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 Wisconsin-Milwaukee has received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study how gender and racial and ethnic diversity fosters innovation within engineering teams. Nadya Fouad, who holds the Mary and Ted Kellner Endowed Chair of Educational Psychology at the university and is a leader of the project, states that “being part of a team that has good leadership, is open to the perspective of others and where you feel safe, that’s the kind of micro-environment that can transcend the faulty lines of gender, race, and expertise.” Dr. Fouad has been on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1984. She is a graduate of Iowa State University and holds a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Minnesota.

Barnard College, the highly selective liberal arts educational institution for women in New York City, received a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct research on the body’s circadian clock. The research is under the direction of Rae Silver, the Helene L. and Mark N. Kaplan Professor of Natural and Physical Sciences. Professor Silver has taught at Barnard College since 1976. She is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal and holds a master’s degree from the City College of New York and a Ph.D. in animal behavior from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham received a five-year, $841,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study malaria prevention for pregnant women in the African nation of Cameroon. The research will study the efficiency and safety of a new antibiotic regimen to prevent malaria and other infections during pregnancy among women living with HIV in Cameroon. The research will be under the direction of Jodie Dionne-Odom, an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the university’s School of Medicine. Dr. Dionne-Odom joined the faculty at the university in 2013. She earned her medical degree at Dartmouth College.