study of wage subsidies for structurally unemployed youth; and $935,000 to the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1978 for a major three-year program of research on capital formation in the U.S. and for preparation and publication of a conference volume on "Post-War Changes in the American Economy."

The Foundation's public affairs program has also demonstrated a concern for the workings of the American Government and an understanding of its history. A 1977 grant of $240,000 supports the initial phase of "Project 87," a ten-year bicentennial undertaking in which the American Historical Association and the American Political Science Association are Jointly reexamining the evolution of the U.S. Constitution and the institutions and processes that have grown up around it during the past 200 years. More recently, the National Academy of Public Administration received funds to monitor and assess the process of Civil Service reform under the 1978 Act and also for a separate project to assess the major government fellowship programs and certain related programs of education for public service. In an effort to look ahead to ways of improving the quality of training for public administration, the Foundation is supporting the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration in an evaluation of new and promising developments in that field.

Cities and Regions

A concern for the viability of our cities, and of particular regions, was reflected in a number of grants, including support totaling $530,000 to the Regional Plan Association for its studies of money-flows in the New York region, widely publicized for their finding that the Federal Government withdraws in taxes billions more than it repays the region through federal employment and other forms of expenditure; a 1979 award of $150,000 to Partners for Livable Places for studies of 'the economics of amenity' in our communities-the ways in which cultural organizations and the quality of urban surroundings affect the economic health of cities and regions; and an award of $350,000 to the Institute of Social and Economic Research of the University of Alaska for studies on the management and use of Alaska's land and resources. The latter grant reflects the immense importance of Alaska as a national asset and the very great difficulty of arriving at a fair and fruitful plan for its development-for the management of its surplus revenues and its extraordinary resources in ways that will sustain its unique and vulnerable environments.

International Affairs

Such grants as the Foundation has made in international affairs have reflected an interest in modern history, politics, and law, as well as economic issues. A grant of $450,000 went to The Brookings Institution in 1972 for a study by American and Japanese economists of the extraordinary growth of the Japanese economy since the 1950's-growth at a rate not previously achieved by any other nation. Two later awards to the Council on Foreign Relations have supported its "1980's Project"- a re-examination of the institutions, relationships, and processes of the international system-and contributed to its International Affairs Fellowships. The Trilateral Commission has received $300,000 in support of its efforts to bring Joint U.S., European, and Japanese capabilities to bear on a variety of global problems. And the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies was given $135,000 for costs of broadening its base of support and for interim costs of Seminar sessions in the humanities and international affairs. Assistance has also gone to the Overseas Development Council-most recently in 1979 for a program of research on certain aspects of Mexican-American interdependence.

Research on Philanthropy

Finally, reflecting a concern for the role of philanthropy in the U.S. as a valuable source of private Initiative in promotion of the national welfare, the Foundation has provided support for the Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs (the Filer Commission), the Council on Foundations, and the Foundation Center, as well as assistance at smaller scale for particular research projects in this area.

These, then, have been the major directions of effort in the 1970's. The total of appropriations made by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in all fields since its founding in mid-1969 is $402.7 million. Of the total a little more than one fourth - $106 million - was given in the form of endowment or funds functioning as endowment. That emphasis, unusual for a major foundation, reflects our commitment to selective institution-building and our conviction that basic research and the nurturing of the highest quality in education and the arts require adequate and predictable support. The table that follows indicates the distribution of grants by major fields of activity.

We are painfully aware of multiple other legitimate areas of need and deeply regret our inability to provide assistance to them. Appeals for funds in most years of the 1970's have exceeded our capacity to help by about twenty to one. To be effective in any area the Foundation has to focus its efforts on a limited number of programs continuously discussed with the Trustees and within the reach and competence of a small professional staff.

III. ORGANIZATION

The original Board of Trustees of The Andrew W Mellon Foundation in 1969 was composed of William O. Baker, Lauder Greenway, Charles S. Hamilton, Jr., Paul Mellon, Nathan M. Pusey, and Stoddard M. Stevens. In 1971 Nathan M. Pusey succeeded Charles S. Hamilton, Jr., as President, and Mr. Hamilton resigned as Trustee. He was succeeded as Trustee by William H. Morton. In 1973 the Board was enlarged by the election of John B. Connally as Trustee and, in 1974, by that of Charles A. Ryskamp.

In June 1975, Nathan M. Pusey retired as President and Trustee and was succeeded in both capacities by John E. Sawyer. At the same time, Stoddard M. Stevens retired from the Board and was succeeded by John R. Stevenson. Mr. Stevens was elected Honorary Trustee, and William O. Baker was elected to the newly created office of Chairman of the Board of Trustees. The Board remained unchanged until June 1979, when Lauder Greenway retired after 25 years of service on this Board and previously that of Avalon (as President and then Chairman, 1954-1969), and when John B. Connally resigned to become a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. To fill these vacancies the Board elected Arjay Miller, until recently Dean of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and Hanna Holborn Gray, President of The University of Chicago.

At the close of 1979 two of the original six Trustees remained: William O. Baker, Chairman, and Paul Mellon. In the course of the decade the Board of Trustees had been enlarged from six members to eight, the professional program staff to six, and total full-time personnel to 17-- a reflection of the Foundation's commitment to carrying forward as significant and useful a program as possible with as small an organization and as expeditious procedures as feasible.

In 1979 the Foundation realized $53,254,729 in net income after investment expenses and federal excise tax. It made appropriations during the year of $51,747,897 and paid out $50,796,372. The market or appraised value of the Foundation's assets on December 31, 1979 was $827 million. The total amount appropriated for charitable purposes by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and its predecessors, the Avalon and Old Dominion Foundations, has now reached $559,624,440.

John E. Sawyer
President
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
140 East 62nd Street
New York, NY 10021
(212) 838-8400