Grant News
NETVUE GRANT AWARD SUPPORTS "PURPOSE-DRIVEN EDUCATION" COURSE DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRAMS FOR FACULTY AND STUDENTS
In spring 2024, SLU received a two-year program development grant award from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE). The Building a Campus Culture of Purpose-Driven Education (PDE) project will be co-led by Dr. Mary Jane Smith, Faculty Director of the Sophomore Success Initiative and Associate Director of Career Education Michelle Gould, representing the overarching goal to strengthen the integration of campus academic and career-building programs and help students find purpose and meaning in their undergraduate experiences. Major project activities include creating a new PDE Faculty Learning Community, creating PDE-infused first- and second-year courses, and engaging students from underrepresented, first-generation, international backgrounds.
PATTI FRAZER LOCK AND COLLEAGUES AWARDED MAA TENSOR GRANT
Professor Patti Frazer Lock, in collaboration with department colleagues Drs. Michael Schuckers and Dan Look, received a $6,000 grant from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) Tensor Grant Program. In alignment with the program’s mission to encourage women and girls to enter the mathematical sciences, the St. Lawrence project will engage ~150 local high school women students, their teachers and their counselors, from the rural and underserved North Country region through a half-day on-campus event in September 2024 showcasing opportunities and career paths in the mathematical sciences, followed by a monthly series of interactive Zoom presentations (October-May 2024-2025).
GEOLOGY PROFESSOR AWARDED GRANT FUNDING FOR ST. LAWRENCE RIVER RESEARCH
Associate Professor of Geology Alexander Stewart recently received grant funding of $6,519 from the St. Lawrence River Research and Education Fund for environmental research. The goal of the project is to initiate using tree-ring science (dendroclimatology) to reconstruct pre-contact streamflows (dendrohydrology) for the fluvial section of the St. Lawrence River and its tributaries. Streamflow reconstruction will provide insight into pre-agrarian history and yield valuable climate information for the region.
BIOLOGY PROFESSOR BRAD BALDWIN AWARDED GRANT FUNDING TO MITIGATE INVASIVE AQUATIC PLANTS
Professor of Biology Brad Baldwin has been awarded grant funding of $98,592 over 3 years from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC). The project, titled “Protecting the Fishery and Recreational Value of Black Lake through Early Detection and Reduction of Water Chestnut and other Aquatic Invasive Species,” focuses on early detection and mitigation strategies, particularly targeting water chestnut and other aquatic invasive species known to threaten the ecological balance of Black Lake, known as “the freshwater fisherman’s paradise.” Dr. Baldwin recently received additional funding of $15,000 from the St. Lawrence River Research & Education Fund (SLRREF) to support related work on invasive aquatic plants.
DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP TEAM RECEIVES A.I. COLLABORATION SPACE GRANT
The ODY Digital Scholarship team led by Eric Williams-Bergen and Nicole Roche has received a grant of more than $11,000 from the Northern New York Libraries Network (NNYLN) to create an “A.I. Collaboration Space for Digital Storytelling” within ODY Library’s newly renovated Digital Scholarship Suite. The collaboration space is intended to provide students and faculty with access to emergent A.I-driven apps and digital equipment, with both experimentation and critique as primary goals. Click here to learn more about this Digital Scholarship grant.
CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT FACULTY AWARDED RESEARCH FUNDING
Patrick Lutz, assistant professor of chemistry, received grant funding from the American Chemistry Society-Petroleum Research Fund to research circular plastics economies as a means of best using nonrenewable, petroleum-based resources. He will mentor two undergraduate students in the summer of 2024 and three undergraduate students in the summer of 2025 to research the use of a tunable class of self-immolative polymers.
GRACE HUANG AWARDED FULBRIGHT RESEARCH GRANT
Professor of Government Grace Huang received a 2023 Fulbright award to continue her book project, Working Mothers in Comparative Democracies: The US, Taiwan, and Spain. Her book focuses on understanding how particular policies and cultural values shape a woman’s choices about care, work, and the family in a capitalist society. Research on the U.S. portion of the book began in 2022 with interviews conducted in early summer of 2023. The Fulbright award will fund research for the Taiwan section of the book from September 2023 through February 2024.
NSF GRANT SUPPORTS NEW COMPUTER SCIENCE FACULTY MEMBER
Kevin Angstadt, assistant professor of computer science, is part of multi-institutional team of researchers that was awarded a National Science Foundation grant of $1.2 million to research high-performance computer components, their software, and how to make both perform better and last longer. The grant includes $100,000 support for student and faculty research at St. Lawrence University over the course of five years to research automated techniques for designing and improving computer hardware and software. Click here to learn more about Kevin Angstadt's project.
BRUSH GALLERY RECEIVES NEH PLANNING GRANT
St. Lawrence’s Richard F. Brush Art Gallery has received a Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in support of a study aimed at optimizing its storage facility and three adjacent exhibition galleries. The study, led by Brush Gallery Director Cathy Tedford and a campus team in collaboration with external experts, will focus on environmental, mechanical, and structural systems that have been in place for over 40 years to determine design capabilities and optimal operating conditions for improved performance in preservation and energy. Click here to learn more about the Brush Gallery's NEH award.
NSF RESEARCH GRANT AWARDED TO JON ROSALES
Professor of Environmental Studies Jon Rosales received an NSF award to travel to Alaska’s Bering Sea region and study the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of the Siberian Yupik tribe. This is his most recent grant to continue 10+ years of climate change research in the Arctic. During the summer of 2022, Professor Rosales and one of his students visited St. Lawrence Island to research grass lay direction as a proxy for predominant wind direction and the TEK culture that surrounds it, including gathering information from Indigenous community members. Click here to learn more about the NSF award to Jon Rosales.
STATISTICS FACULTY PARTICIPATING IN MAJOR NSF DATA SCIENCE GRANT
Statistics faculty members Michael Schuckers (grant co-PI), Robin Lock, and Ivan Ramler are partnering with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University and three other institutions on a major National Science Foundation grant project called "Building a sustainable national network for developing and disseminating Sports Content for Outreach, Research, and Education (SCORE) in data science." This four-year collaborative effort will create a network of educators and 50+ partners from sports teams and industry experts across the country to develop authentic curricular modules to introduce data science topics via sports applications. All materials will be housed on the Integrated Statistics Learning Environment (ISLE) platform, which will be freely accessible to students and faculty. Resources will be primarily geared towards undergraduate students and will cover a wide array of men’s and women’s sports. The project will also offer professional development opportunities for faculty and work to engage a diverse collection of institutions and students with an additional goal of broadening participation in the data science workforce.
ALDEN TRUST GRANT AWARD SUPPORTS NEW BLOOMBERG FINANCE LAB
St. Lawrence received its largest George I. Alden Trust grant award to create a new, state-of-the-art Bloomberg Finance Lab in Owen D. Young (ODY) Library in support of the new Finance major. St. Lawrence Economics Department faculty involved in the new major include A. Barton Hepburn Associate Professor Brian Chezum, Charles A. Dana Professor Cynthia Bansak, Associate Professor Sahar Milani, Associate Professor Michael Jenkins, and Associate Professor Michael O’Hara. Bloomberg Terminals brings real-time data, analytics, connections, and transparency to global financial markets and market participants, making them the industry standard for all sectors in finance—private, nonprofit, and government. Renovations are currently underway on the lower level of ODY to accommodate 15 additional student Bloomberg Terminal stations. The first Bloomberg Terminal was installed in 2019 and made possible by a generous donation from then-senior Bobby Gates ’19.
FOUNDATION GRANT SUPPORTS NEW DIGITAL MEDIA & FILM MAJOR
St. Lawrence received a grant from the Gladys Brooks Foundation to support our new major in Digital Media & Film (DM&F). Grant funds will be used to create a flexible and technologically-equipped multimedia facility in ODY Library not only for DM&F faculty and students, but also multiple departments across campus engaged in multimedia work. As envisioned by DM&F co-chairs Assistant Professor of Art Sarah Knobel and Associate Professor of German and Film Studies Brook Henkel, working in collaboration with Director of Research & Digital Scholarship Eric Williams-Bergen, the project will bring together and renovate previously underutilized spaces to build a studio and post-production suite. The facility, which will be used for the creation of digitally intensive projects and instructional spaces, is expected to dramatically increase the production capacity and quality of the current location, improve acoustic quality, improve the instructional experience, introduce video capabilities, and attract growing numbers of students.
SANDHYA GANAPATHY AWARDED SPENCER FOUNDATION RESEARCH GRANT
Assistant Professor of Global Studies Sandhya Ganapathy has received a Spencer Foundation Small Grant Award for her project “Educational Responses to Reproductive Injustice: The Role of Midwifery Education.” This three-year award will support her research with academic and midwifery professionals as well as indigenous midwifery students and undergraduate Global Studies students (Onkwehon:we Midwives Collective and St. Lawrence University, respectively). The aim of the project is to generate insights about how midwifery training programs respond to reproductive injustices in the United States. It will create a platform to make recommendations for improvements and detangle the complex webs surrounding structural inequities including colonial oppressions, systemic racism, and anti-Blackness.