Recent H&S Educational Grant Initiative Awards

Summary: Spring 2012 H&S Educational Grant Initiative Awards

Between December 2011 and February 2012, the Educational Grant Initiative (EGI) Review Panel awarded more than $10,000 in support of 20 projects.

Events

• Gustavo Licon, assistant professor, Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, and student collaborators Gabriela Gonzalez ’14, Cöelis Mendoza ’14, Kathleen Perez ’14, Laura Perez ’14, Evelyne Santiago ’12, and Dana Villalobos ’14, to bring to campus the producer of the film Precious Knowledge, about the impact of the Mexican American Studies program on Tucson (AZ) high school students, for a film screening and talkback, April 2012
• Beth Harris, associate professor, politics, and Samantha Lowe ’12, politics and writing major, to present a Palestinian Environmental Films Festival to highlight global environmental justice movements and stimulate student awareness and discussion, March 2012
• Paula Murray Cole and Lindsay Gilmour, assistant professors, theatre arts, to support the symposium “Rasa: In Theory, Practice, and Performance” that explores the practice of rasa aesthetics in dance, music, and theatre performance, March 31–April 1, 2012

Course-based projects and department-based activities

• History Department, to support a field trip to museums and collections in New York City (including the New York Historical Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, and the Asia Society), to augment student learning in a variety of spring-semester history courses
• Brooke Hansen, associate professor, anthropology, to support a field trip to Philadelphia during which students in her “Integrative Health Care” class will visit the Patch Adams Free Clinic to examine accessible and integrative health care in practice
• Susan Allen-Gil, professor and chair, environmental studies and sciences, to support students’ construction of an interactive topographic model of the Amazon basin as part of the course “Topics in Environmental Policy: Sustainability in the Amazon”
• Jason Hamilton, associate professor, environmental studies and sciences, to purchase supplies for the study of medical herbalism and environmental chemistry in the course “Interdisciplinary Physical Science”
• Paula Turkon, assistant professor, environmental studies and sciences, to support activities by students in the environmental studies senior research course who are developing a set of land management recommendations for the Ithaca College Natural Lands
• Annette Levine, associate professor, modern languages and literatures, to provide books and supplies to kindergarten classrooms where students enrolled in her class “Service Learning: Teaching Spanish in the Elementary Classroom” are teaching Spanish to children
• Beth Harris, associate professor, politics, and student collaborators Abby Paulson ’12and Laura Murray ’12, to support showing of a documentary on internal displacement in Columbia and discussion with film director Dan Roge as part of the course “Witnessing War, Occupation, and Displacement,” December 2011
• Joel Gelpe, accompanist and musical director, theatre arts, to support mock auditions and a master class for musical theatre majors with actor Philip Hernandez, December 2011
• Susan Jonas and Wendy Dann, assistant professors, theatre arts, to support the visit of guest artist Dr. Michael Chemers for a workshop on dramaturgy and dramaturgical training, February 2012
• Kathleen Mulligan, assistant professor, theatre arts, to support a workshop for majors and minors on audio-book performance with award-winning actress Susan Ericksen, December 2011
• Steve TenEyck, associate professor and associate chair, theatre arts, to host guest artist Mary Louise Geiger, associate arts professor and head of lighting design at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, for meetings with theatre arts student designers, and opportunities for student portfolio review and critique, February 2012

Research and collaborative projects

• David Gondek, associate professor, biology, and Stefan Haugen ’13, biology major, to support research on host pathogen interactions in fresh water amoeba, summer 2012
• Bodhi Rogers, associate professor, physics, to support travel costs associated with student participation in the final year of the NSF-funded grant project “Archaeological Surveys in Cyprus,” summer 2012
• Doug Turnbull, assistant professor, computer science, and Kristofer Stensland ’14, computer science major, to support the development and launch of MegsRadio.fm, a community-oriented music discovery tool, through the purchase of rights to music by Ithaca-area artists and a non-commercial educational radio webcast license, spring and summer 2012
• Braeden Cohen ’12, environmental studies and sciences major, and Susan Allen-Gil, professor and chair, environmental studies and sciences, to support a capstone project to develop a model organic waste filtering and catchment apparatus for an in-sink garbage disposal, spring 2012
• Rachel Noyes ’13, biochemistry major, and Ian Woods, assistant professor, biology, to support senior thesis research to determine the roles of specific genes in the development and function of trigeminal sensory neurons in zebrafish, 2012–13 academic year
• Daniel Weller ’12, anthropology major, and Paula Turkon, assistant professor, anthropology, to support honors thesis research on the utility of dendrochronology on archaeological charcoal samples from the La Quemada site on the northwest frontier of Mesoamerica, spring 2012

In addition, since October 2011, the EGI has awarded an additional $3,000 in “Easy Access Funds” in support of student presentations of original research or creative work at conferences during the spring semester.