Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
The University of Kansas received a $70,000 grant from the National Academy of Education for a study on the effect of school funding policies on the racial gap in educational achievement.
Historically Black Fayetteville State University in North Carolina received a four-year, $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation for programs to increase student success in mathematics and computer science. The program will be under the direction of Daniel I. Okunbor, a professor of computer science at the university. He is a graduate of the of the University of Benin in Africa. He holds a master’s degree in industrial mathematics and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, received a grant from the Bernie L. Bates Foundation to provide scholarships for students from underrepresented groups who are majoring in STEM fields. Students must have at least a 3.0 grade point average to be eligible.
Lincoln University, the historically Black educational institution in Pennsylvania, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct an oral history project involving residents of Hinsonville, an early African American settlement near the university’s campus.
Historically Black Kentucky State University received a five-year, $1,280,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to fund the university’s Upward Bound program to ease the transition of students in area high schools to college.