Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.
Mississippi University for Women has received a $140,000 grant from the Mississippi Department of Education’s Mississippi Teacher Residency Program. Through this grant, 10 students pursuing a teaching career will receive funding covering tuition, books, and fees. In addition to providing mentoring opportunities from working teachers, the program will also cover licensure exam vouchers, test preparation resources, and professional technology to support the students’ internships during the spring 2026 semester.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City was recently awarded a $4.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to train the next generation of leaders in women’s health research. The program will provide training, mentorship, and resources to three junior faculty scholars each year for the next five years. Scholars will focus their work on how environmental, social, nutritional, and chemical exposures influence women’s health arcoss the lifespan.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has awarded a $199,284 grant to the Pioneer Valley Literacy Consortium, which includes two Massachusetts-based liberal arts institutions for women – Mount Holyoke College and Smith College – and several neighboring public school districts. The funding will strengthen the colleges’ collaboration with local schools and prepare students pursuing careers in education to teach evidence-based early literacy.
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.