Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
Rice University has received a $375,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to fund a project titled “A Two-Part Project Examining Team Discrimination by Gender in STEM Teams and a Way Forward.” The study aims to provide an understanding of why so few women pursue careers in engineering. For the project, the research team will examine college students in an engineering design course. Throughout the year, the students will fill out regular surveys and performance ratings of their team members. The researcher will evaluate the impact of discrimination on the daily lives and long-term career aspirations of these women.
Spelman College, a liberal arts educational institution for women in Atlanta, received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that will be used to develop curriculum and programming to increase the number of Black women in economics Ph.D. programs. The grant will also be used to develop learning modules focused on economics for its annual summer bridge program and launch an initiative that provides financial support to African American women students with an interest in economics graduate programs.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln received a five-year, $3.56 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant will fund scholarships for women, low-income students, underrepresented minorities, and first-generation and rural students who pursue associate or bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and computer science.
Vanderbilt University in Nashville received a five-year, $11.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to continue funding for its Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in breast cancer research. The areas of focus in the renewed SPORE grant include ER-positive and triple-negative metastatic breast cancers as well as studies that target the DNA damage response in BRCA-mutated breast cancers and that seek to improve immunotherapy therapy for breast cancer patients.