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.
Historically Black Delaware State University received a three-year, $591,628 National Science Foundation grant that will fund the investigation of undergraduate research experiences and their benefits to students and their academic journeys. The grant funding will allow undergraduates to take part in the ongoing hemp research at the university.
Claflin University, the historically Black educational institution in Orangeburg, South Carolina, received a $2,725.000 grant from BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina for immediate financial needs to ensure sustainability and help students start or continue their education. Some of the funds will be used for technology support.
Florida International University in Miami will receive a $1.3 million U.S. Department of Education grant over the next five years to ensure more students from underrepresented backgrounds excel and graduate from college. The grant will support an array of services including tutoring, financial aid advice, as well as career and college mentoring.
Historically Black Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina has been awarded a $1.5 million grant through the University of North Carolina’s Research Opportunities Initiative. The grant will be used to establish an applied data science center that will promote collaboration between computer scientists and domain scientists to enhance interdisciplinary research and expand data science education. The funds will support five faculty fellows and their research initiatives as well as one post-doctoral researcher, five graduate students, and seven undergraduate student researchers.
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, received a three-year, $3.3 million grant from the HopperDean Foundation. The grant will fund the creation of an Office of Diversity and Inclusion in the Faculty of Computing and Information Science in addition to new graduate student fellowships and increased support for existing programs that foster diversity in computing.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1 million grant to historically Black Tennessee State University in Nashville to recruit minority transfer students from regional community colleges to its College of Engineering. The award will provide 45 scholarships over five years to students who want to earn bachelor’s degrees in engineering, math, or computer science.
