Category: Grant News

Amna Khalid, Associate Professor of History, has been awarded the inaugural John Stuart Mill Faculty Fellowship from the Heterodox Academy (HxA). Prof. Khalid’s year-long fellowship will enable her to give her undivided attention to issues that she is passionate about and that align with the mission of HxA: increasing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in higher education.

Melanie Freeze, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science, was awarded a Project Pericles “Up to Us Voting Modules” mini-grant to incorporate “How to Vote” civic engagement in her fall 2020 ACE course Polarization, Parties, and Power. Students completed voting plans and participated in voting outreach to elementary students and others in the community. The grant will also fund a political psychology class research project during the Spring 2021 term that examines people’s response to public health messaging from Republican and Democrat governors, with a focus on vaccinations.

Rika Anderson, Assistant Professor of Biology, was awarded a Global Fellowship from the University of St. Andrews, which enables scholars to work within the academic community at St. Andrews. She will work in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences on projects related to the early evolution of microbial metabolisms on Earth.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Spring 2020 Grants Conference will be held May 18-19, 2020 in Minneapolis, at the Minneapolis Marriott City Center.

The conference is designed to give new faculty, researchers, and administrators key insights into a wide range of current issues at NSF. NSF program officers representing each NSF directorate will be on hand to provide up-to-date information about specific funding opportunities and to answer attendee questions.

Registration will open on Tuesday, March 17 at 12 p.m. EST. The organizers anticipate the conference will reach capacity very quickly, so you are encouraged to register as soon as it opens. 

Check the NSF Policy Outreach site for the most up-to-date event information, and view recordings of sessions from last year’s event. 

Carleton faculty and staff are invited to attend a National Endowment for the Humanities workshop at St. Olaf on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. In the afternoon, program officer Russell Wyland will offer two sessions: an overview of NEH funding opportunities and a presentation on writing an application, which includes a mock review panel. In the morning, Wyland will hold one-on-one conversations with prospective applications about their projects.

In summer 2019, Kristin Bloomer, Associate Professor of Religion, completed a major phase of her current research project. With the support of a grant from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Prof. Bloomer worked from August 2018 through June 2019 in Tamil Nadu, India.

Joel Weisberg, Herman and Gertrude Mosier Stark Professor of Physics and Astronomy and the Natural Sciences, has completed the final National Science Foundation grant project in his long career at Carleton College.

Chemist Matt Whited has completed a project for the National Science Foundation in which he and a collaborator offered a training workshop to 100 junior chemistry faculty from around the country.

In July 2017, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Chris Calderone completed the first year of his National Science Foundation grant project, “Condensation Domain-Catalyzed Dehydration” (NSF award 1608723), a three-year project to investigate the creation in the lab of complex biological molecules that may have therapeutic uses. The project also entails training numerous undergraduate students and an outreach program at a Twin Cities college prep program, LearningWorks.

 In Year One of the grant, Prof. Calderone worked with four Carleton undergraduate researchers and with 24 students enrolled in his “Biological Chemistry Laboratory” course. Two of his undergraduate researchers worked with faculty members at LearningWorks to develop curricular modules based on the lab research, helping them acquire expertise in modern experimental techniques and research questions. This work will have beneficial broader effects in developing and implementing learning experiences at LearningWorks. All of these activities will continue in the next two years of the grant project, during which the scientific research activities will intensify.

On its website, Minnesota Campus Compact has published a great summary of the results of Anita Chikkatur’s research project on the experiences of under-represented students in STEM classes and majors at Carleton. Campus Compact and Youthprise supported the project with a Participatory Action Research grant; several Carleton departments also contributed support.

Prof. Chikkatur and a team of students conducted a literature review and extensive interviews with faculty, staff, and students that led to concrete recommendations for making STEM more inclusive at and beyond Carleton. Many of the recommendations relate to improved communication within and across the disciplines and the College; follow the summary link above or “Read more” link below to learn more.