Summary of 2015–2016 Awards
  21 grants to 16 individual awardees: $797,232 total

  • Arts & Literature: $181,198 on 10 awards
  • Humanities: $103,325 on 3 awards
  • Science & Math: $470,596 on 7 awards

Gao Hong, Gao Hong Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments

Four 5-day residencies in southeastern Minnesota schools

Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board

Award date: 7/16/15   
Award amount: $12,008      
Project period: 9/1/15-8/31/16

With this Arts Learning Grant, Chinese musician and educator Gao Hong will present a five-day residency at Arcadia Charter (Northfield), Nerstrand Elementary, Farmington Elementary, and Prairie Creek Community School (Castle Rock).

Stephi Fried, Stephie Fried Assistant Professor of Economics

Rural Electrification and Internal Migration in the Developing World

Funder: London School of Economics International Growth Centre (IGC)

Award date: 8/1/15   
Award amount: $16,515    
Project period: 9/1/15-1/31/17

As coPI, Professor Fried, with PI David Lagakos, will compile a village-level dataset for Ethiopian villages, aiming to provide guidance to developing-country policy makers on optimal patterns of – and governmental spending on – electrification across rural regions.

David TompkinsDavid Tompkins, Associate Professor of History

Title: The Construction and Reception of Friends and Enemies during the Cold War: Images of Israel, China, and Yugoslavia in the Soviet Bloc

Funder: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Award date: 8/6/15   
Award amount: $45,725
Project period: 12/1/15-12/31/16

This 13-month research fellowship supports David’s work on his new book that investigates changes in the ways that Soviet bloc countries understood Israel, China, and Yugoslavia during the Cold War; and analyzes how those changes challenged communist self-understanding.

Title: The Construction and Reception of Friends and Enemies in the Soviet Bloc: Images of Israel, China, and Yugoslavia

Funder: DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Dienst, German Academic Exchange Service)

Award date: 8/19/15   
Award amount: $7,200
Project period: 2/1/16-4/30/16

A 3-month faculty research stay in Germany supports David’s investigation of changes in the ways that Soviet bloc countries understood Israel, China, and Yugoslavia during the Cold War; and analysis of how those changes challenged communist self-understanding.

Cindy Blaha,Cindy Blaha Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Mutual Mentoring to Combat Isolation in Physics

Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Award date: 9/3/15  
Award amount: $2,000
Project period: 9/1/15-8/31/20

As many as 50 women physics faculty members will participate in the mutual mentoring alliances supported by this NSF ADVANCE grant. Operating under the auspices of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and directed by a team that also includes lead PI Beth Cunningham, and co-PIs Anne Cox (Eckerd College), Barbara Whitten (Colorado College), and Idalia Ramos (University of Puerto Rico at Humacao), the project will use a combination of face-to-face meetings and electronic connections to reduce the isolation of participating physicists and to support their career development.

Gao Hong, Gao Hong Senior Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments and Director of the Carleton Chinese Music Ensemble

Storytelling in Chinese Music from the Ancient Past to Modern Times

Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board

Award date: 11/4/15   
Award amount: $27,058 (two grants: $10,000 and $17,058)
Project period: 1/1/16-12/31/16

With two grants – an Artist Initiative Grant ($10,000, 1/1/16-12/31/16) and an Arts Tour Minnesota grant ($17,058, 6/1/16-5/31/17) – Chinese musician and educator Gao Hong will produce and perform Storytelling in Chinese Music from the Ancient Past to Modern Times, a multimedia comedy inspired by her immigrant experience. Seven Minnesota communities will enjoy her performance.

David MusicantDavid Musicant, Professor of Computer Science

Git for People Who Actually Want to Learn Git

Funder: Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (ACM-SIGCSE)

Award date: 1/2/16  
Award amount: $4,737
Project period: 1/1/16-12/31/16

This ACM-SIGCSE Special Projects Grant will fund student research on his project to enable students and teachers to better understand and use “Git,” a system used by developers to track and share code.

Cecelia Cornejo, Cecilia Cornejo Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies

Artist Initiative Grant: Media Arts. Pre-production on a new film

Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board

Award date: 1/6/16  
Award amount: $10,000
Project period: 3/1/16-2/28/17

This Artist Initiative Grant enables Professor Cornejo to complete pre-production on her new film. The project explores issues of displacement and belonging as experienced by the Latino community of Northfield, Minnesota. The finished work will combine elements of fiction with documentary techniques to present a nuanced vision of reality from a Latino perspective.

Rini KeagyRini Keagy, Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies

Artist Initiative Grant: Media Arts. Post-production of Ordinal

Funder: Minnesota State Arts Board

Award date: 1/6/16  
Award amount: $10,000
Project period: 3/1/16-2/28/17

Professor Keagy’s Artist Initiative Grant in media arts will enable her to complete post-production of Ordinal, a film about valley fever, a fungal disease that afflicts California’s Central Valley. Combining literature such as Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and ancient Assyrian myth, the film uses documentary, fictional, and animation techniques to explore biological and environmental forces affecting humans and Earth. Screenings will take place in Northfield and the Twin Cities.

Asuka Sango, Asuka Sango Associate Professor of Religion

Debate in the Buddhist Monasteries of Medieval Japan

Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)

Award date: 2/3/16 
Award amount: $50,400
Project period: 4/1/16-3/31/17

This Fellowship from the NEH will enable Professor Sango to complete research and finish final preparations of 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.

Matt Whited, Matt Whited Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Cooperative Small-Molecule Activation by Ambiphilic Pincer-Type Complexes Featuring Metal/Main-Group Bonds

Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Award date: 2/10/16 
Award amount: $400,000
Project period: 6/1/16-5/31/21

A CAREER grant funds Professor Whited’s project, involving as many as 23 undergraduate researchers, that seeks to develop new approaches to difficult chemical transformations such as selective oxidation of hydrocarbons and reduction of carbon dioxide to chemical feedstocks, with the goal of extending these reactions to earth-abundant and sustainable metal catalysts.

Professor Whited’s research will have a broad social impact by continuing development and assessment of course-based undergraduate research experiences. He will also be expanding an outreach effort to bring Northfield and Faribault, Minnesota high-school students, including many who belong to groups that are underrepresented in post-secondary education, into Carleton chemistry laboratories.

Alex Knodell, Alex Knodell Assistant Professor of Classics and Co-Director of Archaeology

Title: The Mazi Archeological Project 2016: Investigations at Kato Kastanava, Northwest Attica

Funder: Institute for Agean Prehistory

Award date: 2/12/16 
Award amount: $5,000
Project period: 6/13/16-7/15/16

Title: The Mazi Archeological Project 2016: New Settlement Investigations on the Borders of Attica

Funder: Harvard University Loeb Classical Library Foundation

Award date: 3/9/16 
Award amount: $9,132
Project period: 7/1/16-6/30/17

These two grants in support of the Mazi Archeological Project, of which Professor Knodell co-directs with colleagues from Switzerland and Greece, support mapping, geophysical survey, and aerial thermography at newly discovered and previously known prehistoric, Classical, and Byzantine-period sites in northwest Attica, Greece. Located in the Kithairon mountain range and on the borders of the historical polities of Athens and Thebes, the Mazi Plain was a critical crossroads between the regions of Attica and Boeotia, as well as central and southern Greece. This funding furthers two previous years’ field work; four Carleton students joined the team last year and three to four will participate in summer 2016. For more information, see the Mazi Archaeological Project page.  

Rini Keagy, Rini Keagy Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies

Ordinal

Funder: Jerome Foundation

Award date: 3/4/16 
Award amount: $20,000
Project period: 4/1/16-3/1/17

This Minnesota Film and Video grant supports the production of Ordinal, an experimental documentary that investigates valley fever, a fungal disease that afflicts California’s Central Valley, and that explores biological and environmental forces affecting humans and Earth.   

Yansi Perez, Yansi Perez Associate Professor of Spanish

Los Angeles: A Cartography of Material Memory of the Central America Diaspora

Funder: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)

Award date: 3/8/16 
Award amount: $82,000
Project period: 9/1/16-6/15/17

A Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship supports Professor Perez’s residency at California State University in the Department of Central American Studies. During 2016-2017 she will research culture and memory among populations from Central America’s Isthmus who were displaced post wars and revolutions, and reconceptualize the problems of memory, mourning, and trauma.  

Paul Petzschmann, Paul Petzschmann Lecturer and Research Associate in European Studies

Student Exchanges Between the United States and Nazi Germany 1933-1941

Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)

Award date: 323/16 
Award amount: $6,000
Project period: 7/1/16-8/31/16

A Summer Stipend from the NEH supports Professor Petzschmann’s research in summer of 2016 on student exchanges and transatlantic networks during an isolationist period between the U.S. and Nazi Germany. Hs project will contribute to several pieces of scholarly work on the U.S.-German relations, including a journal article, a book chapter, and sections of his book on German-American intellectual migration between 1930 and 1950.  

Rob Thompson, Rob Thompson Assistant Professor of Mathematics

Preparation for Industrial Careers in Mathematical Sciences” (PIC Math)

Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)

Award date: 4/30/16 
Award amount: $6,500
Project period: 4/30/16-8/31/17

As part of the PIC Math program, Rob will mentor a group of Carleton students as they tackle industrial mathematics research problems proposed by business, industrial, and government partners. Past participants in the program have worked on problems for Los Alamos National Lab, Intel Corporation, RAND Corporation, and many others. Students will present problem solutions directly to company liaisons and publicly at the national “Mathfest” conference in Summer 2017. PIC Math is a program administered by the Mathematical Association of America and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, with support from the NSF (DMS-1345499).  

Laura Chihara, Laura Chihara Professor of Mathematics and Statistics

Making Decisions with Data: Planning for collaborative courses in data science

Funder: Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM)

Award date: 5/12/16 
Award amount: $5,900
Project period: 6/1/16-8/31/17

Extending work started in 2014, this Faculty Career Enhancement grant (FaCE) supports Professor Chihara along with Shonda Kuiper from Grinnell College and Adam Loy from Lawrence University, to address the gap in data science education. The team will develop a suite of assignments and projects that will hone student’s abilities to work with messy “real world” data and problems.  

Susan Jaret McKinstry, Susan Jaret McKinstry Helen F. Lewis Professor of English

London & Florence: Arts in Context

Funder: Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM)

Award date: 6/14/16 
Award amount: $42,113
Project period: 6/14/16-5/31/18

As Program Director for the London site of the Spring 2018 ACM’s off-campus study program in early 2018, Prof. Jaret McKinstry will teach a course and be available to program participants and faculty.

Michael Flynn,Michael Flynn William H. Laird Professor of Linguistics and the Liberal Arts and Chair of Linguistics, and Jeff Ondich, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science

Fostering Dakota Language Restoration through Workshops: First Steps to Partnering by the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, the Dakotah Language Institute, and Carleton College

Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)Jeff Ondich

Award date: 6/23/16 
Award amount: $18,934
Project period: 7/1/16-12/31/17

This grant within the NSF Documenting Endangered Languages program supports a Carleton team – Flynn, Ondich, Associate Professor Catherine Fortin, and Assistant Professor Cherlon Ussery – to work in close partnership with a team of Dakota educators to advance the formal description of the endangered Dakota language, and to begin planning to produce comprehensive courses and accessible electronic resources about Dakota language and culture.

The project’s centerpieces are a workshop, to be held at Carleton in late summer 2016, at which Carleton faculty and students will begin collaborative work with Sisseton-Wahpeton educators and Dakota speakers on the Dakota language, and a follow-up visit by Carleton faculty and students to the Oyate in eastern South Dakota in December 2016.