University awards $450,000 in anti-racism research grants

The University of Michigan (UM) Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) awarded $450,000 in anti-racism grants to eight different research teams that will study “persistent racial disparities embedded in [various] systems.” 

The grants were administered in partnership with the National Center for Institutional Diversity’s (NCID) Anti-Racism Collaborative.

UM is located in Ann Arbor. 

James Holly Jr., Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, was one of the eight grant recipients. His project, titled “Epistemic Reconstruction: Teaching Engineering Through the Lens of Urban Blackness,” will develop a “race-conscious engineering curriculum for high-school students” by investigating prioritizing “urban Black youth’s knowledge production.”

The Michigan Engineering Partnership Program partners with over fifty high schools across nine different states.

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Isis Settles, Gender and Feminist Psychology Area Chair, and Kristie Dotson, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, will lead a project titled “Developing anti-racist faculty evaluation practices through an understanding of epistemic exclusion.”

The project will “survey U-M faculty to understand whether there are race, gender and academic field differences” that impact “workplace attitudes and intentions to remain at U-M and within academia.”

Other projects include research into the “political representation among Puerto Ricans, Ingenious people’s experiences of climate injustice, and the link between discrimination and mental health in Asian youth.”

This is the second year anti-racism grants have been awarded since the OVPR’s Research Catalyst and Innovation (RCI) Program began last spring.

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The grant application encouraged proposals to “explore and address interconnections of racial inequality with inequalities of gender and gender identity, sexual or orientation or disability status among other identity and status areas.”

The application also encouraged proposals to “grow the current scope of research on racial inequality and anti-racism.”

This is not the first round of anti-racism grants that have been awarded by the NCID this year.

As Campus Reform previously reported, the Anti-Racism Collaborative awarded $122,000 to 27 graduate students for projects focused on racial justice and equity earlier this year. 

Campus Reform has reached out to all parties mentioned in this article, and it will be updated accordingly.