Loraine de la Fe was looking for the perfect scholarly fit. She found it in the archives of the Wolfsonian-FIU, Miami Beach's famously eccentric design museum dedicated to 20th century objects, graphic art, books and propaganda.

''The moment you walk in there, you know it's different from other museums,'' says de la Fe, a doctoral candidate at Florida International University. Her research involves investigating the Soviet Union's use of children's images to encourage worldwide communism during Stalin's first five-year plan, which ran from 1929 to 1932 and focused on heavy industrial growth to bolster the future of the Soviet Union.

With help from Wolfsonian librarian Nicholas Blaga, de la Fe delved into a trove of material, from children's books to issues of USSR in Construction, a socialist-realism propaganda magazine published in the early 1930s and famous for its use of photomontage.

''It was perfect,'' she says.

Now, thanks to a prestigious, $500,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Wolfsonian will be able to help even more students and scholars. The foundation gives what Wolfsonian director Cathy Leff calls such ''low-key, under-the-radar'' grants to museums attached to universities in order to strengthen the partnership between the institutions.

Wolfsonian administrators plan to use the money, spread over three years, to create a teaching gallery on the third floor of FIU's new Frost Art Museum, provide stipends to FIU faculty as an incentive to involve the Wolfsonian's resources in curriculum, develop a fellowship program between the museum and doctoral candidates in FIU's history department and create a national semester-long, visiting-scholar program.

''I think it's an exciting opportunity for the Wolf as an institution and the school as a whole,'' Leff says.

The grant has also enabled the museum to create new staff initiatives. Jonathan Mogul, a nine-year Wolfsonian veteran, becomes the museum's first academic-programs coordinator.

Mogul, who previously coordinated fellowships and grants for the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research in Washington, D.C., says he will implement projects supported by the grant and act as liaison to the university.

''I really hope that the result of this will be that we become a much more important resource for the teaching, the learning and the research that takes place at the university,'' he says. ``We've accomplished a lot in that regard, but there's still plenty of potential for more.''

De la Fe also hopes the new projects will lure more FIU students through the doors of the museum.

''There's only so much a library can do for you,'' she says. With the Wolfsonian, you can ``go in there, take your time and experience it.''

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