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 College of Medicine at Florida State University in Tallahassee received a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health for a study on why the anesthetic drug ketamine works better as an antidepressant for women than it does for men.

The University of California at Irvine received a $1.9 million grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to create and study the use of a new, personalized approach to shared treatment decision-making for patients who have been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The program will create an app for use on a tablet computer that will help patients decide what is the best treatment option for them. The research is under the direction of Lari Wenzel, professor and associate dean for faculty development at the university’s medical school. Dr. Wenzel holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She earned a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Arizona State University.

Bryn Mawr College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution for women in suburban Philadelphia, received a two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to hold a series of showings of documentary films dealing with the civil rights movement. In addition to the showing of films, there will be accompanying lectures and panel discussions on issues raised in the films.

Emory University in Atlanta received a five-year, $11.9 million grant to study the epidemic of HIV among women in the southeastern United States. The program expands upon the Women’s Interagency HIV Cohort Study, which was primarily conducted in the Midwest and on both coasts. Gina M. Wingood, professor of behavioral sciences and health education at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, is a co-principal investigator for the grant program. She states, “Understanding the demographics of the HIV epidemic and formulating prevention and treatment goals in specific areas of the country is critical to improving outcomes and controlling this infection.”