Grants – Page 4

Wesleyan professors Lisa Dierker and Jennifer Rose were recently awarded a $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to extend and disseminate their research on passion-driven statistics. The grant begins in the fall of 2018 and extends through 2023. Recognizing the rapidly increasing importance of data-oriented skills in the modern workforce, passion-driven statistics was developed as a novel approach to make statistics and quantitative methods courses more accessible and engaging, particularly for traditionally marginalized students. It moves away from canned exercises, toward more applied, real-world, project-based learning experiences. ”An empowering curriculum needs to rise to many challenges,” Dierker…

Mike Robinson, assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience and behavior, and integrative sciences, is the recipient of a $100,000 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The grant will be awarded over two years, starting on July 1, and will support a study titled "Dissecting Cortical Contributions to Risky Decision-Making." Robinson and his research students will use optogenetics in rats to inhibit parts of the brain's prefrontal cortex during the decision-making process. "The aim would be to see how we make decisions when faced with risk," Robinson explained. "Are certain areas of the prefrontal cortex involved in tracking the outcomes of previous choices…

For 30 years, musicians such as Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Alice Gerrard, Tom Paley, and Hedy West performed at a small café in upstate New York. The business's owner, Phil Ciganer, recorded the multiple musical acts on reel-to-reel tape and cassettes, and in 2004, he donated thousands of hours of material to Wesleyan's World Music Archives in hopes of the University making them available for education and research. For more than a decade, WMA was able to release small segments of the collection, but now, thanks to a $48,573 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), more than…

Two Wesleyan faculty were honored for their artistic excellence by the 2018 Artist Fellowship Program. Nicole Stanton, associate professor of dance, African American studies, and environmental studies, and Noah Baerman, director of the Wesleyan Jazz Ensemble, each received a $3,000 grant in the program's Performing Arts category. The Artist Fellowship Program recognizes individual Connecticut artists in a variety of disciplines and allows these artists the opportunity to pursue new works of art and to achieve specific creative and career goals. The program is highly competitive: for the 2018 round, more than 235 applications were received and reviewed by 48 professional panelists…

Wesleyan's Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) has been awarded a two-year, $200,000 grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Introduced as a pilot initiative in 2011, the ICPP is the first institute of its kind, a center for the academic study of the presentation and contextualization of contemporary performance. The low-residency program offers students a master's degree in innovative and relevant curatorial approaches to developing and presenting time-based art. The grant will be used to support performing artist case studies, working with artists at critical points in their careers to provide analysis of their entrepreneurial strategies, as well…

Isabella Banks ’15 was awarded a 2018–19 Fulbright Study/Research Grant for the master's program in International Crimes, Conflict, and Criminology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Combining perspectives and methodologies from the fields of criminology, law, psychology, sociology, and political science, the program also draws on resources available through its location near The Hague—home to the UN’s International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. “I hope to focus my research on transitional justice, which applies restorative principles to systematic, conflict-related human rights violations,” says Banks, who majored in the College of Social Studies with a certificate in international relations while at Wesleyan. Her…

Wesleyan's Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) received a two-year, $150,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. The award will support a new leadership fellowship program; three curatorial mini-intensives for prospective students; and two global curatorial forums designed to bring an international perspective to the discussion and dissemination of best practices and forge a global network of performing arts curators. This funding will further ICPP's efforts to advance diversity among participants and to amplify the graduate program's impact on the field of performance. "The Ford Foundation funding allows ICPP to support diverse perspectives in the field of performance curation, both…

This semester, Wesleyan's Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, which assists students from underrepresented groups in preparing for, entering and progressing successfully through post-graduate education, received a five-year renewal grant from the U.S Department of Education. Wesleyan's program will receive $232,265 annually, for a total award of $1,161,325. The federal money is supplemented with an additional $50,000 per year from the President. Since 2007, the program has supported 135 students all of whom were first-generation college and low-income and/or from groups underrepresented in graduate school. The program provides research opportunities and funding, mentoring, graduate school admissions assistance and academic support…

On Nov. 28, Wesleyan's Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship received a $10,000 grant from the Newman's Own Foundation to support student internships. "The gift from the Newman Foundation will be used to offer stipends to students doing social impact and entrepreneurship work during the summer," explained Makaela Kingsley '98, director of the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship. "We are grateful for the support of Newman’s Own and our other donors who make this work possible." Trustee Emeritus Bob Patricelli '61 P'88 P'90 is a board member for Newman's Own and has generously encouraged the foundation to support Patricelli Center programs over…

The availability of sufficient dissolved oxygen in seawater is critical for marine life, and places where oxygen falls below a critical concentration — or "dead zones" — are often associated with mass die-offs of fish, shrimp and other creatures. With future global warming, the oceans are on course to see progressively less dissolved oxygen available. Scientists currently use often not well-tested computer models to predict the expansion of dead zones, but a team of researchers from Wesleyan, University California Riverside and Syracuse University are hoping to use oceanic sediment samples to better predict where die-offs may occur next. Their study,…

On Aug. 2, Stephen Angle, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, professor of philosophy, together with colleagues at Notre Dame and Fordham, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support a two-week NEH Summer Institute for college and university faculty focusing on the idea of teaching "Philosophy as a Way of Life." Twenty-five faculty from around the country will be invited. The award—worth $137,045—is part of the NEH's recent $39.3 million in grants for 245 humanities projects across the country. The "Reviving Philosophy as a Way of Life: A NEH Summer Institute for…

Michelle Personick, assistant professor of chemistry, received a two-year doctoral new investigator grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF) to synthesize and test new metal nanomaterials designed to make industrial chemical processes more energy efficient. Her study, titled “Tailored Bimetallic Catalysts with Highly Stepped Facets for Selective and Energy-Efficient Epoxidation and Hydrogenation Reactions," will be supported for two years with a $110,000 award. "Global energy consumption is steadily increasing, and the chemical industry is the second largest consumer of delivered energy," Personick said. "The chemical industry is unique in that it uses energy resources, such as petroleum…

Dierker, Rose Win $2.8M NSF Award for Innovative Approach to Teaching Statistics

Robinson Lab Awarded Grant from National Institute on Drug Abuse

Grant Supports 240 Hours of Folk Song Digitization for the World Music Archives

Baerman, Stanton Receive Artist Fellowship Awards

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Supports ICPP’s Performing Artist Case Studies

Banks ’15 Receives Fulbright to Study International Crimes, Conflict, Criminology

Ford Foundation Supports Wesleyan’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance

McNair Program Receives Refunding, Will Continue to Support Underrepresented Students

Newman’s Own Foundation Awards Grant to Support Internships

Thomas Awarded NSF Grant for Paleoceanographic Research

Angle Awarded NEH Grant to Fund Innovative Philosophy Teaching Institute

Personick Awarded Grant from American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund