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.
Kelly Slay, an assistant professor of higher education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, and Tangela Blakely Reavis, assistant professor of educational leadership at St. Mary’s College of California, have been awarded a grant from the Spencer Foundation to explore the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the college choices of Black students. “Through interviews and examination of student diary entries, we hope to glean a deeper understanding of factors that impact the college choices of Black students,” Dr. Slay said. “We also seek to understand how the inequities of the college selection process have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Historically Black Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, is the recipient of a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration to develop the HBCU Center of Excellence in Digital Education and Rural Workforce Development. This grant is to be matched with $638,420 in local investment and is expected to create 65 jobs and generate $400,000 in private investment.
Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, received a three-year, $1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support a university program to increase the number of underrepresented minority Ph.D. graduates in the physical sciences and engineering. The grant will renew funding for the University Center of Exemplary Mentoring at Duke.
Zoe Liberman. an assistant professor in the department of psychological & brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, received a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct research on understanding of how stereotypes form in children’s brains — work that could inform future interventions aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of stereotyping.
