Grants

• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in conjunction with the FPG Child Development Institute received a $12.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue their study on how rural life affects child development.

The Family Life Project, which was started in 2002, focused on 1,292 newborn children in Appalachia and in rural, African-American communities in the South. This second phase of the project will examine how these same children will make the transition to school.

• The National Science Foundation is providing $2 million over the next three years to support the Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact Program. The program is an alliance between 11 research universities and eight historically black colleges and universities aimed at increasing the number of black students in the field of robotics.

The program will provide funds for robotics research at the black universities and also for internships for black students at predominantly white research institutions. Participating HBCUs are Spelman College, Hampton University, Morgan State University, Norfolk State University, Florida A&M University, Winston-Salem State University, the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, and the University of the District of Columbia.

The grant is under the direction of Andrew Williams, an associate professor of computer science at Spelman College.

Copyright © 2008. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.