The Raritan Valley Community College (N.J.) Planetarium has received a $50,000 grant from NASA for a project that helps local science teachers learn how to teach astronomy. The two-year IDEAS (Initiative to Develop Education through Astronomy and Space Science) grant lets teachers attend a weeklong summer institute at the college.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has provided a 40-month, $789,000 grant to Yale and Stanford universities and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to help the three institutions catalog their collections of 78-rpm recordings. When complete, users will be able to search more than 29,000 recordings from all three sources.

The University of California at Los Angeles has received a $5 million grant from the Paul I. Terasaki Foundation to enhance the university’s Japanese studies program. The grant will establish a professorship in contemporary Japanese studies and fund think tanks and educational outreach efforts, among other things.

The University of Chicago has received a $5 million gift from Bernard J. DelGiorno, who earned a bachelor’s from the university in 1954 and a master’s in 1955. The donation will help establish a creative and performing arts center, build a new dormitory and renovate Stagg Field, the university’s main athletic field.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has received a $5 million gift from Frank and Athena Sarris, founders of Sarris Candies. The gift will endow research at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, where Frank Sarris received a kidney transplant in 2002.