Grants Received 2009-10

Faculty Grant Awards Received

National Science Foundation RAPID (Grants for Rapid Response Research). $53,661. (Ben Edwards, Earth Science) “Constraints on fragmentation and lava-ice contact from ongoing 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, south central Iceland” Starting 20 March and continuing to the present, Eyjafjallajökull central volcano has experienced two different types of eruptions: initial strombolian and hawaiian eruptions of alkaline basalt from the northeastern flank (Fimmvörthuháls), producing lava-snow interactions, and starting 14 April, after a short temporal hiatus, the eruption was renewed beneath the summit caldera of the volcano (Eyjafjallajökull summit). The summit eruption has been much more explosive, and preliminary analyses show that the magma is more silicic in composition. Several important aspects of the eruption will be investigated during the next 12 months that will result in better knowledge and methodologies for interpreting ancient glaciovolcanic deposits, and also better prepare society for future glaciovolcanic eruptions from Iceland or from western North America.

Cumberland Valley Visitors Bureau, Tourism Grant Program. $8,000. Matt Pinsker, House Divided Project/History Department; Cumberland County Historical Society. The House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Cumberland County Historical Society will work together to build a dynamic website featuring dramatic stories from the era that will enhance a series of walking and driving tours developed around Civil War era themes. These combined resources will together enable a wide variety of visitors (teachers & students, families, heritage tour groups, etc.) to consider extending their stay in the Cumberland Valley and to better appreciate the role of the region in both the coming of the Civil War and during the conflict.

International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Psychology Summer Institute. $2000. (Megan Yost, Psychology). Funding will support Yost’s attendance at a week-long summer research institute to be held at the University of Michigan. The goal of the Institute is to "provide a unique venue for an intensive exchange of ideas among senior, junior and graduate student scholars located across LGBT psychology." Institute participants will attend seminars and colloquia led by the senior scholars in attendance, and will discuss their own related research projects or works-in-progress via poster presentations throughout the week. Also, faculty attendees will have the opportunity to lead a roundtable on research or pedagogy related to LGBT psychology.

National Endowment for the Humanities―Summer Institute for College and University Teachers. $3,900. (Christopher Bilodeau, History) “Ritual and Ceremony from Late-Medieval Europe to Early America” This five-week institute will be directed by Claire Sponsler, Professor of English at the University of Iowa, and hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library. This institute offers a comparative study of ritual and ceremony across related cultures from 1300 to 1700. It builds on anthropological theories of the ubiquitous role of ritual and ceremony and the impact of that work in performance studies. Testing assumptions about influence and exchange among national traditions and local contexts, it seeks a new understanding of the processes and effects of cultural hybridity and assimilation. Prof. Bilodeau’s attendance at this institute will allow him to acquire epistemological strategies to uncover and analyze indigenous understandings of European colonial activity through the issues raised by this ideational-functional split.

Elizabeth Lee (Art & Art History) has been awarded four grants for her project entitled, "Therapeutic Culture: Health and Medicine in Turn-of-the-Century American Art." This project examines the relationship between health, disease and illness in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American art. The awards will allow Lee to further her research these issues as they pertain to two specific chapters of her book: one on tuberculosis, which analyzes works by Abbott Thayer and John Singer Sargent, and a second which focuses on Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the Cornish artists’ colony. The grants include:

One month residency at The Huntington Library; $2,500
A grant from The College of Physicians of Philadelphia; $1,600
A one month residency : $1700 stipend plus travel and accommodation to The Wolfsonian Library at Florida International University
A $10,000, 3 month Smithsonian Institution Senior Fellowship/residency in Washington, DC

Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, $4,100. (Davis Tracy, WDCV FM.) The funds requested will be used to support the production of WDCV radio broadcasts which will illuminate/publicize the offerings of Arts events both on the Dickinson College campus and in the geographic area, and build relations between the College and Carlisle Community through promotion of Arts events in the town.

Japan Foundation – Japanese Studies Fellowship Program. $54,000. (Alex Bates, East Asian Studies) “The Culture of the Quake: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Taisho Japan.” This funding will support the completion of research and writing of a manuscript. This book will be a definitive look at the various ways writers, photographers and filmmakers depicted the earthquake in the immediate aftermath, with special attention to issues of class, high and low culture, and ethnic identity revolving around the Korean Massacre. The earthquake was a defining moment for many who lived through it and for the nation as a whole. Recent scholarship has shed more light on the earthquake itself and the subsequent events on the political side. The study builds on and extends this research into the cultural realm. Though the book takes the earthquake as a focal point, it is not limited to the portrayal of the disaster alone. Rather, it is about how in these works we can see both continuities and the emergence of new ways of thinking about art and its proper place in a rapidly changing society.

Japan Foundation – Long-Term Fellowship Program. $42,000. (Shawn Bender, East Asian Studies) “Techno-Utopian Imaginaries Meet Lived Realities: Robotics and the Management of Japan’s Aging Society.” This project will investigate the intersection between the discourses about the emergent role of robotics technologies in Japanese society and the complexities of their implementation in everyday life. The project will concentrate on three major areas of implementation: among elderly residents of nursing homes in Toyama prefecture, Ibaraki prefecture, and Tokyo; among rural farmers and patients in facilities who are using supplementary “robotic strengths” to facilitate work or physical therapy; and among planners of a future urban development project in Osaka, where a Center of Robotic Experiments (CORE) is at the heart of a massive new commercial and residential district.

Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) Fulbright Scholar In Residence (SIR) program. (David Commins, Ed Webb, MES; Andrea Lieber, JS; Neil Leary (CESE). Dickinson will engage a scholar from an Israeli University (Ben Gurion or Hebrew University) for a full academic year 2011. The Scholar will teach courses related to environment, sustainability, conflict, and development in the Middle East. This will deepen curriculum and connections between Middle East Studies, Judaic Studies, boost global dimensions of our Environmental Sustainability Initiative, and strengthen our study abroad programs through enhancing new partnerships with Israeli institutions.

Council for International Exchange of Scolars (CIES) Fulbright German Studies Seminar. Susan Rose, Community Studies Center.Funding will support Rose’s attendance at a two-week seminar that covers a wide range of topics about contemporary Germany. Portions of the program will take place in Berlin and other cities throughout Eastern Germany. Past seminar topics have included: Urban Planning in Germany; International Migration and National Identities; Challenges of Demographics; Muslim Minorities; Germany in a Changing Europe; Germany’s Future: New Parties – New Solutions. “The German Sozialstaat Re-Visited: A System in Turmoil” is the title of the 2010 German Studies seminar. The seminar will focus on how demographic developments in Germany are challenging its social security system, employment trends and political development.

American Library Association (ALA) - Carnegie-Whitney Fellowship. $3,951.(Christine Bombaro/LIS). The American Library Association will help fund the completion of Bombaro’s book project, “Finding History,“ a book-length guide to research methodology and information literacy application for undergraduate scholars of history. This guide will help new history students, particularly those intending to declare a history major, to perform historical inquiry efficiently and with the standard, scholarly finding tools used by professionals. “Finding History” includes practical, step-by-step instructions for discovering historical evidence using library catalogs, databases, and websites; and is illustrated with search samples and tables providing a wealth of scholarly starting points.

National Science Foundation/Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) – Request for Supplement to Award. $29,045. (David Jackson, Physics & Astronomy)“Integrating Photon Quantum Mechanics Experiments into the Undergraduate Physics Curriculum.” With this supplemental funding, a series of Lab-View computer interface programs will be designed and constructed to be used in conjunction with the experiments that have been implemented as part of the existing NSF-CCLI grant. The Principal Investigator will spend 2.5 months of his sabbatical developing and revising these Lab-View programs. Specifically, plans include: modifying a Lab-View interface for single-photon quantum mechanics experiments (to incorporate a piezo controller and automate single-photon interference experiments); developing a user-friendly Lab-View interface for a spatial filtering experiment; and developing a user-friendly Lab-View interface for radiation experiments.

Vernier Software & Technology. $2,000(Kenneth Laws, Physics) “Science and the Art of Dance workshop.” This funding will support a week-long summer workshop on the science of dance for teenage dancers and dance students, which will focus on education at the pre-college and college levels. Leading dance teachers, health professionals who interface with dancers, and scientists interested in understanding the mechanisms of human body movement will teach and lead discussions on the various topics to be presented during the workshop. The content of the Science and the Art of Dance workshop will be centered on physics-based ballet classes, as well as the broader application of science to dance. Most importantly, this workshop will expose young girls to science through the intersection of ballet and physics.

Association for Jewish Studies: Legacy Heritage Jewish Studies Project. $11,000. (Andrea Lieber, Judaic Studies). “Hazan Et HaKol: Jewish Perspectives on Food and Environmental Sustainability” attempts to build connections between initiatives currently underway both in the local Jewish community and on Dickinson’s campus. Harrisburg is home to an historic and vibrant Jewish community with five synagogues, a Jewish Home for the Aged, and a Jewish Community Day School. With its unusually rich program and superb faculty in Judaic studies, Dickinson has a great deal to offer the greater Harrisburg Jewish Community. We believe that this collaboration will inspire intellectual engagement and depth of learning for all participants and enhance the relationship between the College and the local Jewish community.

ASIANetwork-Luce Postdoctoral Fellow Program $31,000. (Melinda Schlitt, Art & Art History). This project seeks support for the residency of a Postdoctoral Fellow in Art & Art History for academic year 2020-2011. The Fellow will teach three courses in Asian Art during the academic year.

National Science Foundation. $157,153 (David Kushner, Biology)"Collaborative Research/RUI: Identification of cis-acting sequence and structural elements required for replication of a viral RNA." This grant provides funds for Professor Kushner to conduct a collaborative research project in conjunction with Professor Anne Simon of the University of Maryland. Identification and characterization of all structure-function relationships in non-coding sequences required for replication of an infectious RNA is a fundamental question in virology. However, many viral RNAs are simply too large in size to be used to generate such a functional map. The 356 nucleotide subviral RNA of Turnip crinkle virus known as satC is one of the smallest known infectious agents and therefore is highly suited for sequence-structure-function studies. Furthermore, satC sequence-structure-function relationships can be studied using a novel approach termed in vivo functional selection, in which an evolution-based approach allows for functional satC to be selected from an initial pool where specific regions of this viral RNA have been differentially randomized. This has allowed for detailed characterization of the 3´ portion of satC. This project aims to use in vivo functional selection to begin to characterize the 5´ portion of satC, specifically examining sequences and structures that regulate synthesis of progeny (+)-sense viral RNA from (-)-sense replication intermediates. A critical element of this project is that the experiments will be initiated during semester-long experiments in the PI’s RNA biology (Bio 419) courses in Spring 2010 and Spring 2012, in order to expand opportunities for student-faculty research.

National Science Foundation. $184,920. Ben Edwards (Geology). “Using the Products of Volcano-Ice Interaction to Constrain Paleo-ice Conditions II: documenting fluctuations in continental ice-sheets.” With this funding, we will conduct a field, geochemical, and geochronological study of 34 basaltic glaciovolcanic and subaerial deposits on the Kawdy-Tuya plateaus in northern British Columbia, Canada, to investigate the possibility of genetic linkages between volcanism and the fluctuations in the ice volume of the Pleistocene Cordilleran ice sheet (CIS). In the field we will sample and document the elevations of important stratigraphic components (pillow lava, passage zones, dykes, Surtseyan tephra, glacial deposits/striae) to constrain paleo-ice conditions. In the laboratory we will analyze bulk rock, glass and mineral compositions to determine whether or not source region, transport, or storage conditions also record changes in ice dynamics. The most crystalline samples from each deposit will be used for high precision 40/39 Ar geochronology to determine eruption ages and to test correlations between eruption frequency and ice fluctuations recorded by local glaciovolcanism and/or the global ice volume record from marine sediment climate proxies.

Institutional Grant Awards Received

Headwaters Resource Conservation and Development Charitable Trust – Sinnemahoning Watershed Restoration Grant Program. $2,750 subcontract to ALLARM on a grant to the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited. (Julie Vastine/ALLARM) “Training Volunteer Monitors to Protect Water Quality During Marcellus Gas Extraction.” This grant will establish a pilot program to train and equip volunteers from the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited to monitor water quality and collect data in areas potentially impacted by the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale in north central Pennsylvania. ALLARM will assist with this project by providing study design development assistance, training, and quality assurance/quality control in the form of contractual services to the PA Council of Trout Unlimited, which will be serving as the lead agency on the grant.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Natural Resources Conservation Service – Environmental Quality Improvement program (EQIP). $13,000. Jenn Halpin/Matt Steiman, College Farm). This program will provide up to $13,000 over a six year period to support the certification of transition to organic production at the farm.

Carlisle Area Health and Wellness Foundation (CAHWF). $1,800. Joyce Bylander, Diversity Office. CONNECT is designed to address these challenges by serving 20 at-risk, low-income middle school youth during a four-week summer program. CONNECT offers full-day programming that integrates health education and academic enrichment activities with cultural and recreational activities, opportunities for leadership, career exploration and community service. A $2000 mini-grant from CAHWF will strengthen the program’s focus on healthy teen lifestyles by building on our programming last year that focused on nutrition, active and healthy lifestyles, and the development of self-esteem which contributes to mental well-being and resiliency. Directed by Joyce Bylander at Dickinson College and first piloted with 15 youth in the summer of 2009, CONNECT is the result of a partnership between Dickinson College, the Carlisle Arts Learning Center, the YWCA, Carlisle Area School District and the United Way.

American Council of Learned Societies – Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Dickinson has been awarded as one of a handful of small liberal arts colleges to participate in this ACLS program. Funding will allow the College to host a Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in social sciences or humanities for two years. A Fellow (one of 55 awarded by ACLS) in American Studies has been selected by Dickinson for a term beginning in fall 2010.

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) – Growing Greener. $30,000 sub-award to ALLARM through Pocono Northeast Resource Conservation and Development Council. (Jinnie Woodward/ALLARM) “Consortium for Scientific Assistance to Watersheds (C-SAW VI).” This sub-award will enable ALLARM to provide technical assistance, mentoring, and quality control laboratory analyses for watershed organizations, and to work with other C-SAW partners to provide educational workshops on water quality topics ranging from natural gas to stormwater monitoring through the end of calendar year 2010.

The Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation. $500,000. This grant establishes a named scholarship endowment at Dickinson for worthy students from Central Pennsylvania.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Global Climate Change Education Program. $486,919. (Neal Leary, CESE) “Cooling the Liberal Arts Curriculum” The primary objective of the proposed project is to develop, demonstrate and evaluate a model for improving teach and learning about global climate change in the liberal arts curriculum at 4-year and 2 year colleges. Dickinson’s partners will be Montgomery Community College, Northampton Community College, Harrisburg Area Community College, Montgomery County Community College, and Columbia University.

9/2009 National Science Foundation, Partnerships for Innovations (PFI) program. $25,000 subcontract with Penn State Harrisburg. (Walt Chromiak, Academic Affairs). “Overcoming Cultural Chasms: Maximizing Innovations for Smaller University/Industry Partnerships.” Dickinson will collaborate with Penn State Harrisburg and F&M College in a project to help form new partnerships that will l advance innovative technologies as a result of breadth and depth of expertise, sharing of intellectual and physical resources, and rigorous internal and external evaluation procedures. The project will (1) gather and disseminate information about faculty research interests, (2) conduct collaborative conferences, (3) provide partnership training, (4) provide seed funding for collaborative projects, (5) provide comprehensive intellectual property infrastructure support.

American Council on Education (ACE) – Alfred P. Sloan Awards for Faculty Career Flexibility. $25,000. (Neil Weissman/Academic Affairs) ACE’s Alfred P. Sloan Awards for Faculty Career Flexibility competition was open to 287 baccalaureate arts and science institutions. Six institutions were chosen for $200,000 awards, and two received $25,000 awards in recognition of innovative practices in career flexibility. Dickinson will use our $25,000 award to enhance our Faculty Career Cycle Program to include support for faculty dealing with health and family issues.

The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, $10,000. (Leonard Brown, Jr., Dean of Students Office). This funding will support the College's Bonner Leader Program in 2009 – 2010 by providing funding for an orientation program, first-year service trip, second-year service exchange project, local summer service internships, a senior Bonner intern, and costs associated with travel.

Student Grant Awards Received

Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace, $10,000. (Anna Valiante, Class of 2010) “Pirambu Peace Project: Building skills and empowering the children of the Pirambu neighborhood in Fortaleza, Brazil, Summer 2010.” This is an eight week project aimed to empower adolescents from the Pirambu neighborhood of Fortaleza through photography and English language skills. Students will be recruited from two local high schools and will work with ACARTES, a local NGO that serves disadvantaged youth in the area.

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