Here is this week’s news of grants to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct research on the use of algae and bacteria to remove chromium from water and soil. The grant has allowed the university to purchase equipment such as a coupled plasma spectrometer.
Morehouse School of Medicine received a five-year, $5.7 million grant from the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities to continue funding for the school’s Center of Excellence in Health Disparities.
The principal investigator on the grant project is Dr. Ronald L. Braithwaite. He is a professor in the departments of community health and preventive medicine, family medicine, and psychiatry and behavioral sciences.
Washington State University and Pennsylvania State University are participating in a $524,999 National Science Foundation grant to study the career pathways of African American men in technology-related fields who graduated from several historically Black colleges and universities.
K.D. Joshi, professor of management at Washington State and the principal investigator, said, “This work is particularly important because the literature that focuses on African American males often is populated with topics associated with their academic failures. However, this work focuses on African American males’ academic successes.”
Delaware State University in Dover received a three-year, $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Science Foundation for research aimed at making the cassava plant resistant to viruses. The cavassa plant is a food staple of about 500 million people in many tropical regions of the world.
The research is under the direction of Vincent N. Fondong, a professor of biology at Delaware State University. Dr. Fondong holds a master’s degree from the University of Dschang in Cameroon and a Ph.D. from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Historically Black Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina received a three-year, $300,000 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that enables five undergraduate students and two faculty members to complete a 10-week summer research program at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
