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 Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received a $1.7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to examine the sustainability of family planning programs in urban areas of Nigeria. The grant program is under the direction of Ilene Speizer, research professor of maternal and child health at the university. Dr. Speizer joined the faculty at the university in 2005. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, Professor Speizer holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in population dynamics from the School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Eighteen colleges and universities in the state of Michigan have received a total of $506,191 in grants as part of the Campus Sexual Assault Grant Program funded by the state legislature. The goal of the grant program is to fund the development of new and innovative programs to reduce and/or eliminate sexual assault on college campuses. A complete list of the educational institutions receiving the grants is available here.

West Virginia University has received a gift from Mohindar Seehra, the Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Physics at the university, to fund the Seehra Lecture series. The lecture series will support the professional development of women graduate students and researchers and will be administered by the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at the university.

The Avon Foundation for Women has announced a $200,000 grant program to enable 20 colleges and universities to participate in a two-day conference to help these institutions develop and implement action plans to prevent and respond to sexual assaults on campus. One conference was held in Boston in October and one recently concluded in Atlanta. A list of the colleges and universities participating can be found here.

Arizona State University received a $245,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to increase the number of women and students from underrepresented groups who participate in the university’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation program.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has awarded nearly $1 million in grants to 36 colleges and universities to implement programs that address the goals of Governor Tom Wolfe’s It’s On Us campaign to address issues regarding sexual assault on campus. The colleges and universities received up to $30,000 each for programs to improve awareness, prevention, reporting, or response systems regarding sexual assault. A list of colleges and universities receiving the grants can be found here.