New Grant Programs Relating to Women in Higher Education

Bernadette Brooten, the Robert and Myra Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies at Brandeis University, is spending this academic year as a visiting scholar in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. She received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for this academic year to conduct research on early Christian women who were enslaved or who owned slaves during the first to fourth centuries.

Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, received a three-year, $298,638 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice for programs to reduce violence directed against women on campus. The university will use the grant money to hire a violence-prevention coordinator and to develop mandatory anti-violence programs for students.

Dena S. Cox, a professor of marketing at the Kelly School of Business of Indiana University, received a two-year, $99,600 grant from Merck Inc. to study factors that go into the decisions of young women whether or not to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. She will explore the best practices for informing young women of the benefits and risks of the vaccine.

Professor Cox has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Missouri. She earned an MBA and a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Houston.

Lauren Vasquez, a sociology doctoral student at Mississippi State University, received a grant from the Verizon Foundation to study violence against women college students. Her research is examining the relationship between school policies and the accessibility of victims’ services to sexual crime rates.

The University of Michigan received a $3.5 million grant from Susan G. Komen for the Cure for research on treatments that target cancer stem cells in triple negative breast cancer.

The University of Southern California‘s Keck School of Medicine received a $125,000 grant from the Avon Foundation for Women to fund the Avon Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Clinic in Los Angeles. The clinic serves low-income families.