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 Tuskegee University in Alabama received a $482,107 grant from the National Science Foundation that will be used for a program to increase interest in STEM subjects among middle school students in local school systems.
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, received a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies to support the continuing work of the Ecclesiastic and Secular Sources for Slave Societies database. Founded in 2003, the database digitally preserves endangered ecclesiastical and secular documents related to Africans and Afro-descended peoples in the Americas. The documents include records from Brazil, Colombia, Cuba and the United States. The American Council of Learned Societies’ grant program is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Meharry Medical College, the historically Black educational institution in Nashville, Tennessee, is participating in a five-year, $11.6 million grant program from the National Institutes of Health. The grant will fund the Center of Excellence in Precision Medicine and Population Health. The center will focus its research on eliminating racial health disparities. Also participating in the grant program will be Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the University of Miami.
The University of California, Riverside received at $100,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services that will fund a series of meetings for a diverse group of curators with the goals of increasing the diversity of archived digital collections to include more materials relating to groups that have been marginalized in American society.
Historically Black Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, received a $1 million commitment from the College of Bishops of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. In addition, the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church announced a pledge of $350,000 to the college.
Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland received a grant from the Institute of International Education to support scholarships to study abroad for students from underrepresented groups. According to the Institute of International Education, African Americans make up only 5.6 percent of all American students who study abroad.
