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.
Historically Black Dillard University in New Orleans received a $300,000 grant from the AT&T Foundation to support the university’s Pre-Collegiate Emerging Scholars Program. The program is a free college preparatory initiative designed to encourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds to complete high school and enroll in college.
Fayetteville State University, a historically Black educational institution in North Carolina, received a $100,000 donation from Nicholas Perkins, a 2003 alumnus of the university, for scholarships for entrepreneurial students enrolled in the university’s School of Business and Economics. Perkins is president and founder of Perkins Management Services Company of Charlotte, a food services management firm.
Historically Black Tuskegee University received a four-year, $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for programs to increase research opportunities for undergraduate students. The grant will support the university’s Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE) program.
The University of Maryland Eastern Shore, a historically Black educational institution in Princess Anne, received a five-year, $750,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health for a research project on viruses that cause cold sores and complications that can lead to blindness and brain lesions.
Kansas State University received a $1.2 million grant from Cargill, a privately held agricultural and food conglomerate that employs 142,000 people in 65 countries. The grant will support the Cargill Project Impact Diversity Partnership at the university which seeks to increase the number of minority students in the colleges of agriculture, business administration, and engineering.
The program began at Kansas State in 2008. Since that time there has been a 68 percent increase in multicultural students in the target disciplines.
