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 Oklahoma Breastfeeding Resource Center on the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences campus has received a three-year $250,000 grant from the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust to extend its services to 10 hospitals in rural Oklahoma. The center provides support for new mothers to begin breastfeeding before leaving the hospital. With the new grant, the center will facilitate the training and resources the 10 rural hospitals need to become “Baby-Friendly,” an international designation for hospitals that provide speciality breastfeeding and baby bonding support for mothers.

The Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia has received $1.49 million in federal funding from the United States Health Resources and Services Administration to train the next generation of sexual assault nurse examiners (SANE). The grant will be used to establish the Southeastern Alliance for Forensic Excellence Network, which will train SANEs across more than 30 clinics, health centers, and hospitals across the Southeastern United States and the U.S. Virgin islands. The new network aims to train 80 SANEs over the course of the next three years.

A team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have received $3.8 million in federal funding to research the difference in men and women’s response to respiratory viruses. The investigators will conduct both animal and cell-line experiments, as well as simulated mathematical models to understand how the estradiol hormone affects the body’s reaction to the influenza virus.

The University of Texas at El Paso has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study improved treatments for women who are trying to quit smoking. The funding will be used to understand how a particular behavior-regulating brain pathway relates to the body’s withdrawal symptoms from chronic smoking. Additionally, the grant will provide funding to four graduate students over the course of five years.

The Merrilee Alexander Kick College of Business and Entrepreneurship at Texas Woman’s University has received a $30 million gift from its namesake, Merrilee Kick. The college will use the funding to establish an institute focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, an endowed chair, and an entrepreneur-in-residence program – all named in Kick’s honor. Originally trained as a teacher, Kick is the founder and CEO of the beverage company, BuzzBall. She received her MBA from Texas Woman’s University in 2009.