Harvard deepens commitment to HBCUs with $1.05 million grant — Harvard Gazette
Harvard has introduced a three-year, $1.05 million grant to the Association of Historically Black Colleges and Universities Research Institutions (AHRI), a brand new coalition of 15 HBCUs working to improve their collective analysis, innovation, and affect.
The grant, made via Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS) Initiative, will help analysis infrastructure and technical help at these faculties as they construct analysis capability and search to obtain R1 standing — the analysis designation provided to the best United States universities — underneath the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR) will present technical help.
“Through this three-year grant to AHRI, the H&LS Initiative is deepening our commitment to developing enduring partnerships with HBCUs,” stated Sara Naomi Bleich, vice provost for particular initiatives at Harvard. “We are honored to leverage our expertise in research infrastructure and capacity-building to help further HBCU research excellence.”
The new funding strengthens Harvard’s commitment to constructing partnerships at HBCUs, whereas enhancing their potential to entice prime analysis expertise and funding that comes with R1 analysis classification. Howard University is the primary HBCU to have earned an R1 designation and is at the moment the one associate establishment in AHRI with that designation.
The grant straight implements Recommendation Three from the 2022 Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, which known as on the University to forge lasting connections with HBCUs.
“The launch of AHRI represents an important inflection point for HBCU research institutions. The 15 universities in this coalition collectively account for 50 percent of all competitively awarded federal research funding among HBCUs — underscoring the scale and strength of our research, doctoral education, and innovation,” stated Tomikia P. LeGrande, president of Prairie View A&M University and vice chair of AHRI. “As Carnegie-classified institutions spanning R2 and R1 designations, we are aligning that strength through AHRI to amplify impact, accelerate discovery, and define the future of research while firmly establishing HBCUs as central to that future.”
“AHRI marks a new chapter in the HBCU research landscape,” stated Ruth Simmons, senior adviser to the president on HBCU engagement at Harvard and president emerita of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M University. In 2024, Simmons and Bleich started speaking about methods Harvard may help advancing analysis capability at HBCUs. “This association brings institutions that have too often worked in isolation into sustained collaboration with one another and with the country’s leading research universities. Harvard’s partnership with AHRI offers a powerful model of a more forward-looking approach to higher education.”
Along with the OVPR, Harvard’s Office for Sponsored Programs (OSP) will present technical help and steering in designing and strengthening analysis administration and compliance infrastructure throughout AHRI member establishments. This will embrace collaborating within the inaugural AHRI symposium, internet hosting HBCU administrative employees at Harvard, and help with lifecycle grants administration and compliance.
AHRI formally launched April 29, at Howard University in Washington, DC, with a nationwide press convention and inaugural symposium, “Expanding the Research Mission of HBCUs.”
Beyond the brand new AHRI grant, the H&LS Initiative additionally helps the subsequent era of HBCU leaders via Harvard’s Seminar for New Presidents management program, which offers a collaborative cohort studying mannequin for HBCU and non-HBCU presidents. Additionally, the H&LS Initiative helps capability constructing via the HBCU Digital Library Trustwhich has engaged greater than 90 HBCUs in digitizing high-priority collections on a single platform and offering skilled improvement applications. The initiative additionally funds analysis alternatives just like the Du Bois Scholars Programa summer season analysis internship at Harvard University for undergraduate college students from 21 research-intensive HBCUs.
