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 College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, will lead a $998,053 grant project funded by the National Science Foundation to examine the systemic biases that undermine the efforts of women to advance to full professor of information technology at colleges and universities. In partnership with the Association for Information Systems, the team will conduct research and develop best practices for identifying and mitigating barriers to women’s promotion to full professor. In the United States, women make up only about 20 percent of full professors in information technology. Eleanor Loiacono, associate professor at the College of William and Mary is the principal investigator.

The S.G. Atkins Community Development Corporation has been awarded a grant by the Small Business Administration to establish the Winston-Salem State University Women’s Business Center. The project will include the addition of a full-time program director for the Women’s Business Center to provide classes to the current incubator occupants and entrepreneurs in the community who are start-ups or existing businesses. The expansion will also promote access to SBA grant and loan programs, an advisory committee of mentors and resources to address barriers to economic mobility.

An anonymous donor has committed to a $5 million gift to Salem College, an educational institution for women in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to support its groundbreaking Health Leadership transformation. (See WIAReport post.)The $5 million gift is the largest in the institution’s nearly 250-year history.