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.
Syracuse University has received a $300,000 gift from university trustee Rob Light and his wife Shelly to support scholarships for historically underrepresented students. The funds will endow three scholarships in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, the Bandier Program in Recording and Entertainment Industries, and the College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Voorhees College, the historically Black educational institution in Denmark, South Carolina, has received a $73,700 gift from the United Tank Offering of the Episcopal Church to assist with the Voorhees College Campus Community Initiative (VCCCI). The VCCCI is a two-part project that allows Voorhees to meet the needs of students and community by providing access to education and wellness progrms in rural South Carolina. The new funds will create a new wellness and fitness complex and renovate a building on campus to serve as an admissions center.
Alabama State University has received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop evidence-based research and learning for undergraduate biology students at the historically Black educational institution. The funds will enhance the university’s biology curriculum, provide five undergraduate biology students with research opportunities, and increase the research and teaching infrastructure in the university’s biology labs.
Andrea Roberts, an assistant professor of urban planning at Texas A&M University, received a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to support the Texas Freedom Colonies Project. The freedom colonies were towns established by former enslaved people of Texas. Dr. Roberts has set up a website documenting the history of these communities. Dr. Roberts is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she majored in political science. She holds a master of public administration degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from the University of Texas.
The African American Health Disparities Task Force and Cicatelli Associates Inc. have received a five-year, $790,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve health outcomes and reduce high rates of chronic disease among African Americans living along the Ferry Street corridor in Buffalo, New York. The University at Buffalo of the State University of New York System is a key member of the task force.
Afua O. Arhin, professor of nursing and associate dean at historically Black Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, received a three-year, $1,443,360 grant from the Health Resources and Service Administration. The grant will fund the Veterans in the Community Project. The program seeks to recruit veterans into the undergraduate nursing program who are willing to practice in noninstitutional settings in underserved communities.
