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.

Simmons University, a women’s undergraduate and co-ed graduate institution in Boston, has been awarded a $250,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to establish the Center for Information Literacy, which aims to provide the public with the skills need to access, interpret, and wield information effectively. These skills allow people to identify trustworthy information and recognize the characteristics of misinformation. Laura Saunders, professor and associate dean of the School of Library and Information Science, will serve as the center’s inaugural director.

Wendy Kuohung, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University, has received a $200,000 grant from the March of Dimes to identify treatments for preeclampsia in women who have a genetic mutation that increases their risk for the pregnancy complication. Throughout her career, Dr. Kuohung has conducted research on infertility treatments, in virto fertilization, fertility preservation, menstrual disorders, fibroids, endometriosis, mullerian anomalies, and minimally invasive and robotic gynecologic surgery.

Smith College, a liberal arts college for women in Northampton, Massachusetts, has received a $51 million gift from an anonymous alumna. The donation, which is the largest planned gift in the college’s history, will significantly boost the school’s endowment support for financial aid and fund two new faculty positions in engineering and statistical and data sciences.

Ping-Ching Hsu, associate professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, has been awarded a $1.9 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to investigate how environmental exposures contribute to the development of early onset breast cancer in women throughout Arkansas. The project will focus on participants in the university’s ongoing Arkansas Rural Community Health Study, specifically the subset of women who were healthy at the study’s inception in 2007 but have since developed breast cancer. As an expert in molecular epidemiology and environmental exposure, Dr. Hsu’s previous research has focused on factors contributing to cancer health disparities in underserved communities.