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 Center for Application of Substance Abuse Technologies at the University of Nevada at Reno received a $300,000 grant from the Office of Violence Against Women of the U.S. Department of Justice to fund the university’s program to reduce sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking on campus. The project coordinator is Justine Hernandez.

Jackson State University in Mississippi received a grant from the Women’s Foundation of Mississippi to fund the university’s Bridge to Success: Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. The program will focus on pregnancy prevention among incoming women students in an effort to boost retention rates. Josie Latham, coordinator of intervention services, is a co-principal investigator for the grant project.

Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, received a substantial bequest from the estate of the late Marjorie Van Eenam Butcher, who was the first woman faculty member at the liberal arts college. The gift will fund the establishment of two endowed chairs. Professor Butcher joined the faculty at Trinity College in 1956 and taught there until her retirement in 1989. In 1979, she became the first woman full professor at the college. Professor Butcher held a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of Michigan.

Drs. Bhatia and Soundarajan

Syracuse University in New York received a $258,870 grant from the National Science Foundation for a program to create a network to connect women faculty in geotechnical engineering. Drexel University in Philadelphia and the University of Michigan will collaborate on the project. Shobbha Bhatia, a professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University and Sucheta Soundarajan, an assistant professor in the college, will lead the effort.

Smith College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution for women in Northampton, Massachusetts, received a $348,736 grant from the Boston-based Henry P. Kendall Foundation to help the college implement plans to promote sustainable dining options and support local food purchases. The grant will also fund the hiring of an executive chef and training of kitchen staff to promote sustainable dining.

The University of Alabama Birmingham received a five-year, $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to support the university’s Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Researchers at the division recently published research on the need to administer betamethasone, a steroid medication, to reduce the risk of neonatal respiratory complications for women at risk for preterm delivery.