Summary of 2014–2015 Awards
  22 grants to 20 individual awardees: $1,037,993 total

  • Arts & Literature: $75,447 on 7 awards
  • Humanities: $101,400 on 3 awards
  • Science & Math: $861,146 on 12 awards

Anna Rafferty, Assistant Professor of Computer ScienceAnna Rafferty

Diagnosing Misconceptions About Algebra Using Bayesian Inverse Reinforcement Learning

Funder: National Science Foundation

Award date: 7/30/14    
Award amount: $288,886       
Project period: 9/1/14-8/31/17

In this three-year project as a part of a subaward from University of California-Berkeley, coPI Professor Rafferty will work together with PI Tom Griffiths on research that will result in a sophisticated automated algebra tutor freely available online.

Nikki Melville, Associate Professor of MusicNikki Melville

Commissioning of three composers to write piano pieces in Judith Clark’s memory

Funder: Creative New Zealand

Award date: 8/7/14  
Award amount: $6,352     
Project period: 8/1/14-11/1/14

Professor Melville commissioned three composers to write piano pieces in memory of her former teacher and longtime mentor, Judith Clark. The pieces were presented at Carleton and on tour in New Zealand during winter 2015.

Barbara Allen, Barbara Allen Professor of Political Science and Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Social Sciences

Documentary: Actual World, Possible Future

Funder: CHS Foundation

Award date: 8/19/14
Award amount: $10,000             
Project period: 8/1/14-7/31/15

This funding supports production and editing of Professor Allen’s documentary about the social scientists Elinor and Vincent Ostrom.

Paul Hager, Paul Hager Instructor in Cinema and Media Studies

Established Artist Grant for Cannon Shoals: A Ten-Episode Screenplay

Funder: SEMAC (Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council)

Award date: 8/19/14  
Award amount: $4,865                     
Project period: 8/19/14-9/1/15

The capstone of this Established Artist project will be a staged reading of the screenplay at the Northfield Arts Guild in October 2015.

Mark Kanazawa, Mark Kanazawa Professor of Economics

Building Climate Readiness in Nature-Based Tourism-Dependent Coastal Communities

Funder: U.S. Department of Commerce NOAA

Award date: 8/21/14  
Award amount: $14,620     
Project period: 7/1/14-6/30/16

As a subaward with the University of Minnesota-Duluth and working with PI Mae Davenport, Professor Kanazawa and student researchers will compile and synthesize economic-recreational tourism data, and develop recreation site fact sheets to be available on the University of Minnesota Tourism Center’s website.

Gary Wagenbach, Gary Wagenbach Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor of Biology, Science, Technology, and Society, Emeritus

Training for Burmese Lumbini Academy science teachers

Funder: Mary Alphonse Bradley Fund

Award date: 10/15/14
Award amount: $20,000             
Project period: 3/1/15-2/25/18

Bradley Fund support will be used to transport six teachers from the Lumbini Academy in Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) to the US to receive content training and tutoring in best practices and pedagogy for K-12 science teaching.

Dana Strand, Dana Strand Andrew W. Mellon Professor of French and the Humanities and Director of French and Francophone Studies

The Tournées Festival

Funder: FACE (French American Cultural Exchange)

Award date: 11/1/14  
Award amount: $1,800                     
Project period: 11/1/14-5/31/15

This FACE Tournées Festival funding supports the showing of six French films in April 2015 as a part of Carleton’s international film festival during winter and spring terms 2015. The screenings in Carleton’s Weitz Center for Creativity 250-seat cinema will be woven into language, literature, and cinema and media studies courses; and will be open to the larger community.

Scott Carpenter, Scott Carpenter Professor of French

2015 Artist Initiative Grant – Prose

Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board

Award date: 11/5/14
Award amount: $6,000             
Project period: 11/5/14-12/31/15

With this funding from an Artist Initiative Grant, Professor Carpenter will complete a novel dealing with a young man’s struggle to connect with his estranged brother. Set in Minnesota, the story draws on various aspects of Midwestern history. As part of the project, there will be a reading from the manuscript, and a panel discussion featuring two other Minnesota writers, about blending history and fiction.

Linda Rossi, Professor of ArtLinda Rossi

Valley Grove Prairie Installation

Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board

Award date: 1/7/15  
Award amount: $10,000                     
Project period: 3/28/15-2/27/16

This 2015 Artist Initiative Grant enables Professor Rossi to create a complex sculptural and photographic installation at the historic Valley Grove Chapel in Nerstrand which will illuminate the natural and cultural history of Rice County, MN. The installation will be open to the public in September 2015.

Adrienne Falcón, Adrienne Falcon Lecturer in Sociology and Director of Academic Civic Engagement

Civic Engagement and Sociology in Cuenca, Ecuador

Funder: U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

Award date: 1/12/15
Award amount: $17,230             
Project period: 9/1/15-12/31/15

A Fulbright U.S. Scholar award during four months of academic year 2015-2016 enables Lecturer Falcón to participate in and research the construction of academic community and civic engagement in Ecuador while teaching and doing research at the Universidad de Cuenca. In particular, Falcón will study the implementation of a new law mandating community involvement for all institutions of higher education in Ecuador – a subject which Falcón will introduce to the wider scholarly conversation about civic engagement.

Laurel Bradley, Laurel Bradley Senior Lecturer in Art and Art History and Director and Curator in the Perlman Teaching Museum

Teaching, curation, and outreach at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland

Funder: U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

Award date: 1/28/15
Award amount: $17,200            
Project period: 10/1/15-6/30/16

A Fulbright U.S. Scholar teaching and research appointment during academic year 2015-2016 provides for Laurel Bradley to contribute to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) curatorial and collections programs, and to develop lectures and courses related to contemporary art.

Liz Raleigh, Liz Raleigh Assistant Professor of Sociology

2015 Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty

Funder: Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation administered; funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Award date: 1/29/15
Award amount: $31,500             
Project period: 6/1/15-5/31/16

This fellowship provides Professor Raleigh with sabbatical support during 2015-2016 and a stipend for research, travel, or publication expenses. With the fellowship, Professor Raleigh will complete work on her book, Chosen Children: Race and the Adoption Marketplace, which argues that private transracial adoption serves as a lens into changing racial boundaries and conceptions of kinship in the modern United States.

Deborah Gross, Deborah Gross Professor of Chemistry

Chemical Composition measurement of Atmospheric Aerosols in Real-Time

Funder: U.S. Department of Energy (DoE)

Award date: 2/17/15
Award amount: $22,362           
Project period: 2/17/15-10/31/15

Support from the DoE Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program comes through a subaward from the MSP Corporation. The project, led by Dr. Amir Naqwi at MSP, brings together a team of leading aerosol experts to develop a cutting-edge technology for investigating the chemistry of airborne particles, which is critical for the understanding of climate change. The resulting instrument will also be an advanced tool for monitoring and controlling air pollution.

Barbara Allen, Barbara Allen Professor of Political Science and Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Social Sciences

Documentary: Actual World, Possible Future

Funder: CHS Foundation

Award date: 3/4/15
Award amount: $15,000             
Project period: 2/23/15-4/30/15

This CHS 2015 Cooperative Education Grant supports Barbara’s March 2015 research trip to South Korea, on which she interviewed and filmed important figures in the Korean cooperative movement and conduct research at coops and other social enterprises, including fisheries and fish markets, ecotourism, and water resources. This opportunity is especially important to the documentary and to the cause of the coop movement because the movement in South Korea has both wrought enormous positive social change and provided a successful contrast to the North Korean model of state control.

Serena Zabin, Serena Zabin (square) Associate Professor of History

Occupying Boston: An Intimate History of the Boston Massacre

Funder: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)

Award date: 3/10/15
Award amount: $45,000             
Project period: 1/1/16-12/31/16

Professor Sabin will use this fellowship support to finish her book on the Boston Massacre. The book uncovers the extensive personal interactions between troops and their families and townspeople and challenges the political spin put on the “massacre.” In addition to deep archival and documentary research, Professor Zabin and Carleton students used digital tools to map the personal networks in colonial Boston that, she argues, help to explain the Massacre’s origins and effects. Noteably, ACLS funded less than 7% of the fellowship proposals received.

Alex Knodell, Alex Knodell Assistant Professor of Classical Languages

The Mazi Archeological Project 2015: Regional Survey on the Borders of Attica

Funder: Harvard University Loeb Classical Library Foundation

Award date: 3/11/15
Award amount: $29,230             
Project period: 6/15/15-7/17/15

This fellowship supports Professor Knodell in conducting a second field season of the Mazi Archaeological Project, which he co-directs with colleagues from the Swiss School of Archeology in Greece and the 3rd Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities of the Greek Ministry of Culture. The team of 25 researchers, cultural heritage professionals, and students (some from Carleton) will employ a variety of methods, including intensive pedestrian survey, innovative digital recording, and geospatial and geophysical analysis to investigate and document surface and subsurface remains on a regional scale across the landscape of the Mazi Plain, located in Northwest Attica, Greece.

Serena Zabin, Serena Zabin (square) Associate Professor of History

A New History of the Boston Massacre

Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)

Award date: 3/18/15
Award amount: $50,400             
Project period: 9/1/15-8/31/16

Professor Sabin will use this fellowship support to finish her book on the Boston Massacre, Occupying Boston: An Intimate History of the Boston Massacre. The book uncovers the extensive personal interactions between troops and their families and townspeople and challenges the political spin put on the “massacre.” NEH fellowships support scholars pursuing advanced research. In this cycle, the Endowment funded only 7.5% of the fellowship proposals received.

Asuka Sango, Asuka Sango Associate Professor of Religion

Buddhist Debate in Medieval Japan: A Raft to Hell or to Enlightenment?

Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)

Award date: 3/19/15
Award amount: $6,000             
Project period: 6/1/15-8/14/15

Professor Sango’s NEH Summer Stipend funds continued research at archives in Japan for her book on the role played by Buddhist debate in shaping the intellectual, religious, and cultural contours of Japan from the 11th to 16th centuries.

Nelson Christensen, Nelson Christensen George H. and Marjorie F. Dixon Professor of Physics

RUI: Parameter Estimation, Data Analysis, and Detector Characterization for LIGO

Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Award date: 3/20/15
Award amount: $210,000             
Project period: 7/1/15-6/30/18

This three-year project doing Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) astronomy research continues the international collaborative analyses of data in search of gravitational wave signals, including signals from massive black hole systems and supernova produced signals. As many as six undergraduate researchers will apply novel statistical strategies to parameter estimation and data analysis, and identify detector disturbances for Advanced LIGO. See more of Nelson’s work at his web page.

Matt Rand, Professor of BiologyMatt Rand

Stephan Zweifel, Chair and Professor of Biology

Assessing genetic diversity within and among three populations of Bullsnakes in Minnesota

Funder: Minnesota Herpetological SocietyStephan Zweifel

Award date: 4/28/15
 Award amount: $1,500            
 Project period: 5/1/15-12/31/15

Working with students in the Molecular Biology course and with Department of Natural Resources personnel, Rand and Zweifel will analyze the DNA profile of bullsnakes, a “species of special concern” in Minnesota.

 

Matt Whited, Assistant Professor of ChemistryMatt Whited

Stoichiometric and Catalytic Nitrene-Group-Transfer Reactions from Late-Metal Silylamides

Funder: American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund

Award date: 6/8/15
Award amount: $70,000             
Project period: 7/1/15-8/31/18

This Undergraduate Research Grant supports the PI and seven Carleton student researchers in cutting edge research. The project explores versatile metal-catalyzed routes to forming carbon–nitrogen bonds that are ubiquitous in pharmaceuticals and commodity chemicals. Read more about the Whited lab.

Helen Wong, Helen Wong Associate Professor of Mathematics

RUI: Skeins on Surfaces

Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Award date: 6/16/15
Award amount: $160,048             
Project period: 6/15/15-5/31/18

Professor Wong’s project explores the extent to which the Kauffman skein algebra of a surface can serve as intermediary between quantum topology and hyperbolic geometry, and seeks to characterize knots and other topologically complex structures that can occur in DNA and proteins. As many as ten undergraduate researchers will participate in the research.