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.

Maeve Wallace, a research assistant professor in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans, has received two grants totaling $2.4 million from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development to study pregnancy-associated mortality and state-level policies that could be contributing to the high rates of maternal mortality in the United States. One study will examine why Black women are three to four times more likely than White women to die during pregnancy or postpartum periods. The second study will look at how state-level policies play a role in maternal and infant mortality. Dr. Wallace is a graduate of the University of Arizona. She holds a master of public health degree and a Ph.D. in reproductive and perinatal epidemiology from Tulane University.

A research team, led by Sabra L. Klein, an associate professor of molecular microbiology and immunology in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has received a $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study differences in how men and women respond to flu shots. The grant will establish a new specialized research center at Johns Hopkins, which will conduct three major studies in addition to offering further research and education opportunities for graduate students and junior faculty. The effort has been dubbed SADII, short for Sex and Age Differences in Immunity to Influenza. Dr. Klein is a graduate of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. She holds two master’s degrees from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

The all women’s Alverno College in Milwaukee received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund a new program aimed at supporting low-income women who are pursing degrees in STEM disciplines. Currently, less than 10 percent of Alverno undergraduate students are on a STEM academic track, and of those students, only 50 percent graduate. The “New Futures” program hopes to increase enrollment and graduation rates for STEM majors by providing scholarships, mentorship, internships, and community-building activities to its participants.