The Grawemeyer Awards, presented by the University of Louisville, are five annual prizes given in the fields of music, improving world order, psychology, education, and religion. They were established in 1984 by H. Charles Grawemeyer, the founder and CEO of Reliance Paint and Varnish Company, with an initial endowment of $9 million. Grawemeyer died in 1993. The first award, Music Composition, was presented in 1985. The award for Ideas Improving World Order was added in 1988 and Education in 1989. In 1990, a fourth award, Religion, was added as a joint prize with the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Psychology was added in 2000, with the first award given out in 2001. Each of the awards include a $100,000 prize.
This year the Education Award was given to Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor in the College of Education at Temple University in Philadelphia. Professor Goldrick-Rab is being honored for her research on financing higher education. She is the author of Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid and the Betrayal of the American Dream (University of Chicago Press, 2016).
“This book is intended to be a wake-up call,” writes Professor Goldrick-Rab, who teaches higher education policy and sociology. “It brings the lives of students pursuing college degrees front and center and unveils their financial struggles.”
Professor Goldrick-Rab joined the Temple University faculty in 2016, after teaching for a dozen years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a graduate of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.