RENSSELAER – St. Joseph’s College is among three Indiana independent colleges selected as 2012 winners of the Ball Brothers Foundation Venture Fund competitive grant program. The others are Franklin College and St. Mary-of-the-Woods College.

Each will share $75,000 in seed funding for start-up initiatives to stimulate creativity and innovation and to foster competition and collaboration among the state’s 31 independent campuses.

St. Joseph will use its $25,000 to develop a “Hoophouse Farming Eduventure,” an innovative start-up business and educational collaboration in organic hoophouse farming that uses hoophouse technologies for four-season vegetable production. Also known as a high tunnel, a hoophouse is a passive solar greenhouse that extends the growing season for warm and cool-season crops in both rural and urban settings.