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 Elizabeth City State University received a three-year grant totaling $576,333 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to fund the new NASA Minority University Research and Education Program Aerospace and Advanced Manufacturing Education and Training Program at the institution. The initiative will develop organizational systems and mechanisms required to meet the workforce needs of the aerospace manufacturing industry in northeastern North Carolina, strengthen education capacity at ECSU by increasing partnerships with high schools, small businesses, and workforce and economic development agencies, and generate interest in aerospace manufacturing careers, thus increasing the successful pipeline of qualified workers in the field.
Coppin State University, a historically Black educational institution in Baltimore, has received a $3.7 million Teacher Quality Partnership grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The grant will be used to support the university’s Pathways to Professions initiative over the next five years. The program aims to increase teacher diversity while also boosting student success in high-needs urban and rural schools across Maryland.
Historically Black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University received a $1.7 million grant to study how to create semiconductors that can withstand extreme environments, like outer space. The research will focus on modeling and simulation of wideband gap semiconductors, focused on gallium nitrate. Researchers are attempting to make the semiconductors radiation immune which will allow them to be used in more extreme conditions, including high heat and other harsh environments.
The University of Houston received a five-year, $3.3 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development for a study of children with disabilities in Zambia. There are nearly 300 million children who are estimated to have one of four developmental disabilities – epilepsy, intellectual disability, vision loss, and hearing loss. Ninety-five percent of these children live in low- and middle-income countries, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The study hopes to find the cause of these disabilities so that remedial steps can be taken.
Historically Black Morgan State University has received a $596,383 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the responsiveness to environmental indications of fire through the in-depth analysis of human behavior in diverse situations and physical cues. In addition, the research findings will also be used to improve fire safety systems, particularly in the home. The study entitled, “Detecting Changes in Developing Fires and Posed Risk,” aims to better understand human perception of budding fires, how the inherent risks are interpreted, and the spectrum of responses that they illicit.
