Grant Announcements

Cathia Silver, director of App State’s Student Support Services (SSS) program, has received continued funding from the U.S. Department of Education in support of the SSS program’s provision of holistic services to first-generation and/or low-income students.

App State has been awarded nearly $12 million in federal grant funding to implement Empowering Teacher Learning — a teacher-directed professional learning program designed to add flexibility to traditional recertification and state licensure renewals for Western North Carolina teachers.

App State was awarded a nearly $98,000 grant to analyze COVID-19’s total economic impact on the Northwestern NC region. In April alone, the region lost an estimated $52.4 million in gross regional product due to COVID-related restaurant and bar closures, according to preliminary reports.

Over the next seven years, Appalachian GEAR UP, a federally funded college access program, will serve more than 14,000 high school students from 10 Western North Carolina school districts by helping them prepare to enter and succeed in postsecondary education.

App State and South Africa’s University of the Free State (UFS) will strengthen their existing partnership through a two-year mountain-to-mountain project that has received $500,000 in grant support. Read more about the project, which will engage faculty, staff and graduate students at both institutions.

The American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA) Furniture Foundation has awarded $12,000 in grant funding to App State’s furniture design program to support student scholarship opportunities. This is the 17th AHFA grant awarded to the university since 2002.

With grant support from the U.S. Geological Survey, Appalachian biology professor Dr. Jon Davenport is undertaking a four-year project that will provide a clear understanding of how potential climate changes — including increased temperatures and changing precipitation — could affect salamander populations of Missouri’s Ozark Mountains.

Thanks to a second awarded grant, Appalachian’s New River Light and Power has received more than $1.1 million to complete an environmental restoration project at the site of the Payne Branch dam on New River. The work will begin the week of July 20.

The “Supporting the STEM Pathway” project is designed to boost student success in calculus courses at Appalachian. Such courses span majors other than math, including biology, chemistry, geology, computer science, geography and physics.