New grant will help King’s College retell its fabled history

WILKES-BARRE — King’s College has always boasted a made-for-the-movies origin story: The nation still recovering from World War II in 1946, the Rev. James Connerton of the Congregation of the Holy Cross left the University of Notre Dame and came to Wilkes-Barre with a typewriter and a $200 check with orders to educate the children of coal miners.

That founding mission may have adapted with shifting demographics and changes in the community it serves, but King’s officials routinely point to the school’s continued emphasis on helping students who are often the first in their families to obtain a college degree. On Thursday the college announced it is getting a chance to reframe that origin in terms of its contemporary setting.

King’s has been awarded a $40,000 “Reframing the Institutional Saga” grant from NetVUE to research and demonstrate how the historical mission of the College is realized within a current context, according to a media release.

Administered through the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), NetVUE “is a nationwide network of colleges and universities formed to enrich the intellectual and theological exploration of vocation among undergraduates. The grant program is funded through the CIC with support from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.,” according to the release.

“This grant will give us the resources to tell our story in a way that will resonate with our current and future students, who would love to be able to see themselves in our stories,” Jennifer McClinton-Temple said in the release A professor of English and vocation committee co-chair, she added that the grant “will enable us to show how our historical mission is still central to everything we do as an institution.”

Using the grant, the vocation committee and volunteers will do “significant research” and “produce an updated account of the history and mission considering current cultural contexts that have evolved” during the 75 years since Father Connerton and other founders established King’s. Plans include production a “series of articles, videos, and dynamic web content.”

The work will culminate with a symposium in the fall of 2024 “featuring interview subjects, writers, and researchers presenting their work to the College and the community.”

It shows just how far that $200 — worth about $3,068 today, according to in2013dolllars.com — can go, in the right hands.