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.
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, received a $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for retention programs aimed as helping women and members of underrepresented groups in STEM degree programs. The grant will fund research opportunities that have been shown to be an effective way to engage students and keep their interest in STEM fields.
Jackson State University, the historically Black educational institution in Mississippi, received a $443,178 grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a grant-writing education program for HBCUs. The grant writing center will provide guidance to faculty at small and mid-sized HBCUs on finding funding opportunities and development of research proposals.
Princeton University in New Jersey received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a project entitled, “Psychiatry, Race, and African American Religion in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries.” The grant program is under the direction of Judith Weisenfeld, the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion at the University. Dr. Weisenfeld joined the Princeton faculty in 2007. She is the author of New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration (New York University Press, 2017). Professor Weisenfeld is a graduate of Barnard College in New York City and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University.
Historically Black Tennessee State University received a four-year grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to conduct research on genetic factors of brain tumors that could lead to more targeted therapies. The research is under the director of Quincy A. Quick, an associate professor of biology at the university. Dr. Quick joined the faculty at the university in 2013. He is a graduate of Ferrum College in Virginia and holds a master’s degree from Virginia State University and a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology and neuroscience from the University of New Mexico.
