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.

Texas Woman’s University received a $100,000 donation from Stacie Dieb, vice regent for the Texas Woman’s University System, and her husband David. The gift will allow five recent Denton High School graduates to receive scholarships to cover tuition and fees at Texas Woman’s University for four full years. To be eligible for the scholarships, recipients must achieve a 3.0 GPA or higher, graduate in the top half of their class, and demonstrate financial need. Dieb is a graduate of Denton High School and Texas Woman’s University. She opened and ran a franchise of 32 fitness centers across Texas and Florida by the age of 22. Dieb is a member of the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Bennett College, a liberal arts educational institution for women in Greensboro, North Carolina, received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to conduct research on bacteria resistance mechanisms. The award money will help purchase equipment to support two fundamental microbiology laboratories and to purchase statistical analysis software to analyze and explain microbiological research.

Texas State University in San Marcos received a five-year, $843,895 grant to support Black and Hispanic women entering science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Texas State will use the grant to study the effects of community wealth on minority women entering computing fields by studying their success in computing courses from eighth grade to undergraduate courses and how it translates to graduate studies or careers. Shetay N. Ashford-Henserd, an assistant professor of organization, workforce, and leadership studies is the principal investigator.