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 School of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst received a three-year, $1.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to analyze family planning and contraceptive use in 69 countries around the world. The goal is to develop ways to monitor and advance national reproductive health. The research will be under the direction of assistant professor Leontine Alkema, who joined the faculty at the university in 2015. Dr. Alkema holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in applied mathematics from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. She earned a Ph.D. in statistics at the University of Washington.

The University of California, Irvine received a grant from the Contending Modernities initiative at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana to study faith-based women’s groups and activists in the African nation of Cameroon. The three-year grant will explore the relationship of women activists with external groups. The research will be under the direction of Cecelia Lynch, a professor of political science at the university. Dr. Lynch is a graduate of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she majored in French and international studies. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, received a grant from the Petit Family Foundation to support the 2017 Green Street Girls in Science Summer Camp. The camp is for girls going into fourth, fifth, or sixth grade who are interested in chemistry, electronics or physics.