Maria Palazzi, director of the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD), has been awarded a $28,000 grant from Women & Philanthropy in support of the summer program, Digital Animation: A Technology Mentoring Program for Young Women.

This generous support will provide funding for ACCAD's summer program for young women in 2014 and 2015, as well as seeding a new social networking community for both mentors and attendees of past and future programs. The Digital Animation program is a free program for 7th and 8th grade students in central Ohio. Each year, it selects 20 young women with exhibited artistic potential to work with women mentors from arts and technology fields at Ohio State. For two weeks, they use problem-solving skills and collaborative learning to create digital animation.

Ohio State’s Women & Philanthropy members invest together in the people of Ohio State and the work they do. As part of their mission they help Ohio State faculty by seeding ideas proposed to add new programs, grow existing programs, and create new collaborations, making a difference in the life of the university.