Profile of Ken Garcia
[photo] Ken Garcia

A Secret Weapon in the Search for Funds

By Gail Hinchion Mancini

He doesn’t use a divining rod to hunt for grant money. And nobody calls him Coach Ken.

Yet the name Ken Garcia frequently comes up, especially when the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announces a new round of fellowship recipients. This year, Notre Dame faculty led the nation with eight.

Garcia is associate director of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, which supports the scholarly pursuits of College of Arts and Letters faculty by providing internal resources for research, travel, conferences, visiting speakers and curriculum development; by locating outside funding and by helping faculty prepare successful grant applications. External grants and fellowships are Garcia’s specialty.

Applications have been climbing, and so have successes. Between 1997 and 2007, annual grant totals grew from $3.7 million to almost $10 million. The number of successful grants during that period grew from 41 to 91.

Garcia, who reads almost every application and doctors many of them, graciously attributes this success to the faculty. “If they didn’t have the expertise and qualifications, they wouldn’t compete well,” he says. “All I do is help them along a bit.”

Or a lot. Some faculty, including now-tenured political scientist Mary Keys, profess they would never have made it to tenure without his guiding hand.

Rev. Joseph Amar, of the classics department, presents a unique glimpse of Garcia’s skill, having recently received two NEH grants and one from the Earhart Foundation. The latter two awards will allow him to write a book he’s been eager to do for years, a biography of St. Ephrem of Syria. “These two grants should really be credited to Ken. He did all the leg work,” Father Amar says.

Father Amar, Robin Darling Young, also of the classics department, and Garcia collaborated on a successful application for an NEH Summer Seminar grant that gathered scholars from other institutions here to delve into the history of Christianity in the Middle East before the coming of Islam. Father Amar says he wasn’t aware of the summer seminar grant until Garcia brought it to his attention.

At one point while trying to apply for an NEH grant, Father Amar found that his computer no longer was compatible with NEH application software. “Ken came to my office with his laptop. He made a house call,” Father Amar says.

In applying for grants, Father Amar notes, it can be hard to figure out what a foundation is looking for. “In a phone call to Ken, he’ll tell you exactly what you should say and what you shouldn’t say in order to fit the profile of the grant. He’s not just a nice man, and he is that. He’s really smart and knowledgeable.”

When not supporting individual faculty projects, Garcia collaborates with faculty or centers and institutes to garner a more ambitious level of grants, such as NEH Challenge grants. Challenge grants, sometimes as large as $1 million, underwrite endowments for major programs in the humanities. In fall 2007, the Medieval Institute won a challenge grant to establish a new Byzantine studies program. In fall 2005, political scientist Michael Zuckert received one to develop a program on Religion in American public life. The Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies also has won one. In short, every time Garcia and faculty could and did apply, they won one of these prestigious grants.

“These endowments will bring over $10 million to Notre Dame,” he says. “Over the next 20 years, the investment of these three endowments will grow between $70 and $120 million.”

Winning a challenge grant is especially sweet, says the soft-spoken Garcia, who also is finishing his doctorate in theology. “When we get one of those, we go to Legends to celebrate.”