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.
The Robert S. Cox Special Colletcions and University Archives Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries was recently awarded a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources to support the university’s “Black Voices, Black Media: Preserving the Black Mass Communications Project.” The initiative aims to digitize, describe, transcribe, and make freely available online 195 reel to reel audiotapes produced by the Black Mass Communications Project between 1970 and 1980.
Piedmont Airlines has gifted one of its aircraft and engines to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The fully functional airplane, an Embraer E145 with two engines, will provide students in the HBCU’s Aviation Maintenance Technician School with hands-on training experience and workforce development opportunities.
A team of scholars at historically Black North Carolina Central University and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina have received a $69 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to accelerate clinical and translational science in healthcare. Over the next seven years, researchers at the neighboring universities will work together to expand education, research, and training opportunities through Duke’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
Tuskegee University in Alabama was recently awarded a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to support the HBCU’s Investing in Brilliance (IB-STEM) project. The new funds will provide 23 high-performing, low-income first and second-year students studying mathematics and aerospace engineering with annual scholarships up to $15,000 for up to five years. These students will also receive specialized faculty advising, tutoring, mentoring, research experiences, and industry partnerships to prepare them for successful careers in STEM.
