Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, announced to the Board of Trustees at the October board meeting the promotion of Narciso Matos from senior program officer to chair of the International Development program and Patricia L. Rosenfield’s appointment to chair of the Carnegie Scholars program and special advisor to the vice president and director for strategic planning and program coordination.
Matos joined the foundation earlier this year to run the African Higher Education program. A former rector of Mozambique’s Eduardo Mondlane University, he was until this year the Secretary General of the Association of African Universities, working on the continent to improve universities’ status and educational opportunities. Matos will now oversee the foundation’s work in sub-Saharan Africa which focuses on supporting higher education in a few select African universities, creating scholarships for women undergraduate students and revitalizing African libraries.
Rosenfield has chaired the Corporation’s developing country programs since 1990 and helped launch the Carnegie Scholars program in 2000 which supports individual scholarship in areas of interest to the foundation’s work. Each year as many as 20 scholars will be chosen for $100,000 grants for up to two years of research. In 2000, the first class of 12 scholars was announced after a rigorous competitive process.
“We feel very rich in talent to have a scholar like Narciso Matos to lead our International Development program which is dedicated to educational strategies in Africa,” says Neil Grabois, vice president and director for strategic planning and program coordination. “He has spent his adult life working to improve the educational opportunities in Africa and his leadership will be invaluable to the success of our work. With Pat Rosenfield’s appointment to chair the Scholars program the Corporation will continue to draw on her vast knowledge of the developing world and I will benefit from her advice and wise counsel. Her move to this new chair position underlines how important the Carnegie Scholars program is to our current work.”
Carnegie Corporation of New York was created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding." As a grantmaking foundation, the Corporation seeks to carry out Carnegie’s vision of philanthropy, which he said should aim “to do real and permanent good in the world.” The Corporation’s capital fund, originally donated at a value of about $135 million, had a market value of $1.7 billion at the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 1999. The Corporation expects to make grants of $75 million dollars in 2000-2001 in the areas of education, international peace and security, international development and special projects, which focuses on citizenship for the 21st century.