JBHE: Latest News for 3/31/11

Grants and Gifts

• Fort Valley State University, the historically black educational institution in Georgia, received a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to hire staff, purchase textbooks, and computer software for its Academic Success Center. The goal of the center is to increase student retention and graduation rates. The center is under the direction of Said Sewell, associate professor of political science.

• The University of Arkansas received a three-year, $288,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support its George Washington Carver Program. The funds will support a summer program of biotechnology research for 10 students from historically black colleges and universities.

• Three historically black universities will join with eight other universities in a $20 million grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The research project will study the effects on climate change on southern pine forests. Participating HBCUs are Alcorn State University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Virginia State University.

• Central State University, the historically black educational institution in Wilberforce, Ohio, received a $3.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to create the University Center of Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Juliette B. Bell, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Central State, will serve as principal investigator of the project.

• The University of Michigan, Rutgers University, and North Carolina State University will share an $18.5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to rebuild the higher education system in the African nation of Liberia.

• Emory University in Atlanta received a three-year, $170,000 grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Save America’s Treasures program to preserve 34 scrapbooks compiled by African Americans during the 1883 to 1975 period. The funds will also be used to create digital archives of the contents of these scrapbooks. Among the scrapbooks are those assembled by author Alice Walker, playwright Flourney Miller, and W.S. Scarborough, a classics scholar who served as president of Wilberforce University.