Grant News

The Jerome Foundation awarded Gao Hong Dice (Music) a $9,000 Emerging Composer Commission grant for the writing of three new music works. Gao was also chosen to receive a $1,200 Subito award from the American Composers Forum to contribute toward recording fees for her upcoming CD.

Tsegaye Nega (ENTS) received $47,302 in support from the NITLE Instructional Innovation Fund. Furthering his ongoing interdisciplinary GIS initiative, he will work with staff at Carleton and faculty at four partner institutions to develop course modules that use geographic information systems (GIS) concepts, tools, and skills to analyze Hurricane Katrina. Additionally, NITLE awarded $3,500 to support travel and dissemination efforts for the project. Recent grants.

George Vrtis (ENTS and History) was awarded a summer 2008 residential research fellowship ($1,500 travel grant) from the St. Louis Mercantile Library in St. Louis to support research on his book manuscript, “Refashioning the Mountains: An Environmental History of the Colorado Front Range, 1700-1900.” Recent grants.

The National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research awarded Melissa Eblen-Zayas (Physics) $144,590 for her three-year project “RUI: EuO Thin Films as a Laboratory for Exploring Metal-Insulator Transitions and Colossal Magnetoresistance.” This support continues her research on europium oxide, a little-understood magnetic semiconductor, and provides two summer stipends for undergraduate researchers in her lab.
Recent grants.

Serena Zabin (History) received two awards for her project “Street Politics & the Boston Massacre.” From the New England Regional Consortium, $5,000 will support work at three area archives; and from the Massachusetts Historical Society, $2,000 will support a one-month residential research fellowship. Recent grants.

In spring of 2008, in conjunction with International Freindship Through the Performing Arts, Gao Hong Dice (Music) received a $4,000 MetLife Creative Connections grant from Meet the Composer, Inc. to perform outreach concerts and events associated with the world premiere of her first choral composition, “The Coming of Spring.” Additionally she was awarded her third prestigious McKnight Foundation McKnight Artist Fellowship for Performing Musicians, for $27,000. For more information on Gao’s work and upcoming performances, visit Gao’s personal website. 

Jamie Monson (History) received a grant from the American Council of Learned Society’s (ACLS) “American Research in the Humanities in China” program to support the first phase of a year-long research project on the transnational effort to build the TAZARA railway in East Africa from 1964-1986. Focused on the transfer of technology and knowledge among Chinese and Tanzanian workers, the project will locate TAZARA in a specific historical context that included China’s Cultural Revolution; post-independence and early nation-building in Tanzania and Zambia; and Cold War-era international relations. The $39,000 award will allow Professor Monson to conduct archival and field research in China during the 2008-2009 academic year.
Read more on recent grants.

Nathan Grawe (Economics) will serve as the director of Carleton’s Quantitative Reasoning, Inquiry, and Knowledge (QuIRK) program, which is supported by two recently-received grants. In September 2007, Carleton was awarded a $499,994 National Science Foundation (NSF) CCLI Phase 2 grant to use the writing-based assessment of student quantitative reasoning improvements to guide and evaluate curricular reform. With advice from representatives from six other institutions and following the completion of feasibility studies at four partner colleges and universities, Carleton will adapt its assessment/professional development model for dissemination to two- and four-year colleges and universities. In late 2007, the Keck Foundation granted $300,000 to Carleton to extend QR teaching and learning into fields and departments where quantitative skills and data are less commonly used. Modeled after and integrated with the College’s well-established Writing Program, QuIRK’s professional development workshops and curricular revisions flow from assessment of QR in student writing samples using QuIRK’s novel rubric. The focus on student writing and integration with the Writing Program has allowed QuIRK to implement reforms rapidly and to engage faculty with broad disciplinary representation

These two grants will enable the QuIRK initiative to raise awareness of quantitative reasoning around campus (through LTC talks, workshops to assess QR proficiency in student writing, and other means), to share best QR-teaching practices among faculty throughout the College, and to support curricular reform by funding course development and revision. Read more on recent grants.

In late 2007, Steven Drew (Chemistry) was awarded an Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) grant in the amount of $2,840 to develop skills necessary for increasing his proficiency with the theory and practical application of X-ray crystallography. The funds allow Professor Drew to attend the Crystallography Summer School at the University of California, San Diego during the summer of 2008. Read more on recent grants.

The Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) awarded a Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) grant to Jamie Monson (History) in the amount of $3,000. The funds support enrollment in an intensive Chinese language and cultural studies program in Beijing, offered by CET Academic Programs in June and July 2008. Her current research project – a study of a Tanzanian railway project that was built with Chinese development assistance in the 1960s and 1970s – requires her to acquire language skills in Mandarin Chinese and deepen her understanding of Chinese history and culture. Read more on recent grants.