Faculty Recognition & Funding Opportunities – December 2018
The Grants Office is pleased to renew its Faculty Recognition and Funding Opportunities bulletin! While the form and content of this bulletin may change throughout the coming months, recognition of faculty grants and accomplishments will remain central. We are pleased and fortunate to acknowledge here several faculty grants and accomplishments of the past year (note that this is not a comprehensive list). If an announcement you expected to see was not included this time, please forgive the oversight and complete the Faculty Recognition GoogleForm to be added to a future bulletin. Of course, do the same if you have something new to share!
Congratulations all, and warm regards for the season.RECOGNITION
Chris Bjork, Professor of Education; Jan Cameron, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics; Teresa Garrett, Professor of Chemistry and Associate Dean of the Faculty; and Jodi Schwarz, Associate Professor of Biology (Project Director) were awarded a major grant by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute through the Inclusive Excellence program to transform the College’s STEM curriculum with the aim of attracting and retaining more students who are traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. This award was the culmination of the efforts of many from across campus over the past several years that contributed to pre-proposals and the ideas that will be funded over the next five years. Vassar will use the funds to train faculty and develop a science curriculum that will enable “clusters” of students and faculty to engage in the comprehensive study of “Grand Challenges,” such as climate change and public health issues that have a global impact. The clusters will be structured in ways that make the study of science more inclusive. Vassar was one of only 33 colleges and universities selected this year for the Inclusive Excellence grants from HHMI.
Mita Choudhury, Professor of History, is author of the 2018 Millstone Prize-winning paper, “Performativity and Faith: Rethinking Judith Butler and the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard”. Awarded annually since 1998 by the Western Society for French History, the Millstone Prize is named for Amy Millstone, a distinguished professor of French literature and key player in the advancement of the Society and her field until her untimely death in 1997. The Millstone Prize recognizes interdisciplinary papers that best illustrate how research, methods, or insights drawn from fields other than History can enrich, challenge, or expand the understanding of the French past. Professor Choudhury’s prize was announced at the 46th Annual Conference of the Western Society for French History, held this year in Portland, Maine.
David Esteban, Associate Professor of Biology, and Ming Wen-An, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, along with collaborators at Lehigh Valley Health Network received a grant from the Lehigh Valley Health Network Research Support Fund for "Characterization of the Gut Microbiome in Patients with Cancer Cachexia." Cachexia, also known as wasting syndrome, is an important problem in cancer progression, but the underlying causes are unknown and more effective treatments are necessary. In this study they will characterize the gut microbiomes of patients with pancreatic or colorectal cancer, both of which frequently present with cachexia.
Maria Höhn, Professor of History on the Marion Musser Lloyd '32 Chair, and her collaborators at Bard, Bennington, and Sarah Lawrence colleges received a major grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Vassar-founded Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education (CFMDE) to pursue a set of pioneering engaged learning initiatives, conferences, lecture series, teaching labs and more. At the core of this ambitious effort lies the development of an innovative shared curriculum in Forced Migration across the five campuses of Vassar, Bard Annandale, Bard Berlin, Bennington, and Sarah Lawrence. This four-year grant will allow the Consortium to draw on the liberal arts for a comprehensive understanding of and engagement with forced migration, one of the great political and ethical issues of the day and for generations to come. John Bradley, Matthew Brill-Carlat '19, Anish Kanoria '18, and Alisa Swire '84 provided valuable insight and crucial assistance throughout the proposal development process.
Adam Lowrance, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Mathematical Sciences and Statistics for his project, Topological Characterizations of Generalized Alternating Knots. The thrust of this research project lies in low-dimensional topology and knot theory. Topology is the study of mathematical spaces up to elastic stretching, and knot theory is the study of how loops can be embedded into topological spaces. Knot theory and low-dimensional topology address important problems in physics, chemistry, and biology. This project also has an educational focus: Several of the proposed research projects are intended for collaboration with undergraduate students, and aims to make knot theory accessible to a broad audience via mentoring and outreach programs involving audiences that are not typically exposed to research mathematics.
Taneisha Means, Assistant Professor of Political Science, received a grant from the National Science Foundation and its Law & Social Sciences Program for her research project titled Political Representation in State Courts. In this project, Professor Means employs a mixed-methods approach that includes surveys and interviews of sitting black state trial court judges from across the country in order to understand their backgrounds, group identities, role orientations, and behavior. Some social science theories provide that judges’ backgrounds and identities, including their race and gender, are not important to explaining judicial behavior, while others hold that judicial behavior is influenced by ideology, age, parental status, race, gender, and other salient identities. Her project will test theories about the importance and effects of racial representation and assess whether background characteristics truly influence consciousness, role orientation, and decision-making on the bench.
Seungsook Moon, Professor of Sociology, and her team of seven scholars were selected for a major collaborative research award from The Academy of Korean Studies for their five-year research project, “Local Agency and National Responses to Globalization: The South Korean Case in Comparative, Transnational and Diasporic Perspective”. Consisting of scholars from the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University, Monash University, University of Technology Sydney, University of Mary Washington, and California State University-Los Angeles, Professor Moon’s team will be collaborating through July 2023 to meet the goals of the project, which represents one of only two proposals selected worldwide for the Academy's support through its 2018 Laboratory Program for Korean Studies Research Grants.
Laura Newman, Associate Professor of Art, is a featured artist in the exhibition Paintings & Works on Paper at Victoria Munroe Fine Art in New York City, through January 12, 2019. Professor Newman has several works, including a large painting, on display, alongside works by Pat Adams, Elizabeth Dworkin, Jacqueline Gourevitch, and Stephen Greene. Her paintings will also be on exhibit at Art Miami, part of Art Basel, with Waterhouse & Dodd, London.
Ronald Patkus, Associate Director of the Libraries for Special Collections and Adjunct Professor of History, is author of The Privately Printed Bible: Private and Fine Press Editions of Biblical Texts in the British Isles and North America, 1892-2000, published by Oak Knoll Press. The Privately Printed Bible is the first broad survey of the history of private and fine press printings of biblical texts, exploring English-language examples from the United Kingdom, Ireland and North America from the late 19th-century English revival of printing into the 20th century. Key texts, such as the Doves Bible, the Oxford Lectern Bible, the Golden Cockerel Four Gospels, the Spiral Press Ecclesiastes, the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible and the Arion Press Bible are discussed alongside lesser-known, but no less interesting, exemplars of private biblical publications.
Peipei Qiu, Professor and Chair of Chinese and Japanese, is author of Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves, published in a Chinese edition by Hong Kong University Press. The English edition was first published by University of British Columbia Press in 2013, and a paperback edition followed from Oxford University Press and Hong Kong University Press (2014). Chinese Comfort Women has been well received, with Choice describing it as a “well-researched, well-structured book...indispensable for teaching modern East Asian history and politics and for rethinking organized violence”, while Publishers Weekly notes that “This vital work, combining exemplary scholarship and humanitarian activism, should prove valuable to a wide audience and indispensable to specialists.” At the request of Hong Kong University Press, Professor Qiu completed the Chinese translation (titled Riben diguo de xingnulu: Zhongguo weianfu de zhengyan) with the assistance of Youli Zhou, Class of 2015.
Christopher Raymond, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, had his paper “Shame and Virtue in Aristotle” (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 53) selected by The Philosopher’s Annual as “one of the ten best articles published in philosophy” in 2017. The paper elucidates and ultimately challenges Aristotle’s claim that a sense of shame is not a moral virtue, like courage or generosity. Aristotle’s position marks a major shift in ancient Greek thinking about shame; but it is undercut, Raymond argues, by the philosopher’s own views on the importance of honor and reputation in human lives.
Cindy Schwarz, Professor of Physics, is the author of A Tour of the Subatomic Zoo: A guide to particle physics, published by Morgan & Claypool’s IOP Publishing. Now in its third edition, the volume recently surpassed the publisher’s prior top seller, which held that honor since 2014. Described as “a brief and ambitious expedition into the remarkably simple ingredients of all the wonders of nature,” A Tour of the Subatomic Zoo has consistently been near the top in print sales, as well as for domestic and international downloads and views on the IOP Books Digital Library.
Featured Funding Opportunities
Humanities Unbounded Visiting Faculty Fellows Applications Now Being Accepted for 2019-20
Since 2011, Duke University has hosted 27 faculty from HBCUs and Liberal Arts Colleges for year‐long fellowships under Humanities Writ Large. The Fellowships have underscored the role of the humanities as an engine for knowledge production. Under Humanities Unbounded, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Duke is offering additional Visiting Faculty Fellowships in a two‐year model. The first year will again be a residential fellowship that is tied to an on‐going humanities lab (whether a Humanities Unbounded departmental lab or an interdisciplinary humanities lab based at the Franklin Humanities Institute) or other Duke department, program, institute, initiative, or center. The residential experience will be followed by a second year in which Fellows may draw on resources from a consultancy fund to bring newfound research approaches to their home institution and, where appropriate, continue their collaborations with Duke partners.
Resources While at Duke: Humanities Unbounded includes significant staff support and other resources for our Visiting Faculty Fellows. This includes access to all holdings of Duke University Libraries and the assistance of our subject area librarians; the support of our team of digital humanities technology consultants and PhD students trained in digital resources; a hosted talk at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute; office space; and a collegial community of scholars and teachers eager to engage with new colleagues.
Financial Details: The Fellowship covers salary (up to $100,000) and fringe benefits, paid to the home institution, $5,000 in research funds for use on the Fellow’s project, $2,500 to spend in partnership with the Duke partner on a project of their mutual choosing, and $1,500 for travel of other staff from the home institution to visit Duke for consultation on how the work at Duke can be adapted back into the life of the home institution. In addition, Fellows will be brought to campus during spring semester before their Fellowship for a visit to meet with Duke partners and consider housing options. (Duke does not provide housing.) In the second year, each Fellow will have access to $10,000 to be used as needed for post-residency support.
The grant also includes funding for Duke to host all Fellows from both Humanities Unbounded and Humanities Writ Large Fellows at two conferences, slated for Spring 2021 and Spring 2023. We anticipate accepting four Fellows each for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years, and three Fellows in 2021-22.
Applications Are Now Being Accepted: Interested faculty should contact Humanities Unbounded via laura.eastwood@duke.edu to begin a conversation about connecting with the Duke scholarly community. Applications will be due January 7, 2019 for the 2019-20 academic year. Selected Fellows will be notified in February 2019. Faculty may also begin looking for potential Duke partners by searching keywords for their research area at Scholars@Duke.
Maurer School of Law inaugural Law & Society Scholar-in-Residence Program
Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law and its Center for Law, Society & Culture seek applicants who are pursuing outstanding, innovative research to serve as the inaugural Law & Society Scholar-in-Residence for fall 2019 or spring 2020. Tenured or pre-tenured professors who will be on sabbatical or research leave during the 2019-20 academic year are invited to apply, with preference given to scholars in the humanities or social sciences with full-time appointments at liberal arts colleges or universities. The Scholar-in-Residence will be expected to present a public lecture to the Law School community.
The Scholar-in-Residence will receive an office at the Law School at Indiana University’s flagship campus in Bloomington; semester-long affiliation with the Center for Law, Society & Culture; an $8,000 honorarium, and more. Applicants should submit a letter of application, a curriculum vitae, a brief description (no more than two pages) of the research project you plan to pursue during your sabbatical or research leave, and a list of three references to Prof. Victor D. Quintanilla, CLSC Co-Director, at lawsirp@indiana.edu. Applications are due by December 15, 2018, whether the three-month visit would take place in the fall 2019 or spring 2020 semester. More details are available here: https://www.law.indiana.edu/academics/research/centers/law-society-and-culture/scholar-in-residence.shtml
National Science Foundation (NSF) Science, Technology and Society (STS)
The Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program supports research that uses historical, philosophical, and social scientific methods to investigate the intellectual, material, and social facets of the scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical (STEM) disciplines. It encompasses a broad spectrum of STS topics including interdisciplinary studies of ethics, equity, governance, and policy issues that are closely related to STEM disciplines, including medical science.
STS is an interdisciplinary field that investigates topics relating to the scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical (STEM) disciplines, including medical science. STS research uses historical, philosophical, and social scientific methods to investigate STEM theory and practice with regards to history and socio-cultural formation, philosophical underpinnings, and impacts of science and technology on quality of life, culture, and society. STS researchers strive to understand how STEM fields contribute to the development and use of systems of knowledge, the production and use of materials and devices, the co-evolution of socio-technical systems and their governance, and the place of science and technology in the modern world.
STS researchers make use of methods from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, communication studies, history, philosophy, political science, and sociology. STS research includes interdisciplinary studies of ethics, equity, governance, and policy issues. STS studies may be empirical or conceptual. The STS program supports proposals across the broad spectrum of STS research areas, topics, and approaches. Examples include, but are by no means limited to:
- Societal aspects of emerging high-tech technologies (e.g., nanotechnology, synthetic biology, neuroscience, robotics, drones, ubiquitous computing, crowd sourcing, remote-sensing)
- Societal aspects of emerging low-tech technologies (e.g., paper microscopes; whirlwind wheel chairs)
- Issues relating to equity, ethics, governance, sustainability, public engagement, user-centeredness, and inclusiveness.
- Integration of traditional STS approaches with innovative perspectives from the arts or humanities.
- Ethical, policy, and cultural issues regarding big data, surveillance and privacy in an increasingly networked world, and
- The science of broadening participation in STEM disciplines.
Applications are due February 4, 2019. Complete guidelines are available here: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2015/nsf15506/nsf15506.htm
Visit the Grants Office website for links to funding sources for all disciplines!
If you have general questions about funding for research and scholarship, including administration of an active award? Contact grants@vassar.edu
Or reach out to us at any time:
Lori Buckey (5490, lbuckey), Grants Office Specialist
Katherine Hite (7661, kahite), Professor of Political Science & Faculty Director of Research Development
Gary Hohenberger ‘97 (7092, gahohenberger), Associate Vice President, Corporate, Foundation & Government Relations
Tonya Pinkerton (5893, tpinkerton), Director, Grants Accounting
Amanda Thornton (5309, amthornton), Director, Grants Administration
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