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.

North Carolina Central University in Durham received a four-year, $2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to fund research on a particularly aggressive type of cancer known as inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), which disproportionately impacts African-American women.

Syracuse University in New York received a three-year, $999,719 grant from the National Science Foundation to support programs to recruit women and members of underrepresented groups into STEM disciplines at the university. The grant will fund the establishment of the Strategic Undergraduate STEM Talent Acceleration Initiative at the university. Karin Ruhlandt, distinguished professor of chemistry and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University, is co-directing the grant program. Dr. Ruhlandt holds a Ph.D. from Philipps-Universitat Marburg in Germany.

Kent State University in Ohio has received a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct research on explanations for why women are more likely than men to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The research is under the direction of Gemma Casadesus Smith, an associate professor of biological sciences at Kent State University.

Gesa E. Kirsch, a professor of English and media studies at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct research on the Woman’s Medical Journal that was published between 1893 and 1952. The research project is entitled “Legacies of Thought and Action: The Professional Networks of Nineteenth-Century Women Physicians.” Dr. Kirsch holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego.