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.
Researchers from California State University, Northridge and the University of California, Berkeley have received a $250,000 grant from the FEDCO Charitable Foundation to launch a three-year pilot program for the Compton Unified School District in California with the goal to improve the retention rates of male teachers of color. The first year of the project will consist of training teachers and administrations at one school within the district on how to mentor and support new teachers, especially men of color. During the second and third year, the researchers will expand their training program to more schools in district.
The University of Washington Press has received a $1,205,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the continued development and expansion of the pipeline program designed to diversify academic publishing by offering apprenticeships in acquisitions departments.
Historically Black North Carolina A&T State University has received a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the expansion of the university’s writing center and writing-intensive courses throughout the university’s curriculum. The funds will go towards hiring an assistant director and many new trained tutors for the writing center, integrating a Faculty Writing Fellows program and a Writing Across the Curriculum program. Additional funds will be used to implement a summer-bridge program for needs-based admitted students, offer more writing workshops, seminars, and undergraduate research opportunities in the ares of composition and rhetorics, and to allow faculty to attend professional writing conferences.
The Post-baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has received a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. PREP supports educational activities that enhance diversity in the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research workforce. The program, which is currently in its eleventh year of operation, has seen 97 percent of its students accepted into Ph.D. programs and 85 percent complete biomedical or behavioral doctoral programs.
Historically Black Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina has received a $78,579 grant from the National Security Agency to offer an intensive Chinese summer language program for high school and college students. The STARTALK Chinese Language program will run for three weeks in July and will waive tuition for its 20 high school and 10 college student participants.
