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.
During the 2025 commencement ceremony at historically Black Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Bishop T.D. Jakes announced his organization, the T.D. Jakes Foundation, will donate $100,000 to the school. The gift will support workforce readiness initiatives, expand access to higher education, and strengthen the HBCU’s infrastructure.
The Center for Urban Research at the Georgia Institute of Technology has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the Southern Company Foundation. The funds will be used to evaluate the “Achieving Fairness of Place” initiative, which is investigating seven historically disinvested neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia. The new grant will go towards developing a measurement strategy to determine the initiative’s success in improving outcomes in housing, education, health, and economic mobility.
Bowie State University in Maryland has received a $99,999 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) program. The grant will support the development of a new AI and Machine Learning Health Research Laboratory at the HBCU. Once established, the lab will study the social and demographic risk factors contributing to persistent mental health challenges across the local Prince George’s County community.
