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.

A University of Massachusetts Amherst cancer epidemiologist has received a $462,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to expand her research into the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on the breast density of college-age women. High breast density is a strong risk factor for breast cancer. Susan Sturgeon, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the university, will lead the study. She is a graduate of the University of Connecticut. Dr. Sturgeon earned a master of public health degree from Yale University and a doctorate in public health from Columbia University.

Georgia Power has made a donation to Wiregrass Georgia Technical College to help fund their second annual Women in STEM Symposium event, scheduled for June 4. The Women’s STEM Symposium reaches out to high school counselors, teachers and administrators across the 11 counties Wiregrass serves. The purpose of the event is to discuss how to keep middle school to high school-aged girls engaged in STEM career fields.

Spelman College, a highly rated liberal arts college for women in Atlanta, received a $1 million bequest from the estate of Joan A. Johnson, a co-founder Johnson Products, the first Black-owned business traded on the American Stock Exchange. The gift will be used to support scholarships for students majoring in STEM fields, as well as for renovating instructional spaces on campus.

The University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington received a $147,900 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. The grant will support research awards for women majoring in the STEM fields of computer science, math, chemistry, geology, and physics. The award will support research stipends for 18 women over a period of three years.

Thirty-six Pennsylvania colleges and universities will split $1 million in state grants to fund a national initiative focused on ending sexual assaults on campuses. Twenty-nine of the 36 grants were given to colleges and universities that said they would be implementing an anonymous reporting system. In addition, a grant to St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, will fund a study on the effectiveness of the grant program, now in its fourth year.