Calhoun Community College (Ala.) and the state of Alabama received a two-year $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to establish a regional Center for Manufacturing Innovation to be located at Calhoun’s Decatur campus. Funding for the project comes through President Bush’s High Growth Job Training Initiative, a strategic effort to prepare workers to take advantage of new and increasing job opportunities in high growth, high demand and economically vital sectors of the American economy.

California State University, Northridge received a five-year, $1 million grant from alumnus Mortez “Mory” Ejabat to the university’s College of Engineering and Computer Science for the creation of the college’s first endowed chair.

Duke University (N.C.) received $2.2 million from Jeffrey and Martha Gendell of Greenwich, Conn., to support an expanded curriculum in energy studies at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.

Florida Atlantic University received a $5 million grant from Barry Kaye, an expert in the life insurance industry, for the establishment of the Barry Kaye School of Finance, Insurance, and Economics in the College of Business, as well as the Barry Kaye Endowed Fund to support the school.

The National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) received a $50,000 grant from Sodexho USA for the NAFEO Historically Black Colleges and Universities Best Practices Institute Project. The project will examine what combination of demographic, academic, environmental, economic/financial, social, civic, administrative and other factors lead to the success of HBCUs in retaining and graduating African-American students particularly in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas.