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.

St. Catherine University, an educational institution for women in St. Paul, Minnesota, received a $337,192 grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration to support programs to recruit and retain students who intend to become academic nursing faculty. The project is under the direction of Emily Nowak, an associate professor of nursing at the university. Dr. Nowak is a graduate of St. Catherine University and holds a Ph.D. in nursing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Florida International University in Miami received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a program to increase the number of women and members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups pursuing degrees in physics. Selected students will work closely with the university’s nuclear physics group, receiving mentorship, training support in both experimental and theoretical nuclear physics, and hands-on research experiences. They will also have the opportunity to attend conferences, as well as participate in summer programs at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.

Spelman College, a liberal arts educational institution for women in Atlanta, will join with Clark Atlanta University and Cornell University in a six-year, $3.6 million grant project funded by the National Science Foundation. The grant will establish a Partnership for Research and Education in Materials program to develop next-generation materials for electronic devices. Researchers on the project will focus on the design, synthesis, and characterization of new oxide-based interface materials, towards the next generation of electronic, magnetoelectronic, and optoelectronic devices.

Florida Atlantic University’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing received a five-year, $772,525 grant from the National Institutes of Health for a project titled, “Decision Support for Multigene Panel Testing and Family Risk Communication among Racially/Ethnically Diverse Young Breast Cancer Survivors.” The award will support further development and testing of an innovative web-based intervention to improve multigene panel testing and cancer risk-reduction among racially and ethnically diverse young breast cancer survivors in South Florida and to promote family risk communication among their at-risk family members. The project is under the director of Tarsha Jones, an assistant professor of nursing at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Jones is a graduate of Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. She holds a master’s degree in community and public health nursing from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. in nursing from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.