FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Six initiatives on the University of Arkansas campus were awarded grant money totaling $60,000 from the university’s Women’s Giving Circle April 18. Members of the circle consider funding proposals for campus projects on an annual basis and every member of the circle votes on which project or projects will receive funding for the current year.

The projects that received funding this year are as follows.

The Bessie B. Moore Center for Economic Education in the Sam M. Walton College of Business was awarded $7,000 for the project titled “Arkansas Pride: Economic Dimensions of Arkansas History.” The money will support a curriculum unit that provides education to middle school students about the economic dimensions of Arkansas history.

The program uses a map analysis activity, group presentations, Internet research and other economic lessons on Arkansas history. After participation in the lessons and completing online research, students play a Jeopardy-type Internet-based game to show the knowledge they have gained. This curriculum will be developed by middle school education majors at the University of Arkansas. Learning to use technology for teaching and learning is a priority of the Arkansas Department of Education. The project will be operated by Rita Littrell, director of the Bessie B. Moore Center.

“Experiencing War Series: Arkansas Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan” is a project of the department of sociology and criminal justice in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. The $7,500 grant awarded by the Women’s Giving Circle will support a study of the experiences of Arkansans recently deployed to war — Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. The purpose of this research is to honor the lived experiences of soldiers returning from war and preserve those experiences for historical purposes and also to document the unique experiences of those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The study, led by associate professor Lori Holyfield, captures the experiences of 50 soldiers, most having returned from deployment in the past year. The oral histories will be archived with the Veteran’s Oral History project, “Experiencing War Series,” in partnership with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the David and Barbara Pryor Center for the Arkansas Oral and Visual History on the University of Arkansas campus.

Mark Boyer, associate professor in the department of landscape architecture, was awarded $10,000 for a project titled “Green Roof Demonstration Plot Trials.” The purpose of this project is to measure the benefits of green roofs in Arkansas through the construction of 12 mock roofs on the university’s new Watershed Research Education Center. The mock roofs will be monitored for plant survival and growth and the water quality and quantity coming off of the roofs. This project will allow students and faculty to generate applicable data on a technique that has the potential to lessen some of the negative aspects of development in Arkansas and the region. University students, the general public and groups of school children will be invited to learn about ways development practices impact our environment and health.

The University of Arkansas Police Department and the Division of Student Affairs were awarded $20,000, the largest grant this year from the circle, in support of “Razorback Patrol.” The program, originally established in 1981, provides escort services for students who are uncomfortable walking around alone on campus at night. Students involved in the Razorback Patrol, called cadets, are also responsible for nightly patrols of parking lots, checking for streetlights that are not functioning and ensuring the emergency phones on campus are working. The grant money will be used to purchase two additional six-seat carts used by the cadets to escort students safely around campus at night. The program leader, Mike Burcham of the university police department, estimates an additional 10,000 riders will be served by the additional carts.

Marta D. Collier in the College of Education and Health Professions, Yvette Murphy-Erby in the School of Social Work and Deanna Williams, migrant education program coordinator for the Boston Mountain Educational Cooperative, were awarded $7,500 for “The Reading Room,” a project that will build on an existing program serving the Marshallese community. The Marshallese Home-Based Literacy Learning Project grant funded by the Women’s Giving Circle in 2006 provided training and materials to empower mothers to support the literacy learning of their children. The Marshallese community requested expansion of the program to reach additional mothers and their families.

This year’s grant will fund a permanent site — at the Anij Emman Assembly of God Church — for assistance and support with literacy learning and access to books and materials that can be used at the Reading Room site. The materials will also be available to be checked out for use by mothers with their families at home. The average number of children in a Marshallese family is four, and the funding will allow an additional 30 mothers to receive training and materials for literacy learning.

The final program funded by this year’s Women’s Giving Circle grants is titled “Women Count.” Directed by the office of remediation and retention, this project is designed to improve the mathematical skills of women by providing female role models for women in foundational math classes at the University of Arkansas. The program will include a summer mathematics boot camp for women and a peer tutoring and mentoring component. Women who are admitted to the University of Arkansas but whose ACT or SAT scores indicate a need either for remediation or review in mathematics will be invited to attend the summer boot camp.

Tutors in the peer mentoring program will be junior and senior women majoring in mathematics or mathematics education who not only will be able to help students with specific questions in mathematics, but also will serve as role models for all students to show that women can be successful in mathematics.

The Women's Giving Circle was created in 2002 by the founding members of the Women and Philanthropy Committee of the Campaign for the Twenty-First Century.