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 Howard University, has received a $613,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to fill essential data gaps in biotechnology research. A team of faculty and student researchers will explore explore dry fractionation, an environmentally friendly method that separates material particles without using liquids, heat, or mechanical forces. Results from the project could enable U.S. bio-refineries to make special plant-based nanofibers at a significantly reduced cost compared with current methods.
Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, was awarded $465,000 from Lilly Endowment Inc. to expand the HBCU’s “Equipping Leaders for Ministry” program. First launched in 2019 with $1 million in funding from the Lilly Endowment, the program will focus its next phase on integrating classroom learning into real-world ministry and organizational contexts, providing small churches with critical support in high-impact areas, and strengthening congregations that play an essential role in their communities.
The University of California, Santa Barbara, was awarded a $750,000 grant from the Schmidt Sciences’ Humanities and AI Virtual Institute to recover and share nineteenth-century African American newspapers using artificial intelligence. The interdisciplinary project will focus on developing machine learning tools specifically trained on Black press materials, which will account for the nuances and experimental layouts of historical Black newspapers that current commercial AI tools fail to recognize.
