Grant News

Laurence Cooper (Political Science) received a Fulbright Scholar award to teach on “Political Philosophy and the Soul” at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic in the academic year 2009-2010. Read more on recent grants.

Gao Hong Dice (Music) was granted a Meet the Composer Global Connections Award of $2,000 to perform her composed music in Delhi, India, and Beijing, China. Read more on recent grants.

Matt McCright (Music) received funds in support of his CD project “Second Childhood” from the Greenville Symphony Society, and from the American Composers Forum (ACF) with a Subito grant. Additionally Matt was awarded an ACF Encore grant for the performance of Asa Nisa Masa by Drew Baker, and a Gene Gutche Incentive grant from the Schubert Club for recording two piano pieces. Read more on recent grants.

Devashree Gupta (Political Science) received a visiting fellow award of $20,000 from the University of Notre Dame Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. She will reside at the Hesburgh Center in spring 2010 while researching her project, “How Ethnic Minorities Participate in Deeply Divided Societies.” Read more on recent grants.

Gary Wagenbach (Emeritus) was granted $30,000 from the B.K. Kee Foundation for a curriculum improvement project at Lumbini Academy in Yangon, Burma. He will serve as an educational consultant focusing on teaching hands-on science-based investigative learning. Read more on recent grants.

The Science Education Resource Center (SERC) received funding in the fall of 2008 for numerous collaborative projects.

* A $224,132 award from the NSF’s Division of Education for a CCLI Phase 2 two-year project, “Collaborative Research: Improving the Geoscience Major,” will enhance the design and implementation of geoscience curricula and programs through a series of topical workshops, on-line resources, and outreach efforts.

* An NSF DUE subaward from North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University for the three-year project “Developing an Economics Pedagogic Portal” provides $177,992 to SERC.

* Two subawards from University of South Florida: a supplement to their NSF DUE “Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum” project which provides $36,428 to SERC for a National Numeracy Network (NNN) workshop promoting quantitative literacy instructional spreadsheet modules; and an NSF CCLI Phase 1 “Geology of National Parks: Spreadsheets, Quantitative Literacy, and Natural Resources” project that awards SERC $16,579.

* A University of Vermont NSF DUE subaward for “The Textbook Reconsidered – Creating the Shortbook of Geomorphology” project, provides $41,379 to SERC.

*An NSF DUE National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) subaward from the University of Michigan’s “Quantitative Social Science Digital Library Pathway (QSSDL)” project, which will provide a portal to materials that integrate quantitative analysis in the teaching of the social sciences, with SERC’s portion being $231,722 over three years.

* A small NSF SBE subaward from Temple University provides $4,998 to SERC for hosting of a web site for a Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC) workshop in Germany.

Recent grants.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Susan Singer (Biology) $149,967 for a Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grant. Professor Singer’s project “RUI: Scaffolding Conceptually Driven Genomics Education” hypothesizes that a carefully designed, web interface tool can support classroom instruction and facilitate authentic research by moderately scaffolding the student research process. The instructional technique of scaffolding utilizes teacher modeling of a desired learning strategy or task – providing support structures to get to the next level – then gradually shifting responsibility to students.

A genomics education tool “Exploring Genomics in Context Interface” (EGCI) will be developed and tested at two different institutions – one that integrates genomics throughout the curriculum (Carleton) and one with distinct genomics and bioinformatics courses (Vassar). Carleton’s Science Education Resource Center (SERC) will do the design, development, and customization of the EGCI tool.

For more, visit Susan’s Web site; or SERC’s Web site. Read more on recent grants.

Natalie Khazaal (Arabic) is a subawardee of a U.S. Department of Education grant awarded to the UCLA International Institute. UCLA’s project “Listen and Learn: Teaching Arabic, Persian, and Turkish in America’s Middle and High Schools” is one of eleven projects receiving funds in 2008 from the USDE’s International Research and Studies Program. Professor Khazaal will develop on-line Arabic Lebanese dialect modules. Read more on recent grants.

Joel Weisberg (Physics) was awarded $332,335 for a four-year continuing grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue his astronomical investigations. His RUI (Research in Undergraduate Institutions) project “Radio Astronomical Investigations of the Interstellar Medium, Relativistic Gravitation, and Pulsars” uses pulsars as tools for the study of the interstellar medium and relativistic gravitation and focuses on the study of the emissions and evolution of pulsars. The grant will provide opportunities for students to do data acquisition and analysis, and travel to the Australian Telescope National Facility. For more about Joel’s work, visit his Web site. Read more on recent grants.

Phil Camill (Biology) received a National Science Foundation (NSF) award of $193,615 for the first year of his project “Landscape-level controls on terrestrial, aquatic, and wetland responses to climate change in the southern Canadian Arctic.” Along with three colleagues at other institutions (Charles Umbanhower, Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies, St. Olaf College; Christoph E. Geiss, Associate Professor of Physics, Trinity College; and Mark B. Edlund, Senior Scientist, Science Museum of Minnesota), Professor Camill, a specialist in global change ecology, will use his NSF grant to improve scientific understanding of how landscapes – the geographical characteristics of a site, such as upland or lowland location or the abundance of peat-forming wetlands – mediate the responses of lake and terrestrial ecosystems to climate change. The study will look at more than two dozen sites in the forest-tundra region of northern Manitoba, a region experiencing some of the fastest rates of warming in the world. Professor Camill’s project will involve numerous undergraduate researchers. Read more on recent grants.