JBHE: Latest News for 5/5/11

Grants and Gifts

• Norfolk State University, the historically black educational institution in Virginia, received three grants totaling nearly $6 million from the U.S. Department of Defense. The grants will fund research on nanomaterials, mulitfunctional sensors, and novel polymers.

• Lincoln University, the historically black educational institution in Pennsylvania, received a $64,578 grant from the Federal Highway Administration. The grant will fund the Summer Transportation Institute program on the Lincoln campus this July. The institute aims to increase interest in careers in the transportation industry among students ages 12 to 14.

• Washington University in St. Louis received a four-year, $400,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to preserve Henry Hampton’s award-winning civil rights documentary film Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965. The six-episode documentary originally appeared on the Public Broadcasting System in 1987. The film, and 75 hours of interview footage that was edited out of the series, were donated to Washington University in 2001. The grant will enable the university to preserve the footage on more stable film. Eventually, all the footage will be digitized.

• The Community College of the District of Columbia received a $750,000 grant as part of Next Generation Learning Challenges, a new initiative that supports using innovative technology to improve college completion, particularly for low-income young adults. The initiative is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

• Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland, received a two-year, $200,000 grant from Kaiser Permanente to provide scholarships for low-income and minority students in the college’s allied health or nursing programs.

The college enrolls about 14,000 students, 80 percent of whom are black.

• Ohio State University received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to provide funds for the operation of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.