Morehouse College has received a $1 million grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, a U.S. private family foundation, to establish the Rugari Scholarship Fund. The fund will cover the full costs of a four-year education at Morehouse for five students from Africa's Great Lakes region, which includes the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda. The grant will also support faculty and student research on effective development interventions in Africa's Great Lakes region. The Howard G. Buffett Foundation's grant to Morehouse College is part of the foundation's 14-year, $140 million Africa Great Lakes Region Peace Initiative. The scholarship program is named after a village in North Kivu at the center of the DRC's most recent active conflict.
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Seventh-grade science students at Woodward Academy welcomed a group of CDC Commissioned Corp Officers on Nov. 21. The scientists discussed disease transmission, lead an interactive lesson about germs and talked about their careers. The visit was part of the the CDC's PACE EH (Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health) initiative. During a second visit in the spring, the scientists will discuss PACE initiatives, drug use, obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
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The Westminster Schools' high schoolers placed 23rd in the country in the 2013 Team Scramble, a national mathematics contest administered by National Assessment & Testing. Coach Landy Godbold prepared students for the competition, where students had to answer 100 problems on a variety of mathematical topics in 30 minutes. The top 25 scores ranged from 43 to 81 (out of 100). The Westminster Schools will participate in National Assessment & Testing's 2013 Ciphering Time Trials next month and in the Four-by-Four competition in January.
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North Springs High School science students recently dissected fetal pigs to learn about an uninjured brain in preparation for a study of acute brain injury. The students were paired with researchers from Morehouse School of Medicine in a program called Power-It! Power-It (Promoting Our Worth as Entrenpenurers and Researchers in Innovative Technologies) is a project of the National Sciences Foundation with a neuroscience focus. North Springs and Morehouse have collaborated on Power-IT! for three years. "Most of the students participating want to become doctors or biomedical researchers," said Steven Moody, North Springs' Science Department chair. "The fetal pigs provide an animal model with a brain similar in development and anatomy to human brains, so the students find it very interesting." Morehouse provided the pigs and dissecting equipment. The students worked in teams to carefully expose and then remove each pig's spinal cord and brain.
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The Galloway School will host Discover Galloway open house 1-3:30 p.m. Sunday. Prospective students and their parents can explore academic, arts, athletic, and extracurricular life at The Galloway School, 215 W. Wieuca Road NW, Atlanta. Go to: www.gallowayschool.org to register for this event.
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