Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
Shelley White-Means, a professor of health economics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, has received a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to study the disparity in breast cancer survival of Black women compared to White women. The goal of the research project is to identify effective public policy interventions and strategies to better support Black women with breast cancer.
Wellesley College, a women’s college in Massachusetts, has received a nearly $1.5 million award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support their project “Transforming Stories, Spaces, Lives: Rethinking Inclusion and Exclusion through the Humanities.” The endeavor aims to restructure the college’s humanities curriculum by providing students with research and learning opportunties focused on understanding inclusivity in the humanities fields.
Howard University in Washington, District of Columbia has received a nearly $1 million grant from Gilead Sciences to increase HIV prevention, anti-stigma, and health equity efforts for Black cisgender and transgender women. The funds will support a collaborative effort between the historically Black university and HealthHIV, focusing on engagement and awareness through artistic endeavors such as podcasts, blogs, fashion shows, and workshops geared towards Black women.
The WISE Women’s Business Center at Syracuse University has been named a Entrepreneurship Assistance Center and received a grant from Empire State Development. The funds will support the center’s Accelerate Business Intensive, an 8-week intensive program that provides women entrepreneurs in the early stages of their business with expert guidance and personalized support.
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.