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 Simmons College in Louisville, Kentucky received a $350,00 donation from the National Baptist Convention of America that will be used to expand its campus and purchase one of the first public schools for Black students in Kentucky. The original Central High School will become the new campus headquarters for the college.
North Carolina State Univerity and historically Black North Carolina A&T State University are sharing a three-year, $349,893 grant from the National Science Foundation that aims to develop the first quantitative tool to specifically measure the STEM identity of African American students while accounting for their racial identity. The instrument will conceptualize the multidimensional nature of STEM identity in African American college students attending historically Black colleges and universities, with a focus on social identity and academic identity. Researchers will also determine whether this new instrument is effective in predicting African American students’ participation in STEM-related activities or careers.
Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit has secured a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop an effective mobile management intervention program to improve asthma control in young Black American adults. While intensive, face-to-face interventions are often difficult to implement in the targeted population, interventions that provide education and address underlying motivation for managing asthma may be the most effective means to ensure adherence to medical prescriptions and to reduce chronic asthma attacks that can lead to death. The research team will assess the ability of a number of technological components to assist and improve traditional asthma education.
California State University, Long Beach received a $2.5 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to develop a new curriculum model that makes research opportunities available to all first-and second-year students in an effort to increase retention in STEM programs of students from underrepresented groups.
Historically Black Delaware State University has received a $438,000 research grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop novel protein/RNA interactions, and incorporate these interactions into a technology capable of fixing adverse RNA mutations.
