Brown University
Full financial support for military veterans at Brown has received a boost in the form of a $20 million gift. The donation will fund a permanent endowment to benefit current and future veteran undergraduates. brown.edu
A $450,000, three-year NSF grant will fund research at the University of North Dakota to help elementary and middleschool teachers develop teaching practices and design engineering problem-solving tasks directly relevant to Native community culture and rural students. und.edu
The School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will use a $6.8 million gift to upgrade facilities to offer a cutting-edge clinical environment, create a nursing simulation center, and fund scholarships in the BS in nursing program. unc.edu
A $75,000 donation has created the President’s Indigenous Achievement Awards for financial support for undergraduate and graduate students in STEM at Nipissing University in Ontario. nipissingu.ca
The Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science will be established at Cornell University, thanks to a nine-figure gift from Bowers, an alumna. The CIS department, which is led by a female dean and where 43 percent of majors are women, will be the first college at Cornell named for a woman. cornell.edu
The Native American Cultural Center at Colorado State University has received a $700,000 donation. The gift will support programming like tutoring, peer mentoring, career development, and K–12 outreach to Indigenous communities. colostate.edu
A new continuing education program leading to a certificate in Indigenous Community-Industry Relations will be co-delivered through a partnership of the University of Alberta and Yellowhead Tribal College. ualberta.ca
An anonymous gift that may exceed $10 million has gone to the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh to provide tuition support to underrepresented students and help diversify the professional workforce. pitt.edu
The College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati is launching a new graduate program in engineering education. The program has both an MS and a PhD path and prepares participants to educate students in engineering principles at all levels, from elementary through grad school and workforce development. uc.edu
A new online master’s in data science and a post-baccalaureate in computer science have been added to the degree programs at Tufts University. Classes will begin in the 2021 fall term. tufts.edu
A $300 million gift, the largest in higher education in the state’s history, has been given to the Missouri University of Science and Technology. The gift will fund a school of innovation and entrepreneurship, new research centers, and more scholarships and fellowships. mst.edu
A gift of $50 million has been given to Smith College by an alumna. The school’s financial aid resources will benefit from $40 million, and career development programming from the remaining $10 million. The donation advances the school’s goal of offering need-blind admission. smith.edu
An NSF grant of $1.5 million has gone to the University of New Hampshire to study carbon interactions as the Arctic thaws. Researchers will look at how carbon trapped in organic matter is released, which further warms the planet, to better mitigate long-term consequences. unh.edu
The Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago has received gifts totaling $10 million. The funding will support new and existing research and programs in astrophysics and cosmology. uchicago.edu
The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria have given $15 million to the School of Law at UCLA to bolster the study and practice of tribal law. The gift will fund the Graton Scholars program in the school’s Native Nations Law and Policy Center. Each year Native students planning to become tribal advocates will be able to study tuition free for all three years of law school. ucla.edu
Washington University in St. Louis
A $14.6 million grant will fund research at Washington University School of Medicine into racial disparities in Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers will investigate biological markers that might be predictive of the disease outside the white population. wustl.edu
The Rockefeller Foundation has awarded a research grant of $1.5 million to the Center for Antiracist Research to study racial disparities in the U.S. bu.edu
A five-year, $1 million NSF grant to William Paterson University is earmarked to support scholarships and mentoring for low-income, high-achieving first-year and transfer students in math, computer science, and computer information technology. wpunj.edu
UMM was featured in Sierra, the national magazine of the Sierra Club, as a Native American–Serving Nontribal Institution that offers a tuition waiver. Established on what was once the site of a boarding school, the campus now counts nearly one-fourth of the students as Indigenous. The only similar institution in the country is Fort Lewis College in Colorado. morris.umn.edu
Diversity in STEM will be supported and expanded at the University of Arkansas thanks to three NSF grants of approximately $1 million. The school is planning to recruit 12 underrepresented doctoral students and offer each a stipend and other support. uark.edu
A $5 million alumni gift will establish a new endowed professorship of Indigenous Studies at Princeton. And a $20 million gift from Black and Latinx donors will go to construction of two adjoining dormitories to support a 10 percent expansion of the undergraduate student body. The addition of 500 students will allow Princeton to expand efforts to increase diversity and support talented students from all backgrounds. princeton.edu
An NSF grant of $1 million has gone to the College of Engineering at Tennessee State University to recruit minority students from regional community colleges. The funding will provide scholarships to students in engineering, math, or computer science. tnstate.edu
University of Saskatchewan
A new $1.07 million project at the University of Saskatchewan will study how participation in traditional Métis dances can impact cardiovascular health while promoting beneficial mental, social, and cultural effects. usask.ca
Canada’s first center for Indigenous law will be built at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. At the National Centre for Indigenous Laws, which has received $27 million in funding, students will be able to combine studies of Indigenous and non-Indigenous law. uvic.ca
Scholarships for underrepresented undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, have been augmented thanks to a new gift of $24 million. UC Berkeley has also received a five-year, $10 million grant from the NSF and the Simons Foundation to study deep learning, an artificial intelligence approach. berkeley.edu
The new Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering has received a $3 million gift from a Tulane University alumna. The department focuses on how climate change and human activities affect rivers and coastal areas. Also at Tulane, a new specialty in renewable energy has launched at the A.B. Freeman School of Business. Students in the master of management in energy program can now concentrate in renewable and sustainable energy, preparing to bring projects to completion in the clean energy marketplace. tulane.edu
Syracuse University
A new research computing cluster at Syracuse University has been funded by an NSF grant of nearly $400,000. The cluster will feature graphical processing units (GPUs), which will significantly increase the computing power available to students and faculty. syracuse.edu