Grant News

Following on a research award in November 2010 from the Keck Geology Consortium, Cameron Davidson, Professor of Geology, has also received a four-year, $212,563 award from the National Science Foundation’s Tectonics program. Awarded jointly to Professor Davidson and a collaborator at Union College (Schenectady, New York), the NSF grant will supplement and extend work begun with Keck funding, a project entitled “Provenance and thermal evolution of the Chugach-Prince William terrane flysch, southern Alaska.”

In June 2011, Professor of Religion Michael McNally received a $50,000 award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue a project, begun in 2006, on the relationship between Native American religion and U.S. law. With the new award, Professor McNally will (in summer 2011) be able to complete two strategically placed law review articles on this topic and (during the 2011-2012 academic year) to begin work on his next book, tentatively entitled No One Word for Religion: Native American Traditions, the Freedom of Religion, and the Law.

In May and June, Matt Whited, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, received two awards from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement and the American Chemical Society that will further his research program and provide opportunities for undergraduate students.

In May, the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) received support for various projects.

*Carol Ormand, SERC Geoscience Assistant, was awarded $174,800 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (TUES) program for her project “Developing and Testing Materials to Improve Spatial Skills in Upper Division Geoscience Courses.”

*SERC was awarded a subcontract with Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) for creating a website supporting faculty development of under-represented groups in the STEM discipline as part of GIT’s NSF project “Advance Leadership Award: Cross-Disciplinary Initiative for Minority Women Faculty.”

*Additionally, a contract with Evergreen State College supports “Sound Learning Communities” with SERC adding to and enhancing the web presence of the Curriculum for the Bioregion Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Education FIPSE program.

On May 19, 2011, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Helen Wong received a $124,770 grant from the National Science Foundation for a new three-year research project, “Relating quantum and classical topology and geometry.” The main goal of the project is to strengthen the relationships between quantum theory, geometry, and topology, an area of mathematics concerned with the intrinsic properties of a space – properties that are preserved under continuous deformations.  Wong’s project will involve a number of undergraduate researchers during each year and summer of the grant.

Adeeb Khalid, Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor of Asian Studies and History, was named Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. His research “Between Empire and Revolution: The Making of Soviet Central Asia, 1917-1932” between December 2010 through May 2011 at the Library of Congress culminated in a lecture, and contributed to his book on Central Asia in the early Soviet period.

Harry Williams, Laird Bell Professor of History, has been selected as a Fulbright Scholar for the 2011-2012 academic year. Professor Williams has been placed at the Northeast Normal University in Changchun, where he will offer courses in African American social, cultural, and intellectual history and pursue a research project on China’s relations with black America.

Ross Elfline, Assistant Professor of Art History, has recently received two grants to advance his book project on the Italian radical architecture collective Superstudio:

• a $6,000 Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities and
• a $5,000 Research and Development grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies.

Professor Elfline will use the NEH grant in summer 2011 to conduct archival research in Florence and Paris for his project “Toward an Architecture of Distribution: Superstudio’s Magazine Works.” He plans to use the Graham Foundation grant to finish that archival research in December 2011 and summer 2012.

Through the Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) project, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) have awarded a $6,000 grant to Assistant Professor of Religion Asuka Sango and colleagues at Luther College for a joint “Zen Stories for Today” project. Working with colleagues and undergraduate student researchers, Sango will create interactive digital applications that allow students to explore Zen Buddhist religious texts. The team will develop interactive animations of key Zen “encounter dialogues” between masters and disciples, make audio recordings of interviews with Zen Buddhist practitioners and scholars on the dialogues, and build a set of resources which students and faculty can use to teach the dialogues. The project combines cutting-edge research and digital/interactive technology to facilitate learning across the liberal arts and to explore the intersections of faith and learning. More information is available on the ACM FaCE website.

Mark Kanazawa, Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Social Sciences and Director of Environmental Studies, was awarded an appointment as a Wilbur R. Jacobs Fellow at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The $2,500 stipend will support a summer month in residence doing research for his book-length manuscript on the California Gold Rush.