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.

A project by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa faculty members to create a biography of the late Native Hawaiian leader and scholar, Haunani-Kay Trask received a $182,486 collaborative research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanties. A poet, political scientist, activist, and international advocate for human and Indigenous rights, Trask was one of the most influential Native Hawaiian scholars of the 20th century. Her life and works contributed to the global rise of Indigenous subjectivity, and she profoundly shaped Hawaiian movements for justice from the 1970s. Trask started her extensive academic career at UH Mānoa in 1981 as an assistant professor in the American studies department with expertise in feminist theory and Indigenous studies. She is credited with co-founding the contemporary field of Hawaiian studies and went on to become the founding director of the UH Mānoa Center for Hawaiian Studies. The research hopes to have a draft of the biography within two years and to publish the book in 2025.

A team of researchers from Michigan State University, Care New England Health System and Henry Ford Health is collaborating on a $6.2 million National Institutes of Health mental health research grant. The Reach Out, Stand Strong, Essentials for New Mothers program, funded by NIH through the end of 2022, has served low-income women at 98 prenatal clinics. Study findings show that ROSE prevents half of the cases of postpartum depression. Jennifer Johnson, C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State and a leader of the grant project notes that  “the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force recommends that women at risk for postpartum depression receive these preventive interventions. However, our experience implementing ROSE across the country suggests that a universal intervention may be better; easier for agencies, less stigmatizing for mothers, and no one is missed.” The new grant will seek to determine if the universal intervention for all new mothers would produce better results in combating postpartum depression.

The Society for Women Engineers received a $200,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support its Academic Leadership for Women in Engineering program. The program is for women in the early and mid-stages of their careers at academic institutions. Participants experience year-round workshops with interactive sessions that provide best practices to advance in academia while creating opportunities to network across institutions. Since 2014, over 300 women have participated in the program. The new grant will fund the participation of 45 women during the current academic year.