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.

Ohio University received a $2 million gift from alumna Jackie Reau to support women’s athletics at the university. It is the largest philanthropic gift to women’s sports in university history. The newly established Jackie M. Reau Fund to Recognize and Enhance Women’s Athletics will support facility enhancements, equipment and supplies, travel, recruiting, and more. Reau is the CEO and co-founder of Cincinnati-based Game Day Communications, which specializes in brand experience and engagement activation strategies to connect brands with their fans and consumers. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in sports administration and management from Ohio University.

The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine received a $3.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to combat cervical cancer in the sub-Saharan African nation of Botswana. The mortality rate for cervical cancer in Botswana is 10 times the rate in the United States. The new grant will allow researchers to identify communication and support strategies, such as text messages or phone-based patient navigation, that are best equipped to close gaps in the care of cervical cancer patients.

Yale University in conjunction with the Black Hills Center for American Indian Health in Rapid City, South Dakota, received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to pilot a mindfulness-based, culturally-tailored smoking cessation intervention for Indigenous women who experience intimate partner violence. It is estimated that 70 percent of Indigenous women who have been victims of intimate partner violence are smokers. The intervention is an eight-session series, each based around seven Lakota values: fortitude, generosity, kinship, prayer, respect, wisdom, and compassion.

Women in physical and mathematical sciences at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, will have more opportunities to complete research and grow their careers thanks to a three-year, $226,800 grant from the Clare Boothe Luce Program of the Henry Luce Foundation. Funds will be used to establish a Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Research Scholars Program to support women specifically in physics, chemistry, geosciences, computer science, and mathematics. Eight female students a year (a total of 24 over three years) will take part in a campus summer research program that includes a professional development seminar, science symposia, and community outreach events. Scholars will work with faculty on research and then prepare those projects to be presented at professional meetings.