The College of New Rochelle (N.Y.) received a three-year, $125,000 grant from the Aetna Foundation to help support education programming that addresses obesity. The grant will be used to outfit smart classrooms in the colleges planned Wellness Center, which is scheduled to be completed in 2007.

Indiana University received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund a five-year project, the International Mental Health Stigma Study. The study is designed to determine the effect of other people’s attitudes and behaviors on the recovery rate of the mentally ill in other countries. The results of the study may help improve the recovery rate of patients in the United States.

The University of California, Berkeley, has received a $40 million gift from the Li Ka Shing Foundation to establish a research center focused on new scientific fields — including stem cell biology and brain imaging — that could provide solutions to today’s major health problems. In recognition of Li’s generosity, the university will name the new facility the Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.

The University of Texas at Austin’s Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts, along with five other institutions, is a sub-awardee for a five-year, $7 million grant to research the unique challenges faced by young English-language learners.

The Winston-Salem State University (N.C.) School of Health Sciences received a $900,000 grant from the Department of Health Re-
sources and Services Administration  of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for need-based scholarships. The scholarships will be awarded to students who have declared majors in the school’s nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy or clinical laboratory sciences departments for the 2005-2006 academic year.