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Grant Awards 2021-2022

Institutional Awards

Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation. $50,000. This grant provides a supplement our existing Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Scholarship Fund to provide additional tuition assistance to worthy students to support their pursuit of a Dickinson College undergraduate education.

Max Kade Foundation – German Writer-in-Residence Program. $14,000. This grant will support a Max Kade German Writer-in-Residence at Dickinson College during the spring semester of 2022. 

PA Department of Human Services, Office of Child Development and Early Learning American Rescue Plan Act, Child Care Stabilization Grant. $ 337,946. (Regina VanKirk, Dickinson College Children’s Center)

South Mountain Partnership - Mini Grant Program. $5,871. (Matt Steiman, College Farm) “Improving environmental quality and agricultural viability through a waste-to-energy system & education” This grant is for supplemental funds to complete the anaerobic digester project at the farm. These funds will be used to build a simple 20’ x 20’ pavilion at the digester project site. The pavilion will be used as a shade / shelter and gathering place during educational visits to the digester site. We have substantial outreach activities planned - field days, class visits, and public open houses for the local community. Our goal with the outreach effort is to promote the adoption of modern waste to energy systems on other small to mid-size dairies in Pennsylvania. The pavilion will help facilitate this effort by providing a weather protected spot for discussions. In return for the funding, we have pledged in-kind work: constructing the pavilion, hosting one public tour per month from summer through fall of 2022, and establishing a “by appointment” visitor policy for the indefinite future. This work nestles within the existing plan for the digester and manure management project as described in several other approved and awarded grant applications. This project was financed in part by a grant from the Community Conservation Partnerships Program, Environmental Stewardship Fund, under the administration of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Bureau of Recreation and Conservation. The grant was awarded through the South Mountain Partnership, with management oversight by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. We are a partner of the South Mountain Partnership, an alliance of organizations working to preserve and enhance the cultural and natural assets of the South Mountain Landscape in Central Pennsylvania. To learn more about the South Mountain Partnership, please visit www.southmountainpartnership.org. 

Metropolitan Edison Company Sustainable Energy Fund of Berks County Community Foundation. $25,000 (Grant #2). (Matt Steiman, College Farm) “Waste to Energy: Practical Anaerobic Digestion System for Small to Mid-size Dairy Farms”

Campus Compact of New York & Pennsylvania - AmeriCorps VISTA. (Laura Megivern, Center for Civic Learning & Action) This project supports the Professional & Educational Empowerment Center (PEEC) as an expansion of Hope Station’s current programs and increases access to job readiness training and employment opportunities in Carlisle’s Northside neighborhood. This presents an opportunity to design and implement a contextually relevant and evidence-informed program focused on employment skills, job searching resources, and internet access for low-income youth and adults. PEEC leverages Hope Station’s visibility in the local community and Dickinson’s access to students, faculty, and relevant community organizations to provide new and expanded economic opportunities in Carlisle’s neighborhood with the greatest racial diversity and lowest average income. The VISTA will develop systems for managing the lab (including volunteer recruitment and management, scheduling, and tracking maintenance needs); document unmet needs and demand for training and resources; and recruit and schedule college and community stakeholders to develop and deliver clinics and programs that enhance computer skills, job search effectiveness, resume writing, and employee soft skills. By collaborating with providers like Employment Skills Center and Career Link, the PEEC partnership brings existing expertise and proven program models to the area of Carlisle with the highest concentration of need.

PA Department of Human Services, Office of Child Development and Early Learning – Pennsylvania’s Child Care Technology Access Award. $5,500. (Gina VanKirk, DCCC) This grant will allow the Dickinson College Children’s Center to choose from a list of technology tools provided through Kaplan Early Learning Company.

PA Department of Human Services, Office of Child Development and Early Learning – Pennsylvania’s Child Care Technology Access Award. $3,500. (Gina VanKirk, DCCC) This grant will allow the Dickinson College Summer School-Age Program to choose from a list of technology tools provided through Kaplan Early Learning Company.

Faculty Awards

National Science Foundation - Plant Biotic Interactions. $329,556. (Tom Arnold, Dave Kushner, and Dana Somers - Biology) “RUI: EPIGENETIC WEAPONS IN PLANT-HERBIVORE INTERACTIONS: SULFORAPHANE AS A NATURAL HISTONE DEACETYLASE INHIBITOR IN LEPIDOPTERAN PESTS” Phenotypic plasticity allows individual plants to respond to threats, often by deploying chemical and morphological defenses, despite their static genomes. In response, insect pests alter their phenotypes to counter plant defenses. These reciprocal adaptations, occurring among individuals, require rapid and highly coordinated changes in how genomes are expressed. One way this can be accomplished is via epigenetic mechanisms such as histone de/acetylation, which can open or close genetic “programs”. However, the epigenetic command and control systems of insect pests are vulnerable to ecological sabotage. They can be disrupted by certain plant secondary metabolites, including sulforaphane (SFN), a fast-acting histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) produced by cruciferous plants. In mammals (including humans), SFN consumption alters DNA/histone binding and gene expression in multiple tissues, within minutes. As a result, SFN and similar HDACis are used as disease therapies. This strongly suggests that these plants possess the weapons necessary to disrupt, even sabotage, the epigenetic machinery of insect pests in nature. However, this possibility has never been explored. Based on preliminary data showing that HDACis dramatically reduce the growth of lepidopteran larvae (without mortality), we propose that plants in the Brassicaceae family use SFN and related metabolites as HDACis to disrupt the epigenetic systems of an economically important lepidopteran pest, the cabbage looper, Trichoplusia ni. We propose a three-year study to determine how SFN, a natural HDACi, alters patterns of histone acetylation and gene expression, development, and survival of T. ni, including larvae, adult moths, and next-generation larvae. We will also investigate how this “epigenetic weapon” may protect these plants.

American Academy of Religion - Individual Research Grant. $4,300. (Jodie Vann, Religion) “Paeons to a New Age: The 1987 Harmonic Convergence and Contemporary ‘Spiritual, but not Religious’ Tourism in Yucatan, Mexico”

Association for Asian Studies - Northeast Asia Council Japan Studies Grant, Short-Term Research Travel to Japan. $5,000. (Evan Young, History) “Controlling Fertility in Postwar Japan: Women’s Magazines and the Vernacularization of Scientific Knowledge”

American Institutes for Research - COVID-19 & Equity in Education Research-Practice Partnership Network. $5,000. (Jacquie Forbes, Educational Studies)

American Association of University Women - American Fellowship, Short-Term Research Publication Grant. $6,000. (Maggie Douglas, Environmental Studies & Environmental Science) “The American toad (Anaxyrus americanus): Friend or foe to crop production?”

Northumberland County, Pennsylvania (subaward through Hempfield Behavioral Health). $11,990.50. (Sharon Kingston, Psychology) "Program evaluation for Hempfield Behavioral Health" I have been asked to perform a program evaluation of the delivery of an evidence-based family support program, The Family Check-Up, to ensure that the program is being delivered with fidelity and is meeting its performance targets. The program evaluation will entail asking parents and older children (age 11 and older) to complete online survey instruments while being supported by a Research Assistant who will stay on the phone with parents as they complete the measures to answer any questions they have about the surveys.

University of Baltimore - Combating Overdose Through Community-level Intervention Initiative (ultimate funding source: The White House, Office of National Drug Control Policy). $8,659.82 (subaward). (Sharon Kingston, Psychology) “Gamifying an Evidence-Based Parenting Intervention to Improve Access for Caregivers with Addiction to Reduce Substance Use Outcomes in Their Children” Children of caregivers with opioid use disorder (OUD) are at very high risk for becoming the next generation of substance abusers due to exposure to severely adverse conditions. To disrupt pathways to OUD, this project proposes an innovative approach to disrupting these pathways by providing a well-established family intervention Triple P in a novel, highly accessible and engaging platform. Triple P has been repeatedly demonstrated to exert the largest effects on both substance-involved parent and child outcomes; however, barriers to implementation persist in the ability to engage parents in family interventions which has limited their ability to achieve full benefits and bring them to scale. A solution is to transform Triple P, one of the most effective parenting programs available, into a smart phone game application to increase its acceptability, relevance and accessibility for even the most difficult to reach caregivers.

Slavic-Eurasian Research Center of Hokkaido University - Foreign Visitors Fellowship Program. $7,000/¥800,000. (Alyssa DeBlasio, Russian) DeBlasio’s current research seeks to map and interpret the main intellectual trajectories of Russian philosophy from the late 20th century through the present. The proposed project during an SRC fellowship term will takes two forms: (1) tracing the development of leading concepts in Russian thought from late socialism (late 1960s) to the present, with an emphasis on genre diversity and hybrid models of philosophical discourse; (2) preparation of an article on Aleksandr Piatigorskii (1929-2009), whose work sits at the intersection of several influences and genres: Buddhist ethics, Soviet semiotics, communication theory, and Georgian phenomenology.

National Endowment for the Humanities - Fellowship. $30,000. (Antje Pfannkuchen, German) “Printing the Invisible: The Invention of Photography as a Cultural Technique”

McColl Center - Winter/Spring 2022 Artist-in-Residence Program. $6,000. (Rachel Eng, Art & Art History)

Bogliasco Foundation - Fellowship. (Ellen Gray, Music) “Amália Rodrigues in Paris: Live at the Olympia”

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection - Growing Greener Plus Grants Program. $171,624. (Kristin Strock, Environmental Studies) “Developing High-Frequency Sensor Monitoring Tools for Managing Harmful Algal Blooms” Several studies document an increasing frequency of noxious and harmful algal blooms in freshwater (e.g. Carmichael 2008). In 2012, cyanobacterial toxins (microcystin) were present in 39% of lakes sampled across the U.S. (USEPA 2016). This emerging concern for local communities has led to a call for improved monitoring and forecasting of algal blooms, which includes a better understanding of bloom formation as it relates to both nutrient availability (largely nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) (Paerl and Otten 2013)) and warmer surface water temperatures and prolonged summer stratification that can be expected with ongoing climate change (Paerl and Huisman 2008). We propose installing advanced algal monitoring sensors (funding for equipment is leveraged through other sources) in Marsh Creek Lake (Chester County) and Pinchot Lake (York County). Funds are requested from the Growing Greener grant program for the staff time and resources needed to establish a monitoring and assessment program that will examine the reliability of sensor technology for detecting algal blooms and to relate bloom formation to water quality parameters, such as nutrient concentrations. High-resolution sensor data are essential to capture rapid responses, such as the formation of algal blooms, and are under-utilized in current lake monitoring efforts.

Partnership for Better Health, Perry County Health Coalition - Request for Consulting Services (Community Health Needs Review & Strategic Action Planning). $10,000. (Dave Sarcone, International Business & Management)

National Science Foundation - Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Pathways into the Earth, Ocean, Polar and Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences (IUSE:GEOPAths). $32,834. (Jorden Hayes, Earth Sciences) “Collaborative Research: GP-UP: GNOMES: A near surface geophysics field experience to improve the recruitment and retention of under-represented minority students in the geosciences” Undergraduate geoscience education in the United States lags behind other STEM fields when it comes to racial and ethnic diversity. This deficit is particularly notable for students who are underrepresented minorities (URM) in STEM fields and translates to a larger gap at the graduate level. With the aim of recruiting, engaging, and retaining a diverse group of students in geoscience majors, investigators from Rutgers University, Newark (RUN), Dickinson College, and Penn State University will submit a proposal to the IUSE:GEOPaths:UP Solicitation (20-516). We will propose a two-week long field experience to introduce students early in their post-secondary education to near surface geophysics within a critical zone context. The field experience will be held at two sites in the Chesapeake Basin, Shale Hills, PA, and Pond Branch, MD, the latter of which is part of a recently awarded CZ Net proposal that aims to explore how geology pre-conditions critical zone form and function. The proposed program will build upon the success of a previous Geopaths:Extra program and expand to focus more on mentor development and post-program engagement, which were found to be unexpectedly impactful components of the past program. Participants will be recruited from RUN, Dickinson College, and two-year colleges in Northern New Jersey that have strong connections with RUN (e.g., Passaic County Community College, Essex Community College).

National Science Foundation - Frontier Research in Earth Sciences. $94,945.(Ben Edwards, Earth Sciences). “Collaborative Research: Ice Forcing in Arc Magma Plumbing Systems (IF-AMPS)” Observations of increased global volcanic activity following the last glacial maximum (LGM; Huybers & Langmuir, 2009) and orbital pacing of volcanism on longer time scales (Kutterolf et al., 2019) have spurred considerable interest in the role of climate in driving changes in the solid earth. Although advances have been made in quantifying connections between tectonics and earth surface processes (NRC, 2012), linkages between magma, volcanoes, climate, and topography remain far less well understood (NAS, 2017, p. 76; Sternai et al., 2019). Thus, a major underlying question is: How do changes in the climate system interact with the lithosphere and magma reservoirs housed within it? (Jellinek et al., 2004; Watt et al., 2013; Sternai et al., 2016; 2019; Rawson et al., 2016; Schindlbeck et al., 2018; Mora & Tassara, 2019; Wilson & Russell, 2020). To address this question, we propose to conduct a novel blend of field observations, lab measurements, and numerical model simulations in an integrated study of links between the cryosphere, topography, and subduction zone volcanism. This collaboration is being led by the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Other collaborators are from the University of Oregon at Eugene, University of California at Irvine, Purdue University, and Brown University.

National Park Service - Supplement. $29,867.42. (Matthew Pinsker, History) “Select Newspaper Digitizing for Slave Stampedes Project” This select newspaper digitization effort is designed to support the ongoing Slave Stampedes on the Missouri Border1ands cooperative agreement between the House Divided Project and the National Park Service Network to Freedom. We will be digitizing up to 50 reels of microfilm for internal research use from a variety of holdings in Missouri and Illinois.

Harvard University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies - Visiting Scholars Program. $25,000. (Santiago Anria, Political Science) “Social Movements, Polarization, and Democratic Regime Trajectories in Latin America”

Student Awards