Stronger Together, a collective of several granting partners to fund projects with a Christian faith perspective, today announced that Redeemer University College has been awarded a $75,000 grant to establish a centre for Christian scholarship. The mission of the centre will be to foster the work of Christian scholarship in Canada and leverage that work for maximum public impact. “We are so grateful to receive this first instalment toward our new research centre,” notes Dr. Hubert Krygsman, President of Redeemer University College. “The centre is one of several exciting new initiatives Redeemer is investing in, projects that aim to expand Redeemer’s impact and provide an informed, Christian voice in the public sphere. I want to thank Stronger Together not just for their generosity, but also for the confidence in our work this grant represents. ” The core focus of this new centre will be to equip Redeemer faculty to undertake significant research with a public impact, but it will also foster and celebrate the work of Christian public intellectuals throughout Canada. It will do that by offering a financial prize to an outstanding emerging public intellectual at a Christian Higher Education Canada (CHEC) school and by hosting an annual conference of leading Canadian Christian public thinkers. The centre will also oversee a major new granting program to encourage the production of excellent, Christian scholarship that will have public impact and benefit. The centre will consolidate the work of Redeemer’s two existing research centres, the Dooyeweerd Centre for Christian Philosophy and the Pascal Centre for Advanced Study of Faith and Scholarship. The work of these centres will carry on as programs of the new centre, providing them with coordinated administrative direction and allowing them to sharpen the focus of their work toward public impact. The work of the centre will begin this fall with the commissioning of a Director and hiring of support staff. A more public launch will take place in 2015. “There are many at Redeemer, both faculty and staff, who we thank for working so hard in putting together such an excellent proposal,” says Dr. Doug Needham, Redeemer’s Provost and Vice President, Academic. “Most of all, we praise God for this amazing gift!” This is the third grant that Redeemer has received from Stronger Together. In 2011, Redeemer received funding to develop a community support organization that connects students with organizations and ministries that are addressing the complex needs of Hamilton’s downtown core. And in 2012, Stronger Together funded an initiative to develop a mental health strategy for Redeemer and as a resource for other Christian post-secondary institutions.