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.
Maryam Zolnoori, assistant professor of nursing at Columbia University, received a $3,406,699 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging to develop an artificial intelligence approach for the early detection of cognitive decline in Black older adults. As most speech processing programs are not trained on Black Verbal Language, Dr. Zolnoori’s project will focus on developing an algorithm that can detect language impairment, an early sign of cognitive decline, among speakers of dialects such as African American English, Caribbean English, and Nigerian English.
Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina received a $500,000 investment from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust to launch “Vikings PREP: Pathway to Readiness, Excellence, and Persistance,” a six- to eight-week residential summer bridge program designed to expand college access and support long-term student success. The program will support up to 100 incoming first-year students by providing coursework, mentoring, enrichment activities, and guided access to the HBCU’s campus resources.
Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, received a grant from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education to support the HBCU’s FaithForward Leadership and Mentoring Initiative. Developed in partnership with the Rev. Dr. Jamie O. Graham of Saint John Baptist Church, the program’s curriculum aims to equip students with the tools, mentorship, and experiences necessary to serve effectively in faith-based and local communities.
The HBCU Health Equity Data Consortium housed at North Carolina A&T State University received three grants, worth a combined $1.86 million, to support its operations and programming. An $850,000 grant from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust will support the consortium’s infrastructure as a multi-institution effort to address public health outcomes and disparities in underserved communities. The second grant, an $810,000 award from the North Carolina Division of Public Health, will fund statewide data modernization workforce development for the state’s public health system. The consortium also received a $200,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to resume activities and complete the dissemination of findings and policy implications from the consortium’s COVID-19 Impact Survey.
