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.
The School of Dental Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland received a $200,000 grant from the Cleveland Foundation to upgrade and improve the functional capacity of the school’s community dental health care clinic which caters to underserved, low-income families in Northeast Ohio. In 2012, the center had 85,000 patient visits. The dental school offered free checkups to more than 10,000 low-income and minority patients.
Tennessee State University, the historically Black educational institution in Nashville, received a gift of $600,000 from the estate of alumna Vernice Marie Taylor Gray and her husband Elbert Gray Jr. The money will be used to endow the Elbert Gray Jr. and Vernice Taylor Gray Memorial Scholarship which will provide grants for two men and two women students from Tennessee each year.
Vernice Gray attended San Diego State University for one year before transferring to Tennessee State in 1950. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social administration and a minor in Spanish. She taught school and later earned a master’s degree at California Western University.
