Marion L. Bates Endowment Fund for Faculty Enrichment

Open to teachers with three years of employment in RPS205.

Marion L. Bates, mother of Margaret L. Bates and Kendall P. Bates, was a devoted educator who received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and her Master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin. She was a teacher for many years, with special interests in history and languages, especially Latin and German. She loved to share her knowledge and worked in many ways to make the community a better place in which to live and learn. She was a member of the Board of the Rockford Public Library in the early 1940s and then was appointed to the Board of Education, serving for many years as its secretary.

Marion's children, Margaret and Kendall, established the Marion L. Bates Endowment Fund for Faculty Enrichment in their mother's memory. The purpose of the Marion L. Bates Endowment Fund for Faculty Enrichment is to provide monetary awards for faculty in the Rockford Public School District #205 to further their intellectual development and interests. Grants up to $4,000 per teacher are available through an annual application process. A committee of independent volunteers, including teachers and other educational professionals, will review applications and recommend awards.

Applications must be submitted via CFNIL's online grant application portal.

Read About the 2025 Marion L. Bates Grant Recipients

To be eligible for funding, an applicant must:
- Be a teacher with three years of employment in the Rockford Public School District #205.
The enrichment grants may be used to fund activities that help teachers further develop their intellectual development and interests. These activities need not be basically pedagogical in nature, but the anticipated impact on classes and coursework may be considered. A wide variety of educational activities may be considered, but funding may not be used for computer hardware and/or equipment, which the school district should provide.

Eligible enrichment activities are those that:
- involve personal or professional growth for the applicant;
- may include additional study or pertinent travel;
- show educational linkage to inspire students to be more engaged in their studies, whether through an applicant's classroom, extracurricular, community education, or teaching activities;
- demonstrate quality and creativity in pursuing enrichment activities; and
- provide opportunities to expand and extend the applicant's range of personal experiences.
Activities that are NOT eligible include:
- Personal vacations, and
- Activities that are normal or routine expenses of teaching faculty or are typical of professional continuing education, including teacher's workshops, specialist conferences, subscriptions to professional journals or newsletters, institute day expenses, or other all-school or all-faculty events.
Past applicants and past recipients are eligible to reapply.