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.

The Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in Nashville, Tennessee, has been awarded a two-year grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities for s project entitled “Reducing Disparity in Receipt of Mother’s Own Milk in Very Low Birth Weight Infants: An Economic Intervention to Improve Adherence to Sustained Maternal Breast Pump Use.” Black mothers are disproportionately more likely to give birth to very-low-weight infants than non-Black mothers, but significantly less likely to feed their infants with their own milk from birth until their infants are discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), which increases their infants’ risks of lifelong health problems. Prior research has shown that maternal matriarchs of Black mothers may negatively influence milk provision by Black mothers. Stephanie Devane-Johnson, an associate professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University. will conduct interviews to determine the social and cultural factors that influence the thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs regarding the provision of milk in the NICU setting.

The University of Maryland Baltimore County has received two grants totaling nearly $1.6 million from the U.S. Department of Defense. Researchers have previously discovered that zinc finger protein 217, or ZNF217, is frequently present in unusually high amounts in ovarian cancer tumors and is associated with tumor growth, metastasis, and resistance to chemotherapy. The new grants will allow for additional research to explore the effects of ZNF217 on ovarian cancer progression, treatment resistance, and the environment inside tumors. If the lab can confirm its preliminary data about ZNF217’s significant role in ovarian cancer, they will then explore their hypotheses for how to reduce the amount of ZNF217 in cancer cells, thereby reducing its detrimental effects.

Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, has received a three-year, $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation that will boost efforts to address the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering faculty positions at the university. The funds will be used to Increase the recruitment, hiring, promotion, and tenure of women STEM faculty, particularly women of color and to improve the departmental climate to enhance inclusivity.