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.
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, received a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health aimed at increasing faculty from underrepresented groups in the biomedical sciences. The grant will support the hiring and retention of 10 new assistant professors over the next five years in three research clusters: quantitative biomedical sciences; infection biology; and health equity. Avery August, vice provost for academic affairs and professor of immunology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, is the principal investigator.
The Lumina Foundation of Indianapolis has announced grants to five historically Black colleges and universities in North Carolina for programs aimed at helping Black adults earn college degrees and other credentials. The five grantees are Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, Shaw University in Raleigh, and Winston-Salem State University. Each will receive $175,000 to support work with adult students of color.
Historically Black Central State University in Ohio has received a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for programs aimed at increasing the diversity of the agricultural workforce and developing environmentally and economically sustainable hemp and aquaculture systems. Brandy E. Phipps, research assistant professor of food, nutrition, and health at Central State University, is the principal investigator.
Arizona State University received a three-year, $3.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to examine the issue of race in premodern studies. The goal of the grant is to expand and diversify the reach and tools available to those contributing to the robust body of premodern critical race scholarship, which, while having revealed some of the earliest formations and elements of systemic racism, has yet to find its way into higher education curricula and wider public discourse.
