Clifford Clark, professor of history and the M.A. and A.D. Hulings Professor of American Studies, participated in the November National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) planning session at the Landmark Center in Saint Paul to prepare an NEH grant titled “Uncle Sam Lived Here.”

Paula Arai, assistant professor of religion, received an assistance grant from the American Academy of Religion Research. Arai plans to use the grant to further her book, “Healing Buddhist Women.”

Stephen Mohring, assistant professor of art, has a piece at the Soo Visual Arts Center annual juried show in Minneapolis, a solo show at the Kleinpell Gallery in the River Falls (Wis.) public library and a two-person show in the HFA gallery at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Mohring just received a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant given to individual artists to support future work. This grant will help support a large-scale installation at the Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, Minn., during the summer of 2005.

Carleton has received an $800,000 grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to create the Carleton Interdisciplinary Science and Math Initiative. This grant will also be used to help fund student summer research in mathematics and the sciences, as well as faculty development workshops and laboratory development. A cooperative relationship among Carleton, St. Olaf and Hope colleges is an innovative component of each school’s proposal. This year, HHMI funded 42 proposals out of 170 received. Since 1988, Carleton has received $4 million from HHMI.

Sigrun Leonhard, professor of German, received a Mellon New Directions Grant that she will use this spring term to finish a book of poetry and a novel that she is presently rewriting in German. Leonhard also was awarded a writer’s residency at Yaddo, N.Y., designed to help writers and artists work in seclusion without any outside requirements. She gave a talk to the staff at the Hamm Clinic in St. Paul titled “At Your Own Risk: Crossing Cultural Borders in Difficult Times.” Leonhard also published an article in the February 27 issue of German Studies Review titled “Rosalind Polkowskis Sehnsucht nach der großen Tat: Monika Marons Roman Stille Zeile Sechs.”

Gao Hong, instructor in Chinese musical instruments, has been awarded a 2004 Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. The grant is is a pilot program to support and assist artists at various stages in their careers. It encourages artistic development, nurtures artistic creativity, and recognizes the contributions individual artists make to the creative environment of the state of Minnesota.

Baird Jarman, instructor in art history has been awarded a $1,000 American studies course development grant for his new course, “Object lessons: Material Culture and American History,” to be taught in the fall of 2004.

Kathleen Galotti, professor of psychology and cognitive studies, served on the winter Cognition and Perception Grant Review Study Section for the National Institutes of Health.

Julie Wahlstrand ’04 received a Sigma Xi Grant In Aid of Research award for her proposal titled “Effects of bisphenol A on chromatin remodeling of the interferon-gamma promoter.” Wahlstrand is a biology major working in the research lab of Debby Walser-Kuntz, assistant professor of biology.

Gao Hong, performance activities coordinator in music and adjunct instructor in Chinese musical instruments, was featured in a January 11 story in the Los Angeles Times titled “Natural Soundscapes.” “I’ve played with a jazz group or with Indian sitar or [Japanese] shakuhachi, sometimes even with an early music group,” she said in the story. “I’ve tried everything, because I want people to get to know the pipa [Chinese lute]. You have to be open to other audiences.”