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.

Thirteen colleges and universities in Michigan are receiving $381,929 in funding under the state’s Campus Sexual Assault Grant Program. The largest grant of $83,342 was received by Western Michigan University.

Carol Dunne, a senior lecturer in theater at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, received a $1.25 million grant from the Pussycat Foundation that will be used to support regional theaters that are directed by women. The Pussycat Foundation was established by Helen Gurley Brown, the former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.

The University of Chicago has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund the development of a multimedia toolkit aimed at reducing the number of back-to-back pregnancies among adolescent women. The research is under the direction of Melissa Gilliam, the Ellen H. Block Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics and the founder of the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health at the University of Chicago. Dr. Gilliam is a graduate of Harvard Medical School.

Susan J. Wenze, an assistant professor of psychology at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, received a grant from the American Association of University Women to study mental health issues of new mothers who gave birth to twins, triplets or higher multiple births. Dr. Wenze hopes to develop online and other support to such mothers. Dr. Wenze is a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she majored in psychology. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at American University in Washington. D.C.