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������Ƶ College National Science Foundation’s Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity Program Grant

������Ƶ College has been awarded a grant of $400,000 from the National Science Foundation's Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity program. This program helps smaller institutions build capacity to grow external partnerships and participate in the U.S. innovation economy. While the EPIIC program is focused on key technologies like AI, biotechnology, semiconductors, and novel materials, the work that this grant will fund will ultimately support research and teaching across the disciplines that connects ������Ƶ with external partners in industry, nonprofits, and the public sector. Entitled “CREATE: Creating Research Enterprises Adapted for the Teaching Environment,” the grant will address the following key objectives:

• Bringing the many offices and programs at ������Ƶ that interact with external partners together to provide a clear “front door” and develop a more collaborative, systemic approach to partner cultivation and stewardship.
• Through partnership with the Office of Communications and Marketing, helping our potential external partners within Iowa better understand the potential contributions of ������Ƶ’s faculty and students.
• Developing sustainable systems for supporting faculty conducting industry-engaged research (in the context of faculty workload).
• Improving our compliance with the various regulations connected to this type of work (especially regulations related to intellectual property and international students). 

The grant will be led by Jeff Blanchard, director of the Wilson Center for Innovation and Leadership and professor of mathematics; Monica Chavez-Silva, vice president of community engagement and strategic planning; Andi Tracy, associate dean for student life and associate professor of psychology and neuroscience; and Susan Ferrari, assistant vice president of corporate, foundation, and government relations while drawing on expertise from across the College, including but not limited to colleagues in communications, Development and Alumni Relations (DAR), and the Center for Careers Life and Service (CLS), as well as faculty who are already or who are interested in conducting industry-ready research. CREATE is a collaboration between ������Ƶ and three other institutions: St. Michael’s College in Vermont, Linfield University in Oregon; and National University in California. While each school will conduct its institutional project largely independently, the cohort will meet regularly as a community of practice to advance and evaluate our grants together.

CREATE is closely aligned with the College’s strategic plan, Knowledge Into Action, which seeks to establish ������Ƶ as a collaborative leader and emphasizes expanding local, regional, and statewide partnerships, as well as expanding ways for our students and faculty to put their research into practice in the broader world.

Clark Lindgren (Biology, Neuroscience) Receives Grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Clark Lindgren (biology, neuroscience) received a grant of $515,078 from the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for a project entitled “Investigating the role of pH in presynaptic homeostatic potentiation at the vertebrate neuromuscular junction.” This award was made by the NIH’s Academic Research Enhancement Award program, which supports research at institutions that provide undergraduate research training and receive less than $6 million annually in NIH funding. Lindgren’s project will investigate the process of communication between motor neurons and muscular cells — specifically, he and his students study a process called “synaptic homeostasis,” which synapses (the point of communication between neurons and other cells) use to maintain stability in response to physiological and pathological changes. 

Building on Lindgren’s 30+ years as an award-winning mentor of undergraduate researchers, his project will create a rich mentoring environment for his students. In addition to being mentored by Lindgren and by a professional research technician supported by the grant, the MAP students involved in this project will also be supported by a senior student (a previous MAP student of Lindgren’s who will receive an hourly wage during the summer to continue their research with him and support the younger research students). This creative approach will provide all of Lindgren’s students with a research experience that blends the benefits of an R1-style research lab with the close faculty mentoring of a liberal arts college.

Molly MacInnes (Chemistry) Receives Grant from the National Science Foundation’s Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Program

Molly MacInnes (chemistry) has received a two-year grant of $225,900 from the National Science Foundation's Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program. MacInnes’s project, entitled “Electrochemical characterization of ion adsorption at solid-liquid interfaces,” will examine the adsorption of dissolved metal ions on metal oxide and chemically modified surfaces. Specifically, she is interested in the adsorption of lanthanides and actinides, heavy metal elements that are increasingly used in clean and nuclear energy technologies. These elements have ecotoxic effects when released into the environment, and MacInnes’s project will improve our understanding of their fate in groundwater and surface water systems — as well as helping develop new materials to remove these elements from the environment.

The LEAPS-MPS program is intended to help early-career researchers develop as teacher-scholars. In addition to supporting the research described above (which will be conducted by MacInnes, six MAP students, and a postbaccalaureate scholar, all supported by the grant), MacInnes will also work with two colleagues (Vince Eckhart, Waldo S. Walker Chair in Biology, and Taylor Price, writing center instructor) to build on ������Ƶ’s Market Science program. Market Science is a public engagement program in which students present their research to the ������Ƶ community at the Thursday summer farmer’s markets. Through the grant, MacInnes, Eckhart, and Price will develop and implement a training program for summer students to build lay-audience science communication skills prior to their farmer's market experience.

Xinchan Lu (Economics) Awarded Workshop Grant from the Alliance for the Advancement of Liberal Arts Colleges

Xinchan Lu (economics) has been awarded a $20,000 workshop grant from the Alliance for the Advancement of Liberal Arts Colleges. The funds will allow Lu and her collaborators, Ryuichiro Izumi (Wesleyan University) and Burak Uras (Williams College), to host a workshop for faculty members at liberal arts colleges entitled “Monetary Economics in the Digital Era: Research and Pedagogy in Money, Banking, and Payments” in spring 2026. The workshop will bring liberal arts faculty members together to respond to the seismic impact of digitization on financial systems, which challenges long-held assumptions in fields central to modern finance. Together, they will advance collaborative research on monetary economics in the digital economy, share best practices for updating their pedagogical practices, and create a professional development and mentoring network for liberal arts scholar-teachers working in this area.

Jerod Weinman (Computer Science) National Science Foundation Grant

Jerod Weinman (computer science) has been awarded a grant of $299,762 from the National Science Foundation to host a National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) conference for four-year institutions (as well as a set of virtual roundtables preceding the conference). This conference will build on the NAIRR Pilot project, which aims to connect U.S. researchers and educators to computational, data, and training resources needed to advance AI research and research that employs AI (and is supported by a wide range of federal and non-federal partners). This grant is one of five conference grants that are being coordinated by the Computing Research Association, a partner on the project; the other grants support conferences for different institutional types. 

The key goals of this project are to facilitate increased instructional capacity and a community of practice among faculty at four-year institutions who will implement new AI courses or modules into undergraduate educational pathways, identify a shared understanding of best practices for inclusive AI education relevant to four-year institutions, improve confidence of instructors at 4-year institutions in utilizing NAIRR Pilot resources that are listed on nairrpilot.org, and develop plans for including AI content in courses at four-year institutions, with the use of NAIRR Pilot resources when computational resources are needed. Weinman's collaborators on this project include Ran Libeskind-Hadas, chair of the Department of Integrated Sciences at Claremont McKenna College; Lisa Meeden, professor of computer science at Swarthmore College; and Michael Wollowski, professor of computer science and software engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; as well as Tracy Camp, executive director and CEO of the Computing Research Association, and Mary Lou Maher, director of Research Community Initiatives at the CRA.

Tamara Beauboeuf (Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies) Franklin Research Grant 

Tamara Beauboeuf (gender, women's, and sexuality studies) has been awarded a Franklin Research Grant of $4,500 from the American Philosophical Society to support a book project regarding the family of Edith Renfrow Smith '37, including a cousin of her mother named Eva Pearl Green. Beauboeuf’s book, You may call me Eva P: Portraits of a willful Black matriline, 1837-1937, centers Black women's oral memory as an important and often overlooked source of historical insight as it argues for the importance of Black feminine willfulness in the stories maintained over the last two centuries in the Renfrow family. The book will explore the efforts that this family of women made to align their outer worlds with their inner beliefs, leading to achievements like Edith Renfrow Smith's becoming the first Black woman to graduate from ������Ƶ and Eva Pearl Green co-founding, and serving as a business leader in one of the oldest and largest all-Black communities established after the Civil War (Mound Bayou, Mississippi). Grant funding will support Beauboeuf's travel to Mississippi to conduct archival research on Mound Bayou and interview the founders of Mound Bayou Museum.

������Ƶ College Hearst Foundations Grant

������Ƶ College has received a grant of $150,000 from the Hearst Foundations to strengthen its recruitment of, and support for, transfer students from two- and four-year institutions. Over the course of this three-year grant, ������Ƶ plans to roughly triple its enrollment of transfer students (to 25 per year) and improve transfer persistence and graduation rates. We will accomplish this by developing a targeted recruitment approach for transfer students, adding a spring transfer cohort, and developing a program of activities to strengthen transfer students’ connections to ������Ƶ and to each other. We will also conduct a formal assessment of our program (in partnership with the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College) to produce generalizable knowledge on supporting transfer admissions at elite residential liberal arts institutions. Our work to strengthen transfer admissions has been shaped by our relationship with the Summer Scholars at Chautauqua program, a cohort-based program for honors students at community colleges that (among other activities) provides students with support and guidance on the transfer process. 

Dan Sullivan, a leader of the Summer Scholars program and former president of St. Lawrence University, identified ������Ƶ as an ideal institutional partner for transfer students. The Hearst Foundations also support an endowed scholarship fund at ������Ƶ for students with significant financial need; this endowment was established through a series of grants running from 1992 to 2000. The proposal development team includes Joe Bagnoli (Enrollment, Admissions & Financial Aid), Sarah Fischer (Admissions), JC Lopez (Student Affairs), Elaine Marzluff (Biological Chemistry), Christian Morris ’18 (Admissions) , and Nick Phillips (Spanish, Curriculum & Academic Program)s; along with Kate Ferraro (Academic Success Center) who will play a key role in implementation. 

Charlotte Christensen (Physics) Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) Grant

Charlotte Christensen (physics) has been awarded a grant of $66,000 from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA). Christensen is a participant in a three-year "Scialog" (science dialogue) convening of about fifty scientists funded by RCSA entitled "Early Science with the LSST," which is meant to advance the foundational science needed to realize the full potential of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Christensen, along with her colleagues Nora Shipp (University of Washington) and Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil (Dartmouth College), will pursue a project entitled "Dwarf Debris and Dark Matter: Searching for Evidence of Hierarchical Formation in the Stellar Halos of Dwarf Galaxies." Each investigator received a grant of $66,000, bringing the total funding for this project to $198,000. The funding for the grants comes from RCSA as well as the Heising-Simons Foundation, The Brinson Foundation, the Leinweber Foundation, and independent philanthropist Kevin Wells (Executive Director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics). For predominantly undergraduate institutions like ������Ƶ, the Scialog program allows our investigators to access funding from these partnering funders, most of which rarely if ever support investigators at liberal arts colleges.

Heriberto Hernández (Chemistry) Department of Energy Grant

Heriberto Hernández (chemistry) has won a grant of $717,876 from the Department of Energy (DOE) for a project entitled "Fundamental studies of the influence of ligands on the molecular structure of noble metal nanoclusters." Hernández's grant is issued by the DOE's Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research (FAIR) program, which is designed to "build research capacity, infrastructure, and expertise at institutions historically underrepresented in the DOE Office of Science (SC) portfolio." FAIR grants support partnerships between Emerging Research Institutions (basically, non-R1s) like ������Ƶ, or minority-serving institutions, with other institutions like DOE Labs or Office of Science scientific user facilities. Hernández will be partnering with Dr. Grant Johnson at the Pacific Northwest National Research Lab, continuing a multi-year collaboration that they have sustained through three DOE Visiting Faculty Program grants won by Hernández, which allowed him and his students to work in Johnson's lab for ten-week periods over several summers. Through the grant, they will study conditions affecting the electronic and molecular structures of small noble metal nanoclusters, using experimental and computational approaches. These nanoclusters have many practical applications in energy storage and conversion and in biosensing, bioimaging, biomedical diagnosis, and therapy. The award allows support for twelve MAP students, who will spend part of their summer MAPs visiting Johnson's lab with Hernándes – an opportunity for students to connect with DOE scientists at a variety of career stages, as well as other students and faculty working as visitors at the DOE, and to work with the world-class facilities.  

Susan Ferrari (Corporate, Foundation and Government Relations), Shonda Kuiper (Statistics), Peter-Michael Osera (Computer Science), and Andrea Tracy (Student Academic Life & Psychology/Neuroscience) Receive Faculty Career Enhancement Awards from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest

Susan Ferrari (Corporate, Foundation and Government Relations), Shonda Kuiper (Statistics), Peter-Michael Osera (Computer Science), and Andrea Tracy (Academic Life & Psychology) received Faculty Career Enhancement Awards from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) as part of multi-institutional teams for the following projects:

• Shonda Kuiper (statistics) along with Tyler George (Cornell College), Katherine Harris (Beloit College), and Brittney Miller (Coe College), received a grant of $16,500 for a project entitled “Developing Inquiry-Based, Narrative Modules for Data-Driven Courses,” which will support the creation of classroom resources that emphasize real-world applications for data-based decision making.
• Peter-Michael Osera (Computer Science) along with Destiny Crider (Luther College) and Marc Falk (Coe College), received a grant of $8,500 for a project entitled “Leveling Up Grading in the Liberal Arts,” which will support a reading group and conference on alternative grading techniques, including mastery-based grading, specifications-based grading, and “ungrading” for participants at ACM institutions.
• Andrea Tracy (Student Academic Life and Psychology/Neuroscience) along with Cate Denial (Knox College) and Jen Jacobsen ’95 (Macalester College), received $22,500 for a project called “Sustainable Strategies for Supporting Well-Being and Academic Engagement for Faculty and Students,” which will allow them to offer a series of regional workshops meant to help faculty develop effective, sustainable, and role-appropriate ways to support student well-being and academic engagement.
• Susan Ferrari (Corporate, Foundation, and Government Relations) and Andrea Tracy (Student Academic Life and Psychology/Neuroscience) along with Mario Affatigato (Coe College), Fallon Allison (Knox College), Anna Beno (Lawrence College), Kimberly Dickson (Lawrence College), Deanna Donohue (Lawrence College), Margaret Koker (Lawrence College), Kristina Pagel-Martinez (Lawrence College), Tess Powers (Colorado College), Julie Rana (Lawrence College), Erika Schwictenberg (Macalester College), and Christopher Tassava (Carleton College), received $21,500 for a project entitled “Collaborative NSF ADVANCE grant preparation to address challenges facing women in STEM,” which will support a survey, focus groups, and a summer convening to help ACM faculty, staff, and administrators prepare a collaborative grant to the  program, which supports gender equity in STEM professions.

The FaCE program has been in existence for about 20 years, supported by a series of grants from the Mellon Foundation to the ACM; and this is its final cycle.

Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program Mellon Foundation Grant

������Ƶ College has received a grant of $142,000 in support of our Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship(MMUF) program. This cohort-based program is the central component of the Mellon Foundation's efforts to increase diversity in institutions of higher education; it is committed to supporting a diverse professoriate (through helping students pursue PhDs in humanistic fields) and to promoting the value of multivocality in the humanities and related disciplines, elevating accounts, interpretations, and narratives that expand present understandings. ������Ƶ's grant supports approximately ten students every year (five juniors and five seniors) with stipends, travel and research funding, faculty mentoring, and other support to help them pursue academic careers. 

Peter-Michael Osera (Computer Science) National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering's Formal Methods in the Field Program Grant

Peter-Michael Osera (computer science) has received an award, along with colleagues at Iowa State University and the University of Iowa, from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering's Formal Methods in the Field program, which brings together researchers in formal methods with those in other areas of computer science and engineering. Their project, “Integrating Formal Methods into the Foundational Undergraduate Curriculum,” will develop new pedagogy that better highlights the connections between mathematics and computer science. By using program reasoning as a means of studying introductory programming, discrete mathematics, and algorithms, this new pedagogy will better prepare students to make the leap from introductory computer science courses (which are usually more concrete and centered on programming) to upper-level theoretical courses rooted in abstract mathematics. As part of the grant, Osera and his colleagues will disseminate their work to the computer science educator community through regional and national meetings. The total award amount for this NSF grant is $248,445 and ������Ƶ’s share is $96,015.

Charlotte Christensen (Physics) Scialog Fellow by the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement

Charlotte Christensen (physics) has been named a Scialog Fellow by the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement (RCSA). The Scialog (short for “science dialogue”) program brings interdisciplinary groups of 50 early-career faculty members together around a topic of key scientific importance and, over a three-year period, provides them with guidance from senior facilitators, opportunities to form multidisciplinary collaborations, and seed funding for their research. The Scialog for which Christensen was selected, “Early Science with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST),” will bring together astronomers, theoretical physicists, data scientists, and more to analyze data from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which will be carried out by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory starting in late 2024. This open-access dataset will be higher in volume, velocity, and complexity than any previous astrophysics experiment and could spark an extraordinary era of discovery into fundamental questions about the Universe. This Scialog is co-sponsored by RCSA and the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Brinson Foundation, and the Leinweber Foundation.

Susan Ferrari (Corporate, Foundation, and Government Relations), National Science Foundation Grant

Susan Ferrari (Corporate, Foundation, and Government Relations) and a collaborative team have been awarded a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation GRANTED program for “the Colleges of Liberal Arts Sponsored Programs group (CLASP): Broadening Participation and Deepening its Community of Practice.” In addition to Ferrari, the CLASP team includes Charlotte Whited (Carleton College), Renee Cox (North Park University), Amy Cuhel-Schuckers (The College of New Jersey), Beth Jager (Claremont McKenna College), Tania Johnson (The International School of Management), Tess Powers (Colorado College), and Megan Uebelacker (Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles). Staff at the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College will play a key facilitation role in the grant. The funds will be used to help advance the work of CLASP. As an organization, CLASP serves more than 650 grants officers at predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs). Ferrari is CLASP’s outreach officer and the former chair of its advisory group.

Idelle Cooper ’01 (Biology), National Science Foundation Facilitating Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions Program Grant

Idelle Cooper ’01 (biology) has been awarded a $448,258 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Facilitating Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions program for a project entitled “RUI: Conflicting Selection Pressures within Mate Choice of Jeweling Damselflies” (DEB-2242987). Cooper wrote this grant while employed at James Madison University but was able to bring it with her to ������Ƶ College when she accepted her position here, which began this August. Her project will address a fundamental question in evolution: how mate choice affects the divergence — or coherence — of species. She will observe two species of naturally co-existing damselflies to better understand how two types of selection pressures involved in mate choice (sexual selection and species recognition selection) interact to affect trait evolution and speciation. This four-year project will engage ������Ƶ College students in fieldwork in Michigan and Ontario, as well as research on ������Ƶ College’s campus. Cooper is also a visual artist, and she will collaborate with her students to produce an art exhibition entitled “Tangled Banks,” which will share with public audiences the experience of researching damselflies in river environments, forging connections to indigenous tribes located near the fieldwork sites, and build upon Cooper’s long-term efforts to highlight the role of art in the teaching of scientific concepts and the potential of art to expand diversity in the scientific field.

Eiren Shea (Art History), Fritz Thyssen Foundation Grant

Eiren Shea (art history) and her colleagues Ittai Weinryb (Bard College) and Qiao Yang (Max Planck Institute) have been awarded a conference support grant of €20,000 from the Cologne-based Fritz Thyssen Foundation. (Funds will be administered by the Max Planck Institute.) These funds will allow Shea, Weinryb, and Yang to host a conference entitled “The Golden Horde: Art, Material Culture, and Architecture, 1227–1502” this December in Berlin. The Golden Horde — a khanate originating in the Mongol Empire — was once a powerful political entity that controlled 25 percent of the world’s territory. Despite its influence, and despite growing scholarly interest in cultural exchange between the Mongol Empire and other civilizations, (e.g., through the Silk Road), the art and material culture of the Golden Horde have been underexplored — especially by scholars working in English. This conference will help Shea and her colleagues gather international experts on these topics to catalyze more comprehensive study of this important area.

Andrew Graham (Chemistry), National Science Foundation Mid-Career Advancement Program Grant

Andrew Graham (chemistry) has been awarded a grant of $237,317 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Mid-Career Advancement program. This is a relatively new program supporting mid-career scientists advancing their careers by gaining new skills through mutually beneficial partnerships with scholars at other institutions. Graham is working with Elizabeth Swanner (Iowa State University) and Diana Thatcher (Iowa State University) in launching a new research project that explores the impact of changing regulatory policies and climate change on mercury accumulation in marine ecosystems. Graham and his collaborators will study mercury accumulation in mollusk shells found off the coast of Maine (in both living organisms and historical collections of shells) to establish a high-resolution, long-term record that can be used to improve biogeochemical-climate models and determine how mercury accumulation has responded to natural climatic variability over the last millennium. In addition to protected time to earn new skills, the grant is providing opportunities to build a professional network in this new research area while aligning with Graham’s research projects, teaching, and research opportunities for ������Ƶ students related to issues of climate and other global environmental change.

Brigittine French (Anthropology and Global Education) and Ashley Laux (Faculty-Led Learning), U.S. Department of State’s Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students (IDEAS) Program Grant

Brigittine French (anthropology and global education) and Ashley Laux (faculty-led learning) have received a grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students (IDEAS) Program funding a site-based workshop for faculty and staff to deepen and expand ������Ƶ’s offerings in course-embedded travel for semester courses across the curriculum. The workshop will focus on inclusive pedagogies and increased student mobility in Latin America. ������Ƶ College is one of 34 U.S. colleges and universities in 28 U.S. states to be awarded a grant from IDEAS Program, which aims to develop and expand study abroad programs around the world. Of the 34 U.S. colleges and universities, eight are community colleges and 13 are minority-serving institutions. The selected proposals will develop new international partnerships, train faculty and staff, internationalize curriculum, engage diverse students in study abroad, broaden the destinations where U.S. students study, and create virtual and hybrid exchanges. The IDEAS Program contributes to the State Department’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts to engage the American people in foreign policy.

Edward Cohn (History), National Council for Eurasian and East European Research Grant

Edward Cohn (history) has received a grant of $18,500 from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research to conduct research on the “prophylactic chat,” a policing tactic used by the KGB to fight dissent, particularly along its western frontier. Cohn’s research argues that this was not a simple intimidation tactic, but rather a sophisticated surveillance approach involving elements of social science research that anticipated later developments in crime control like “broken windows” policing (and the current actions of Russian and Belarusian secret police that influence modern-day politics in Russia and its border nations). The grant will allow Cohn to conduct archival research — primarily in Moldova and Latvia, but also in Lithuania and Estonia — drawing on KGB files and other sources.

Clare Boothe Luce Program of the Henry Luce Foundation Grant

������Ƶ College has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Clare Boothe Luce (CBL) Program of the Henry Luce Foundation to support two CBL professors. The College’s nominations for professors in the mathematics and statistics department, Christy Hazel and Jenny Kenkel, have been accepted by the Clare Luce Booth Program. Hazel and Kenkel will begin teaching at the College in the fall of 2023. The Clare Boothe Luce Program is one of the foremost sources of support for women in STEM in higher education; and the grant includes support for training and research. ������Ƶ College appears to be the first liberal arts college to be awarded a grant for multiple CBL professorships. The faculty members who led the development of this proposal include Nicole Eikmeier (computer science), Shonda Kuiper (mathematics and statistics), Elaine Marzluff (chemistry), Jennifer Paulhus (mathematics and statistics), and Paul Tjossem (physics). The grants follows the College’s fourth submission to CBL in five years.

Sarah Purcell (History), Knox College Bright Institute

Sarah Purcell (history) was selected to be part of the Bright Institute at Knox College, a three-year program for liberal arts college professors of American history before 1848. Purcell will incorporate her current research project on the contested history of the Bunker Hill Monument into a variety of courses on early American history, transatlantic eighteenth-century history, and beyond. The institute is an in-residence summer program and includes funding to cover travel and lodging costs in addition to $3,000 each of the three years in support of research.

Peter-Michael Osera (Computer Science), National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Grant

Peter-Michael Osera (computer science) received a $524,611 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) in 2021 to support his project, “Foundations and Applications of Constraint-based Synthesis.” Osera’s project deals with program synthesis which is an array of techniques used to automatically generate computer programs and has the potential to democratize programming by allowing non-expert users to use relatively simple, natural specifications to generate code. This project will help Osera further develop his seminar on human-centered programming. He is also focused on discrete mathematics, a second-year course in the computer science curriculum that is very challenging for students. In addition, he plans to continue leading national conversations about teaching math in computer science with a focus on inclusive pedagogy. These NSF CAREER awards are among the most prestigious and competitive grants the NSF awards to early career faculty.

Charlotte Christensen (Physics), National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Grant

Charlotte Christensen (physics) received a $484,300 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) in 2019. The grant supports her study of what spurs and halts the growth of dwarf galaxies and how galaxies form, and includes modeling dwarf galaxies using extremely high-resolution, realistic computer simulations. For the educational component of her project, Christensen will create a set of computational exercises, labs, and open-ended research projects for students that will be integrated into the physics curriculum. Christensen and her colleagues had earlier implemented a computational lab into the 200-level mechanics course with the support of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant, which they found to have particular benefits for female students. Building on this work, Christensen will improve the overall education of physics students by incorporating computational problem-solving. The grant will also allow her to host speakers on campus to speak about diversity and inclusion in the sciences. These NSF CAREER awards are among the most prestigious and competitive grants the NSF awards to early career faculty.