Marian University to create Riverside Education Innovation District

Lilly Endowment is making a major investment in the northwest side of Indianapolis.

Marian University is planning to use a $25 million grant to renovate an abandoned hospital into a space focused on education for the community.

"The Larue Carter facility down street has been basically abandoned the last seven, eight years. We've had our eye on doing something great for the neighborhood there, something that would really energize it," Marian University President Daniel J. Elsener said.

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The funding will help pay for renovations at several historic buildings on the Larue Carter campus, which was built in 1931 as a U.S. Veterans Administration Hospital. The project will be called the Riverside Education Innovation District, or REID.

"Making that area thrive will help this entire community. Then, when we create an education hub within that campus that will offer tremendous opportunities, for our schools, for our parents, for our families and the community," Lee Ann Kwiatkowski, Vice President of Klipsch Educators College, said.

Marian's Center for Vibrant Schools and several organizations from across the community that are invested in helping students will be a part of the REID.

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"Part of the goal for the Riverside Education Innovation District is to increase educational attainment. To be able to do that, that means that our professors and our faculty in the educators college, they need to be walking alongside our schools," Kwiatkowski said.

The ultimate goal of the REID will be to ensure students know how to read.

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Cold Spring School at Marian University will be on of the schools involved in the REID.

"The biggest impact that we've seen recently is through the literacy cadre. We were actually the sixth highest growth school on our IREAD scores in the state of Indiana," Cody Stipes, Cold Spring School's Chief Operating Officer, said.

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Stipes credits the success the IPS Innovation Network School is seeing to support from Marian University and the literacy cadre.

"The literacy cadre is an initiative that's happening across the state, where schools are partnering with Marian University, getting a literacy coach, getting training on the science of reading from Marian," Stipes said.

"We're particularly excited because Marian University has gained a national reputation in the science of teaching reading, making sure that third graders can read at level," President Elsener said.

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Marian University is one of 13 Indiana higher education institutions receiving grants through Lilly's College and Community Collaboration initiative.

There is no timeline yet for the start of construction or completion of the REID, but President Elsener says they are ready to get started.

"The wheels were in motion with the Klipsch College way before the grant opportunity, but the grant opportunity is like injecting high powered fuel into a race car at the Indy 500 just down the street. We're ready to go from 180 miles an hour to 250," President Elsener said.

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