McDaniel College announced today, Feb. 7, 2012, that the Nora Roberts Foundation has awarded it a second grant of $100,000, following a similar donation in May 2011. The money will fund an academic minor in romance fiction and an online creative writing course at the Westminster, Maryland school, as well as support the American romance collection maintained at its Hoover Library.
Romance writer Nora Roberts has long used the Nora Roberts Foundation as a vehicle for her many charitable donations. In both 2010 and 2011, the Giving Back Fund named her as one of the most generous of celebrity philanthropists.
In a Feb. 7 press release, McDaniel College president Dr. Roger Casey praised Roberts’ latest donation. "This gift will allow the college to reinforce Ms. Roberts’ reputation in the academic and literary arenas as a master of and dedicated advocate for the romance genre," he said, adding, "It will also raise the profile of the romance novel among scholars and the academic community."
One of the few U.S. institutions with an emphasis in the study of romance fiction, McDaniel College includes among its faculty English professor Pamela Regis, author of A Natural History of the Romance Novel. In November 2011 Regis organized the international conference, "Popular Romance in the New Millineum," which was held at McDaniel College and cosponsored by the Nora Roberts Foundation.
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