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 Wisconsin-Madison is the lead institution in a three-year, $1.5 million grant program funded by the National Science Foundation that will study internship programs at six historically Black colleges and universities that have a high number of STEM graduates. The research will examine students’ experiences with their internships and how these experiences may impact their future wages, employment status, and vocational self-efficacy.
Worcester State University in Massachusetts received a $100,000 grant from the state’s Higher Education Innovation Fund. The grant money will be used to build an Equity and Engagement Consortium made up of professors and administrators who will be tasked with promoting “community-engaged scholarship,” as well as increasing diversity on the faculty.
The University of the Virgin Islands, a historically Black educational institution, received a $28.6 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to support efforts to diversify and strengthen the resiliency of the economy by helping to grow the medical sector. The grant includes $14.5 million to support the construction of the Medical Research and Training Center on the University’s St. Thomas Campus and $14.1 million to support the construction of the Medical Simulation Center at the University’s Albert A. Sheen Campus on St. Croix.
The University of Massachusetts received a three-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to expand and diversify the STEM workforce in the state. Nilanjana Dasgupta professor of psychology and director of the university’s Insitute of Diversity Sciences, states that she “aims to develop a research-practice learning community of approximately 100 people from all stakeholder groups. A key focus for our activities will be to identify effective solutions that help students thrive as they transition from high school to higher education in technology or engineering, or from higher education to the workforce in these fields.”
Ohio University received a grant from the Ohio Deans Compact on Exceptional Children for a two-year study entitled, “Project Equity: Culturally Relevant Interactions and Behavioral Supports.” The grant program will explore why Black public school students are disciplined at an inequitable rate relative to White students and students of other racial and ethnic groups.
