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.

Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, received a grant of nearly $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to support efforts to increase the number of women enrolling in STEM programs at the college. According to U.S. Department of Education data, women were only 6 percent of the enrollments at the college in 2014. The grant program will include outreach programs to women at local high schools. Emphasis will be placed on recruiting women for programs in electrical technology, machine tool and computer-aided manufacturing, and environmental technology. At present, there are eight women among the 155 students enrolled in these programs at the college.

Three students at Wellesley College, 1912

Bryn Mawr College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution for women in Pennsylvania, received a $260,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support its archival project, College Women: Documenting the Student Experience at the Seven Sisters Colleges. (See earlier WIAReport post.) The archive now includes about 300 photographs, letters, scrapbooks, and diaries documenting the history of women in higher education. The new grant will fund the expansion of the archive to include thousands of additional items.

Patricia Tilburg, an associate professor of history at Davidson College in North Carolina, is receiving a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to complete work on her book project Diligent Muse: Gender, Taste, and the Parisian Workingwoman, 1880-1936.

Meredith College, a liberal arts educational institution for women in Raleigh, North Carolina, received a $95,000 grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund to fund the Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy, a summer program where local high school girls will conduct research along with Meredith College student mentors.

The University of California, San Diego received a four-year, $3.7 million grant from the American Heart Association to study cardiovascular risk factors for Latina women. Latinas have a higher risk factor for heart disease than the general population. The study will focus on whether sedentary behavior can be modified and whether such behavior modifications would reduce the risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Mills College, a liberal arts educational institution for women in Oakland, California, received a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for scholarships for students from underserved groups who are majoring in STEM fields. The program will fund a summer transition program to help these women students adjust to college life.