New Grants or Gifts Relating to Women in Higher Education

Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.

The University of Montana received a three-year, $297,731 grant from the Office of Violence Against Women of the U.S. Department of Justice. The university will use the grant to fund a full-time position for a professional to deal with issues of sexual assault. Also, a lecture series will be established to educate students and staff about sexual assault and additional funds will be used for training law enforcement and administrative staff on procedures for dealing with sexual assault.

Texas Woman’s University received a $532,500 gift from the estate of Frankie Lovvorn Bretherick that will be used to support the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) archive at the university. The grant will help fund the university’s efforts to digitize the archives.

Bretherick was stationed at Greenville Army Base in Mississippi. After the WASP was deactivated, Bretherick became an evacuation nurse for the Army Nurse Corps. She died this past January in Plano, Texas, at the age of 98.

The University of Pennsylvania‘s Perelman School of Medicine received a $3.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a new interdisciplinary research center to explore the role of gender in behavioral health.

The new Center for the Study of Sex and Gender in Behavioral Health will be led by C. Neill Epperson, associate professor of psychiatry and founder and director of the Penn Center for Women’s Behavioral Wellness. Dr. Epperson, who serves as principal investigator on the grant project, completed her medical training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tracy L. Bale will serve as co-director of the Center for the Study of Sex and Gender in Behavioral Health. She is an associate professor of psychiatry at the medical school and is director of the Neuroscience Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Bale is a graduate of Washington State University and holds a Ph.D. in pharmacology/neurobiology from the University of Washington.