Howard U Receives $1M for Women & Gender Leadership Center
A $1 million gift aims to elevate women of color into leadership roles across all sectors through the launch of the Center for Women, Gender and Global Leadership. The center's academic focus will include producing theoretically grounded research and creating a data center on issues of women and gender in the United States and the global Black diaspora.
21 HEIs to Receive $1M Each for Academic Success of Students of Color
In an effort to help students of color successfully complete the education and training necessary to be successful in today’s workforce, Bank of America announced in mid-November a plan to give $1 million each to 21 higher education institutions including community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, and Hispanic-serving institutions. Each partner institution will develop or enhance existing programs to meet specific skill gaps in their communities, while Bank of America will work alongside major employers to ensure these programs target specific hiring needs and create a clearly defined career pathway to future employment.
U California Santa Barbara Announces Racial Justice Fellowship
In light of recent protests against police violence directed at Black communities and the persistence of systemic racism, the university's Graduate Division and multiple deans have launched an initiative designed to enhance the recruitment of graduate students committed to teaching, research and mentorship around racial justice. The Racial Justice Fellowships will provide recipients $8,000 in summer funding for three years on top of a five-year package of full funding.
Villanova U Receives Gift for Interdisciplinary Initiative on Poverty & Inequality
Spurred by a $1 million gift from Villanova alum, a new interdisciplinary initiative will support programmatic efforts to generate ideas and policy solutions to address the systemic issues of inequality. The initiative will also include an annual symposium focused on identifying the most promising approaches to eradicating poverty and eliminating disparities associated with race, disability and difference.
U Wisconsin Green Bay to Offer Sustainability Certificate
The new non-credit, online only Sustainability Certificate Program launching in January 2021 aims to educate business professionals to implement sustainable decisions into their everyday roles to make a positive impact on both their organization as well as the world around them.
Loyola U Maryland Offers Sustainability Management Degree
The Loyola University Maryland Sellinger School of Business and Management recently introduced a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in sustainability management. In addition to liberal arts and business foundations courses, sustainability management students will take four business management courses and four courses addressing topics including poverty, human rights, justice and equality, the climate crisis, biodiversity, and scarcity of natural resources.
Frostburg State U Launches Life Cycle Facilities Management Major
A new a bachelor degree in lifecycle facilities management will educate students about the application of environmental, societal and long-term sustainability goals in the construction and management of buildings, manufacturing processes and products. The interdisciplinary program builds on knowledge in project management, finance, engineering and sustainability.
U California San Francisco Educates on Racism in Health Care
In response to growing awareness of racism in medicine and health research, UCSF schools have created new courses and expanded existing curriculum that address issues of structural racism in science and health care. They take an explicitly anti-racist approach, advocating for interventions against racism instead of merely being not racist.
Villanova U Receives $5M Gift for DEI Curriculum Initiatives
A $5 million gift from the Lorenzini Family Foundation will support the new Intergroup Dialogue Center. The center will focus on curricular transformation and faculty training with a diversity, equity and inclusion lens. The Intergroup Dialogue Center will also amplify the existing Intergroup Relations program, which teaches students to create meaningful dialogue and relationships among people from different social, economic, racial and ethnic groups.
Aspen Institute Announces Ideas Worth Teaching Award Winners
An initiative of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, the Ideas Worth Teaching Awards highlight teaching that prepares students with the content, skills and mindset to respond to the complexity and rapidly changing issues embedded in economic and social systems. In 2020, 13 faculty received the award across nine categories.
California Lutheran U Launches Ethnic & Race Studies Major
The new program is designed to help students gain a deeper understanding of communities of color in the United States and build cultural competence in working with diverse groups. Additionally, the new associate provost for educational effectiveness is beginning a review of all curriculum to address equity, diversity and inclusion, including looking for ways to incorporate more on issues of race and racism.
Rutgers U Receives $15M Grant for Global Racial Justice
Rutgers president announced recently the receipt of a five-year, $15 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the establishment of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. The institute will support and amplify the scholarship of researchers who are based in the humanities or lean on humanistic methods and whose work has consequences in areas such as policy reform, K-12 education, social justice work and the carceral state. The institute will span the entire university and will include centers at Rutgers’ campuses in Newark, New Brunswick and Camden.
Hood College Launches Sustainability Degree Program
The college recently announced the launch of a new Bachelor of Arts in sustainability studies. The Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund Authority has granted $1 million to fund an endowed chair in the program. The program will emphasize three interrelated areas that form a framework for studying the complexities of sustainable societies: water, energy and food.
U Strathclyde Opens Center for Sustainable Development
(U.K.) The new Center for Sustainable Development aims to prioritize education and awareness of sustainable development, apply and build expertise and research capacity in sustainability, grow international partnerships, and contribute to and benefit from knowledge sharing and thought leadership.
Lincoln U Receives $400K for Sustainability Curriculum
A team of university researchers from computer science, psychology and human services, and biology has received a three-year, $400,000 National Science Foundation grant allocated for an interdisciplinary sustainability studies project. The project, Lincoln University Food Intersectional Education Linked to Diversify Sustainability (LU-FIELDS), seeks to foster science thinking from a historically Black educational perspective. Outcomes include a new sustainability minor, a certificate course in sustainable food systems, student research projects in sustainable garden and food practices, and Black food sovereignty community leadership and mentoring.
Loyola U Chicago Announces School of Environmental Sustainability
The university's board of trustees recently announced the elevation of the Institute of Environmental Sustainability to the School of Environmental Sustainability, creating Loyola’s 11th school. In an effort to amplify cross-school interdisciplinary collaborations and research, there will be four new interdisciplinary areas of study introduced: the departments of energy and sustainability science, sustainable and equitable societies, sustainable economics and governance, and environmental toxicology and health equity.
NC A&T Receives $1.6M to Promote Inclusiveness in Agriculture
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture has awarded a $1.6-million grant to help implement the Center of Excellence to Motivate and Educate for Achievement based at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. The center aims to encourage and support young people from underrepresented minority groups to pursue studies and careers in food, agriculture and natural resources.
Tulane U Launches Renewable Energy Degree Program
The university's business school launched a new program in renewable and sustainable energy, a specialization within the master of management in energy program. The new degree program will focus on the knowledge and skills needed to bring renewable energy projects from concept to completion.
Dumfries Galloway College Launches Sustainable Energy Hub
(U.K.) Called the Green Energy Hub, the new initiative aims to provide practical solutions to the challenges of heating, power and water supply faced by the college as well as creating a valuable teaching tool for students. Technologies of the hub will include a wind turbine, heat pumps, solar arrays, battery storage and electric vehicle charging points.
U Oregon Launches Black Studies Minor
The university's College of Arts and Sciences is offering the Black studies minor beginning in fall of 2020. It will serve at the academic home of its Umoja Residential Community, which takes its name from the Swahili word for unity.
William & Mary Establishes Social Justice Policy Initiative
Starting this fall, the new Social Justice Policy Initiative in the sociology department is a faculty-student collaborative project to engage in policy-oriented and community-based research and advocacy. The initiative aims to bring sociological and interdisciplinary research to community-based and advocacy organizations and policy-makers at local, state, national and global levels. The initial projects are affordable housing, educational equity, eviction crisis, racial and partisan gerrymandering, food justice, and local black histories.
U Pittsburgh Requires Racial Justice Course for First Year Students
The course, Anti-Black Racism: History, Ideology, and Resistance, will be a required, asynchronous, one-credit offering for first-year students on the Pittsburgh campus starting this fall. Students at the regional campuses, as well as any other interested students, may also register.
Insight Into Diversity Announces STEM Award
The 2020 Inspiring Programs in STEM Award, presented by Insight Into Diversity, recognizes unique and innovative programs for improving access to science, technology, engineering and math for underrepresented students. This year's accolade spotlights over 65 programs at higher education institutions.
College of the Holy Cross Launches Environmental Justice Prize
The college's environmental studies program recently announced the creation of the Jairam Miguel Rodrigues Rao Prize for work that addresses environmental racism and justice. The prize aims to recognize faculty who design their courses and research around the program's objectives.
Tuskegee U Receives $100K to Increase African American Access
The university’s Department of Architecture recently received a $100,000 contribution from the Cooper Carry Charitable Foundation, Inc., to increase access to the architecture profession for African American students. A need-based scholarship for undergraduate students will use $80,000 while the remaining $20,000 is designated for a student technology scholarship that will allow students to receive technology assistance by providing laptops and/or architecture design software.
Mid-State Tech College Installs Solar Array
Mid-State’s Renewable Energy Technician students recently installed 135 solar panels on the roof of the downtown Stevens Point campus. The array will supply approximately 15 percent of the campus’s energy usage. The project was incorporated into an advanced solar installation course this June and made possible thanks to a Solar on Schools grant the college received from the Couilliard Solar Foundation to purchase the solar panels.
California State U to Launch Social Justice Requirement
Going into effect for the 2023-24 academic year across all 23 campuses, the newly approved, one-course ethnic studies and social justice requirement will be grounded in the traditional Ethnic Studies discipline, comprised of African American, Asian American, Latinx and Native American studies.
U California Berkeley Students Win the Student Corporate Engagement Competition
A panel of judges recently selected a team from the University of California, Berkeley as the inaugural winners of the SIILK Corporate Engagement Competition. They were recognized for preparing strong investment recommendations and shareholder engagement strategy to improve company performance (and investment returns) through better environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. Hosted by the Intentional Endowments Network, the Student Corporate Engagement Competition invites student teams to write and present an investment recommendation for a publicly-traded company listed on any major exchange, and include in the investment recommendation a proposed shareholder engagement strategy that aims to improve company financial and sustainability performance.
Cornell U Announces Racial Justice Initiatives
In a recent address to the campus body, the university's president asked the Faculty Senate to, as soon as possible, create and implement an educational requirement on racism, bias and equity for all students; create an anti-racism center; and launch an institution-wide themed semester focused on issues of racism in the U.S. through relevant readings and discussions. Additional announced changes include oversight of the university's police department; the creation new professional development programs with a focus on staff of color; make diversity, equity and inclusion part of the performance dialogue process; implement equity and cultural competency trainings for all staff; and make Juneteenth a permanent university holiday.
U Pittsburgh Creates Justice Initiative
Anchored in the university's School of Education, the PittEd Justice Collective is a three-year working group that will engage in anti-racist, justice-directed initiatives within the education community as well as the surrounding community. Year one is focused on definitions and clarifying the scope of work and will also include a school-wide book read focused on anti-racism, along with lunch and learns, professional development opportunities and a virtual series on justice.
U Notre Dame Announces Anti-Racist Initiative
The university's Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights has announced a year-long initiative called Building an Anti-Racist Vocabulary. The project seeks to educate students and members of the broader Notre Dame community, helping them explore and deconstruct concepts that support racism.
Shaw U Launches 'Center for Racial and Social Justice'
The purpose of the new Center for Racial and Social Justice is to enable meaningful social change by fostering engagement around civil and human rights, spiritual formation, discernment and social justice. Featuring research activities and academic programs that celebrate the university’s heritage of racial and social justice advocacy, the center will introduce a series of certificate programs that promote activism, strategic thinking and leadership development to confront the nation and world’s great challenges related to racial and ethnic differences.
Loyola U Chicago Adds Environmental Communication Minor
The minor will be available to Loyola students in fall 2020 and will comprise a variety of courses offered by the Institute for Environmental Sustainability and the School of Communication. The 18-credit-hour minor will provide students with a background in environmental science and policy, and training in how to communicate environmental issues.
Ferris State U Announces Wege Prize Winners
First place winner of the Wege Prize 2020 Design Competition is Georgia Tech and Makerere University (Uganda) for creating biodegradable materials while mitigating the threat of invasive species. Second place is Kendall College of Art & Design of Ferris State University, Grand Valley State University and Oakland University for closing the loop on campus food waste. Third place is Ashesi University (Ghana), Earth University (Costa Rica) and Trinity College for turning waste streams into economic opportunity while nurturing soil health. The Wege Prize 2020 Design Competition is an annual international design competition organized by Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University.
Stanford U Announces Climate & Sustainability School
The university president in a recent address to the Academic Council announced the creation of a school focused on climate and sustainability that will help the university address the challenges facing the planet. In addition to leveraging the university's climate and sustainability research areas, the school is also to include a sustainability neighborhood providing place-based education and sustainability across the curriculum, and an accelerator, which would drive new sustainability solutions through external partnerships with government, industry and nongovernmental organizations.
U Rhode Island Farm Receives Organic Certification
Three acres used to conduct crop research at the university was recently certified as organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organics Program. Now the acreage will be used to conduct research on organic production methods and for comparison studies of organic and conventional crop production. The land will also be used in classes on sustainable crop production.
Energy Dept. Announces Solar Decathlon Winners
For the first time, the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon Design Challenge recognized and awarded two grand winners. The winners were University of Oregon in the commercial building division and Miami University in the residential division. The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition that challenges student teams to design and build highly efficient and innovative buildings powered by renewable energy.
U Vermont to Receive $3M for Restorative Justice Center
The U.S Department of Justice recently announced a $3 million grant to establish a National Center on Restorative Justice within the Vermont Law School. The center will focus on engaging criminal justice professionals, community members, educators, and social service providers with incarcerated individuals and broadening their understanding of the justice system and restorative justice. Restorative justice practices seek to rehabilitate offenders through reconciliation with victims, their communities and other means.
