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.

Billionaire philanthropist John Brown and his wife, Rosemary, plan to give $5 million to the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta to attract women and minority graduate students. The new Rosemary and John Brown Family Scholars Program will provide scholarships to Goizueta’s graduate programs for alumnae of Spelman College, a historically Black college for women; and Agnes Scott College, an all-women’s educational institution in Decatur, Georgia. John Brown is the longtime CEO and chairman of the medical device company Stryker Corporation.

Bennett College, the historically Black educational institution for women in Greensboro, North Carolina, has received a $75,000 grant from the GoodUse program to create a smart, energy-efficient, and sustainable campus. Bennett College will create its first Climate Change Action Plan. The college seeks to reduce its carbon footprint, divert waste through recycling and composting, renovate campus buildings, and empower students and the community to advocate for environmental justice.

Texas Woman’s University received a grant of nearly $100,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant will support the very first interdisciplinary and experiential learning initiative to integrate the history of Quakertown into courses at the university. Quakertown, a thriving Black neighborhood, was founded in the 1880s as a freedmen community just south of the university’s campus. In 1921, TWU’s president, alongside local white civic leaders and women’s clubs, led a campaign to pass a bond vote that displaced over 60 families and black-owned businesses to create a municipal park and site for the city hall, civic center, public library, and public pool.