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.
Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond received a five-year, $3.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for a study on how to reduce barriers to adequate healthcare for people who suffer from sickle cell anemia, an affliction that disproportionately falls on African Americans.
The University of Alabama was awarded a three-year, $800,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health for a program to help fight obesity in the rural Black Belt counties of Alabama. The grant project is entitled “UNITED: Using New Interventions Together to Eliminate Disparities.”
North Carolina A&T State University, the historically Black educational institution in Greensboro, received a $500,000 donation from 103-year-old Clara Hooker Black, who has had several relatives earn degrees at the university. The funds will be used to establish the William Frank Hooker and Clara Hooker Black Scholarship Fund for students in the fields of nursing, history, or education. The gift is the largest in the university’s history from an individual who is not a graduate of the institution. In return, the university is naming a conference room in honor of the couple.
The University of Connecticut received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to support it Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Bridge to a Doctorate program. The grant will allow the university to offer scholarships to minority students pursuing doctorates in STEM disciplines.
