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 Center for NanoBiotechnology Research at historically Black Alabama State University in Montgomery received a three-year, $344,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health for research to develop new vaccines to induce a protective immune response to chlamydia, a common sexually transmitted disease. The research will be under the direction of Dr. Vida A. Dennis, a professor of microbiology at the university. Dr. Dennis is a graduate of the University of Liberia in Monrovia, Liberia. She holds a master’s degree from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and a Ph.D. in parasitology from the University of Georgia.
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst received a grant of $219,757 from the National Science Foundation to fund a study of employment insecurity with a focus on racial and gender differences in job opportunities. The research is under the direction of Enobong Branch, an associate professor of sociology at the university. Dr. Branch is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in biology. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University at Albany of the State University of New York.
Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond received a $175,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a program to educate public school teachers in Virginia about the history of segregation and the civil rights movement in the state. Two groups of 35 school teachers will participate in the program in the summer of 2015. In addition to coursework on campus, the teachers will visit several historical sites.
