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 Yale School of Management has received a gift from Yale Law School alumnus Robert C. Pozen to endow the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Leadership at Yale. The program aims to give healthcare practitioners the necessary skills and knowledge to tackle major inequities in the U.S. healthcare system.
The Morehouse College Entrepreneurship Center will receive a $295,500 donation from JPMorgan to support the training of minority and women business owners in metro Atlanta. The new funds will allow the Center to develop an accelerator program for early-stage technology startups, provide management training and technical assistance for micro businesses, and offer one-on-one management consulting to help small midsize businesses secure contracts from large Georgia companies.
A professor at historically Black Tennessee State University has received two grants totaling $650,000 from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Trojan Technologies of Canada, and California-based Aquafine Corporation. The funds will be used to conduct research into making food safer by eliminating harmful viruses and bacterial endospores in juices and other beverages.
Historically Black Morris Brown College in Atlanta received one of 22 grants totaling $1.6 million from a National Trust for Historic Preservation program called the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The money for the grants was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Morris Brown College was the only HBCU to receive a grant. The funds will be used to help restore Fountain Hall, a vacant and deteriorating structure which is the oldest surviving building associated with the Atlanta University Center. The building, constructed in 1882, contains the office where W.E.B. Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folks.
A professor in the Division of Ethics in the department of medical humanities and ethics at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center has received a $2.8 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute to analyze diversity and inclusion practices at academic medical centers across the country. The majority of individuals who have contributed DNA to population biobanks for medical research are White. The project aims to increase minority participation in this research to create more representative results.
The Atlanta University Center Consortium, a group of historically Black colleges and universities, has received a $8.25 million grant from the UnitedHealth Group to fund the launch of the AUCC Data Science Initiative. The new program will offer classes for students who want to specialize in data science or learn data analysis to give them a competitive edge in the job market.
Historically Black Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina has received a $176,828 grant from the National Science Foundation to purchase equipment for research and the education of students enrolled in STEM fields. The funds will go towards a new Differential Electrochemical Mass Spectrometry System. Additionally, the grant will also provide learning opportunities in technology for K-12 public school students in rural northeastern North Carolina, and support the development of a research facility at the university.
