Two UHD Grants Personnel Find the Keys to Government Money

Anne Sherman and Toni Joseph

(Houston, Texas, May 25, 2007)   Anne Sherman, Director of the Office of Sponsored Programs, and Antonia Joseph, Prospect Researcher for University Advancement, were selected by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) to attend the 2007 HACU-DHHS Professions Capacity Building Program, a workshop series on grant-writing and obtaining federal grants. Of 90 applications for the workshop series, Sherman and Joseph were among the 20 selected.

"We had UHD President Castillo's full support," Sherman says, who completed Session II in Bethesda, Maryland in mid-July.   "He is very active and influential in the Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) community and with HACU."

HACU began the program in 1999 after discovering that very few HSIs apply for and receive federal grants.   The Department of Health and Human Services funded HACU to present the workshops and offer fellowships for applicants to attend.   The goal of these workshops is to help faculty and staff from HSIs to become more competitive in the procurement of federal grants and contracts in the health care field.

The workshops and accompanying online tutelage (and testing) have been eye-opening for Sherman and Joseph.

  "There are 27 institutes within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and we were given the chance to hear about their available grant opportunities first hand," Joseph said. "We also learned all the details of the grants process, and have focused heavily on the OMB Circulars, which cover ground rules for everything from budgeting, grant administration and audit reporting.  This has been a wonderful career development opportunity for me."

The workshops were perfectly timed, as UHD has just won its first National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant in the natural sciences.  

"The most surprising thing to me was leaning how many grant possibilities there are in the Social Sciences," Anne Sherman says.   "I have many new ideas and am making plans!"

UH-Downtown is a public university of nearly 12,000 students, offering a wide variety of bachelor’s degrees, as well as master’s programs in criminal justice, professional writing, security management and teaching. One of four distinct universities in the UH System, Houston’s Downtown University is nationally recognized for its student diversity, wireless campus, outstanding academic opportunities and productive community partnerships. At UHD, the emphasis is on excellence in teaching and student success.

Please use UH-Downtown, UHD or University of Houston-Downtown when referring to our university.