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.

The University of Kentucky received an $8.8 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to establish a Clinical Research Center on addiction treatment for opioid use disorder in criminal justice settings. The grant will be used to create the Kentucky Women’s Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network to enhance access to opioid use disorder treatment for women as they transition from jail back to the community. The project is under the direction of Michele Staton, an associate professor of behavioral sciences in the university’s College of Medicine. Dr. Staton holds a master of social work degree and a Ph.D. in social work from the University of Kentucky.

Arizona State University and the University of Arizona will share a $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the effectiveness of a sexual assault prevention training program for employees who work in alcohol-serving establishments near Arizona’s public universities. The Arizona Department of Health Services developed and began implementing the “Safer Bars” program, a bystander-prevention curriculum, in 2012. The program is designed to teach bartenders and staff to recognize situations that may contribute to sexual violence and ways to safely intervene. To date, no other research programs have evaluated the effectiveness of the bystander intervention training program as a means to reduce alcohol-related sexual violence.

California State University, Channel Islands received a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation for programs to increase the number of women and students from underrepresented groups in STEM fields. The grant will fund scholarships for science, technology, engineering and math students who want to conduct undergraduate research.

Fairmont State University in West Virginia received a grant from the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission to support programs designed to encourage girls to pursue careers in STEM fields. The grant will fund outreach activities in six local middle and high schools and is specifically designed to increase awareness, interest, and participation of female students in computer information systems management.