Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
The University of Denver received a five-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health for programs to support expectant mothers through mental health challenges and prepare them for the transition to motherhood. In partnership with Denver Health Hospital, researchers will recruit 900 pregnant women over the next five years to receive mental health counseling as part of their obstetric and gynecological care at the hospital. The women will be placed in either in-person or virtual group counseling. Once the mothers have participated in the prenatal counseling sessions, the research team will follow them for one year postpartum to examine whether virtual and in-person counseling are equally beneficial. The grant is under the direction of Elysia Davis and Galena Rhoades, faculty members in the psychology department at the university.
The University of Nebraska-Omaha received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. State Department for a program that will assist women’s universities in Pakistan to better teach, conduct research, and develop environmental science practitioners. The program’s goal is to build the capacity of Pakistani society to combat and mitigate climate change through a U.S.-Pakistan university partnership that explores curriculum development, environmental education, student and faculty engagement, research, and data sharing.
Florida Atlantic University has received a three-year, nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to help transform faculty diversity and ensure appropriate representation of women in STEM. The project team will undertake new initiatives and build on current policies and data collection activities and will seek to advance self-sustaining interventions for diverse hiring and retention; transparent and equitable policies, information through a longitudinal demographic data dashboard of faculty; and strategic communications. These interventions will focus on inclusive support for gender diversity and intersectional minorities, most visibly, Latina and African American women, in hiring, retention, and promotion.