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 University of Michigan-Flint has received a $1.5 million grant from the United States Department of Health and Human Services to support the university’s School of Nursing Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program. The certificate program trains nurses to provide high-quality care and perform forensic exams for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors. The university has a particular focus on recruiting nurses who are willing to work in rural or medically underserved communities in Michigan.

Arkansas State University has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to increase the number of women and underrepresented students studying agricultural fields. The funding will establish a program with local Arkansas Lighthouse Charter Schools that will introduce middle and high school students to several agricultural career pathways.

Spelman College, a women’s college in Atlanta, has received a $210,901 grant from the National Security Agency to support the college’s STARTALK Student Program. The program, which successfully kicked off this summer, brings middle and high school students to the Spelman campus to participate in free Chinese language and cultural education workshops.

A team of researchers from Baylor University in Texas, the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, and the University of Minnesota Medical School has been awarded $2.5 million through the National Institute of Health’s National Cancer Institute Cooperative Agreement Award program. The grant will support an ongoing research initiative aimed at promoting cervical cancer screening for women in Ghana. The new funds will be leveraged to train healthcare providers on effective cervical cancer screenings, implement cervical cancer toolkits at hospitals and organizational systems, and monitor the effectiveness and sustainability of cervical screenings in Ghana.

The University of Connecticut has received a $2.5 million grant from the Eunice Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study the mechanisms driving placenta accreta spectrum (PAS), a disease in women with prior cesarean surgeries in subsequent pregnancies. The funds will be used to investigate if a previous cesarean surgery scar can create an inflammatory state that attracts placental cells to the scar, resulting in an infection in the mother’s uterus.