Grants offered for gender research

Caita Pierson
Staff Writer

The President’s Commission on the Status of Women is offering grants of up to $500 to students and faculty who participate in women/gender-related professional development or research.

The application for this grant is due at 5 pm on Feb. 24. All professional development or research is required to be completed by June 1, 2020.

In an interview with Alena Joseph, the graduate assistant for the PCSW, she went into depth about the grants.

“Basically, the commission has set up money, in a sense, to fund students or faculty in either professional development or research,” Joseph said. “They award the grants towards individuals who research or have professional development that has something to do with uplifting women the University or the community.”

Last fall, 15 grants were awarded. Examples of past grants include a conference for black women in engineering and a social justice conference.

“We usually try to give grants towards individuals who have never applied for this,” Joseph said. “We try to move the funds to people who’ve never touched any of it.”

The PCSW emphasizes on their website that they want the most amount of people to be impacted by the grant. This means they have a hierarchy to who qualifies for the grants first. Those who have never received funds in the past have priority.

Specifics to the application process include the official PCSW grant application and an itemized budget. To receive reimbursement, the recipient must submit a one to two paragraph ‘statement of impact.’

Closing the interview, Joseph said, “I wish more people would apply, especially students would apply to the grant because we usually see a lot of faculty.”

Those interested should visit http://www.mnsu.edu/csw/projectyear/poyresearchgrantshtml.html for the application or simply more information. Those with specific questions can email alena.joseph@mnsu.edu.