POTSDAM -- SUNY Potsdam’s Rebecca V. Sheard Literacy Center has received a grant from the Corning Incorporated Foundation to support its work mentoring North Country children, presented by Joseph Neubert, plant manager for Corning Inc. in Canton.

The grant will be used to support the center’s Mentor Program, which serves 200 elementary and middle school children from St. Lawrence County each year, through an after-school mentoring program led by college students in SUNY Potsdam’s education program.

In the 2009-10 school year, the Rebecca. V. Sheard Literacy Center Mentor Program served 200 students from the Potsdam, Parishville-Hopkinton, Madrid-Waddington, Heuvelton, Colton and Massena central school districts.

The Rebecca V. Sheard Literacy Center's mission is to provide literacy education to the greater Northern New York communities, resources and educational support for teachers and parents on issues of literacy education across the curriculum, and state-of-the-art classrooms for the School of Education faculty who teach literacy. In addition, the Literacy Center houses and maintains partnerships with projects that promote leadership and research on current issues, pedagogy, and curriculum in literacy education.

For more information, visit www.potsdam.edu/academics/SOEPS/litcenter/index.cfm.