Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
Hollins University, a women’s college in Roanoke, Virginia, received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to fund the university’s Artemis Scholarship Program for Women in STEM. The program funds full-tuition scholars for women majoring in biology, chemistry, environmental science, or mathematics. The grant is under the direction of Mary Jane Carmichael, an assistant professor of biology and environmental studies
Shehnaz Haqqani, an assistant professor of religion in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, has received an American Association of University Women research publication grant. The award is intended to fund a part of her book project exploring Muslim women’s marriage to non-Muslims. The project involves a textual analysis of the Qur’anic verses on interfaith marriage, a study of contemporary Muslim scholarly opinions on the issue, and detailed interviews with Muslim women who have married or plan to marry non-Muslims. A graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, Dr. Haqqani earned a Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
The College of Nursing at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis has received a four-year, $4 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to support increasing the number and diversity of nurse midwives in the Mississippi Delta region. The college launched a doctor of nursing practice degree program concentration in nurse midwifery in 2021, with the goal of improving health outcomes for pregnant women and their babies. The new grant will provide stipends to educate 12-14 nurse midwifery students annually. It will also allow an expansion of clinical learning sites. The program is under the direction of Kate Fouquier, a professor of acute tertiary care.
Although it was initially founded as school for women, the University of Montevallo has never had a woman president. Now the university has reached a historic milestone and selected selected Michelle R. Johnston to serve as its next president.
The women who are taking on new leadership roles with professional academic organizations are Yasmeen Shorish of James Madison University in Virginia, Elena Carbone of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Shelley Lusetti of New Mexico State University, Oona Hathaway of Yale Law School, and Keisha Blain of Brown University.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a national program run by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. Dr. Yelick, a computer scientist and longtime UC Berkeley faculty member, will become the laboratory's next director on July 1.
The selected candidate should have expertise and experience in theoretical models in labor and public economics as well as in microeconometrics and programming.