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 Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, received a $444,955 grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the college’s Upward Bound program, designed to improve the graduation rate for high school students from low-income students in Richmond County. The program offers students help in math, science, English, and foreign languages and guides these students through the college application process. The grant program is under the direction of Chellita Carlyle, director of the Upward Bound program at Paine College.
The School of Dentistry and the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles received a $3 million grant from the Hutto-Patterson Charitable Foundation that will be used to build a custom-made, eight-chair mobile dental clinic that will operated in underserved communities. The grant will also fund student scholarships and outreach programs at the two schools.
The English department at the University of Missouri received a four-year, $330,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a research project on Luyia, a group of Bantu languages spoken in Kenya and Uganda. The languages remain active largely by oral tradition and therefore are in danger of being lost.
Clark Atlanta University, the historically Black educational institution in Georgia, received a $150,000 donation from Delores P. Aldridge, a trustee of the university. The funds will be used to strengthen the capacity of the university’s fundraising operations. Dr. Aldridge also donated her academic papers to the university. The university will rename an auditorium in its Center for Research in Science and Technology in her honor. Dr. Aldridge earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Clark Atlanta University and was the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in sociology at Purdue University. Later, she was the first African American woman in a tenure-track faculty post at Emory University.
The Walter R. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University in Detroit received a $109,152 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Division to make accessible 1,660 oral histories in the university’s archives from key leaders in the labor, civil rights, and social justice movement.
Historically Black Alabama State University in Montgomery received a three-year, $336,634 grant from the National Science Foundation to fund a summer research program in nanotechnology for 10 undergraduate college students. Students from several different universities will spend nine weeks on the Alabama State campus conducting research. Participants will receive room and board, travel costs, and a $500 per week stipend.
The Thurgood Marshall College Fund received a $600,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation. The grant will provide scholarships for students at TMCF member institutions and fund the TMCF’s Annual Leadership Institute. The institute brings together 500 students from HBCUs for a four-day conference on professional development. This year’s institute will be held in Washington, D.C. from November 9-13.
Historically Black Delaware State University received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a neuroscience research project entitled, “The Role of Astrocytes in Neuronal Synchronous Activity in the Brain.”
