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.
Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has received a $5 million award from the Duke Endowment to expand the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. The funding will be used to establish the Bishop Joseph B. Bethea Professorship, which will support a new senior faculty member who specializes in Black church studies.
Historically Black Howard University in Washington, D.C. has received a donation from the Schwartz Family Foundation to support the university’s Graduation Retention Access to Continued Education (GRACE) program. The new Schwartz Family Foundation GRACE Scholarship Fund will provide financial support for pre-med undergraduate students.
The College of New Jersey has received a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the college’s “Undocumented. Black. Citizen.” project. The multidisciplinary project aims to develop resources that discuss the experiences of Black undocumented immigrants in New Jersey. In partnership with local community members, the college will create a series of lectures, workshops, and classes that help connect the college with the needs of its surrounding area.
Jackson State University, a hisotircally Black educational institution in Mississippi, has been awarded a $2 million grant from the Entergy Charitable Foundation to develop a new Critical Power Grid Network Security Lab. The lab will provide students with academic and research opportunities to prepare them for careers in energy infrastructure cybersecurity.
A project led by Miles College in Alabama, in collaboration with Howard University, Morgan State University in Baltimore, Tennessee State University, and Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, has received a $685,580 grant from the National Science Foundation. The project, “Collaborative Research: Ideas Lab: The HBCU Ujima Collective: Building Research Capacity at HBCUs through a Grow Your Own Research Corps Model,” aims to enhance the research strengthens of all five institutions and create a model for enhancing research capacities at other HBCUs.
The University of Arkansas has been awarded a $3.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to research how personal stress and illness may cause healthcare workers to show bias towards patients of color. The project aims to discover situations where medical providers have increased levels of racial bias, thereby identifying the best times to implement existing anti-bias strategies.
Historically Black Florida A&M University has received two grants totaling more than $23 million from the National Institutes of Health to enhance the institution’s research capabilities and infrastructure. The first grant, worth $15.7 million, will support the existing Research Centers in Minority Institutions program, which provides biomedical research and graduate-level academic opportunities for students. The second grant, worth $7.9 million, will fund a new 16,000-square-foot, multidisciplinary research facility in the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Historically Black Delaware State University has received a $200,000 unrestricted donation from alumnus Norman Oliver. In addition to owning his own construction company, Oliver owns Our Youth, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to building affordable housing in Wilmington, Delaware, and NOR Enterprises, an organization that provides school transportation for homeless children.
Gadsden State Community College, a historically Black educational institution in Alabama, has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Gene Haas Foundation to establish the Gene Haas Center for Advanced Machining and Engineering Technology. The center will enhance the college’s precision machining program, which prepares students for several career pathways in machinery, such as computer network control machinists, programmers, and automotive machinists.
Prairie View A&M University in Texas has received a $1,243,372 grant from the United States Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs to fund “Project iSPREAD-ED: Innovative and Sustainable Practices for Recruiting, Educating, and Diversifying Educational Diagnosticians.” By enhancing the HBCU’s graduate-level special education program, the initiative aims to increase the number of diverse, qualified, and culturally responsive educational diagnosticians in special education.
Historically Black North Carolina A&T State University and North Carolina State University have received a $1 million grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to investigate rock weathering, one of the most promising approaches to storing carbon in soil. Through their research, scholars at both institutions will study how this approach affects soil quality, crop yields, greenhouse gas mitigation, and ecosystem balance.
