Institutional Awards
Repair the World Foundation. $3,000. (Andrea Lieber/Judaic Studies) This is one of the modest grants being made available to professors of Jewish Studies who are graduates of the Jewish Studies Service Learning (JSSL) Training Initiative held at the University of Washington in August 2012 who are interested in creating service-learning courses at their home institutions. Andrea Lieber will use this grant to cover costs of guest speakers, transportation and supplies associated with a spring 2013 service learning course called Religion and the Internet. Students in the course engage in a direct service project in the Jewish community of Harrisburg, working together with the membership of Kesher Israel congregation to create a digital archive of the synagogue’s cemetery. The project will give students a hands-on opportunity to apply technology in a religious setting and to study the history and people of the Harrisburg Jewish community. Students will provide a valuable service to the community and congregation by promoting the public sharing and preservation of archival data. Community members will have the opportunity to work together with students to create a virtual memorial for the community.
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) – Growing Greener program. The sub-award to ALLARM will be approximately $100,000 over a three-year grant period. (Julie Vastine, Jinnie Monismith/ALLARM) “Consortium of Scientific Assistance for Watersheds (C-SAW) VIII.” C-SAW is a partnership of scientists and service provider organizations which provide technical and programmatic assistance to community-based monitoring groups throughout Pennsylvania. ALLARM, a founding C-SAW partner and grant sub-awardee, will be able to provide assistance to watershed groups in the Susquehanna and Potomac drainage basins on stream study design; biological, chemical, and physical monitoring; data interpretation; shale-gas monitoring; strategic planning; and volunteer recruitment. This grant will also support ALLARM’s statewide quality assurance/quality control lab to verify that volunteer stream monitors are collecting credible data and using their equipment correctly. This grant significantly supports ALLARM staff to work with volunteer-based organizations in the state and to work with other C-SAW partners to provide multi-group/regional educational workshops on specific topics.
The Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation. $400,000. This grant supplements our existing Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Scholarship Fund.
The Henry Luce Foundation - Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment - Implementation Grant. $400,000. (David Strand/East Asian Studies and Political Science and Ann Hill/Anthropology and East Asian Studies) Building on the achievements of a successful LIASE Exploration Grant in 2011-2012, this new four-year grant is designed to further infuse the study of Asia through the lens of the environment and sustainability across the Dickinson curriculum. The project will expose more faculty and students from a variety of academic disciplines to Asia through projects involving pedagogical collaboration and direct contact with the region as a human and natural environment. Project objectives are to: 1) expand the capacity of faculty to teach and lead programming about Asia and the environment; 2) expand ties between East Asian Studies and other departments and disciplines; 3) build and maintain infrastructure to effectively teach about these subjects; and 4) expose students to connections between the study of East Asia and environmental concerns across all levels of their undergraduate careers. To achieve these objectives the college’s plans include: 1) continuing the model developed in our Exploration Grant of offering courses in Asia co-taught by faculty from East Asian Studies and other science and social science departments, either in the summer or in January; 2) organizing research colloquia for faculty and interested students that include a film series, visiting speakers, and short residencies for scholars who focus on Asian environmental issues; 3) establishing a two-year post-doctoral teaching fellowship for a natural scientist with field experience in Asia; 4) incentivizing the development of new courses or new modules within courses with an Asian focus through course reassigned time and course development grants; and 5) encouraging field-based Asian language learning through environmental activities on-site at the Dickinson College farm and other campus locations.
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. $700,000. This grant will be used to launch a four-year initiative to expand and enhance digital humanities in the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum at Dickinson. Grant funding will be used to support: 1) a one-course reassigned time for the faculty chair of a digital humanities advisory board to guide the initiative; 2) a postdoctoral teaching fellowship to help introduce the latest digital technologies, link Dickinson’s efforts to a larger community of scholars, and assist our Library and Information Systems (LIS) staff in defining needed future capabilities; 3) competitive internal grants for faculty to incubate significant expansion of existing digital projects and/or pilot the use of new tools in teaching and research, including providing student-faculty research opportunities; 4) an intensive summer program to better train undergraduate students for robust collaboration with faculty on complex digital projects; 5) a virtual “digital studio” to provide accessibility, visibility, and outreach for the best work being done at Dickinson in this field; 6) workshops with representatives of all humanities departments and with key all-college committees to enhance their capacity to support and evaluate digital work in the humanities and across the curriculum; and 7) work toward defining learning outcomes expected for Dickinson students with regard to digital humanities skills.
Ruth and Hal Launders Charitable Trust. $12,500. (Paul Richards/Swim Coach and Aquatics Director) This grant is for the purchase of equipment upgrades for the Kline Center’s pool to benefit the Dickinson College community and its swimming program. Funds will be used to purchase lane lines, touch pads, a CTS timing harness, backstroke flags and lap counters.
The Max Kade Foundation. $12,500. (Kamaal Haque/German) This grant will support a Max Kade German Writer-in-Residence at Dickinson during the spring semester of 2013. This residency will enrich the cultural life of the college, engage students and faculty members with a practicing writer, and provide additional visibility for Dickinson’s global initiatives. German-Turkish author Zafer Şenocak is available and interested in coming to Dickinson for this opportunity. He is a prize-winning poet, translator, editor, political and philosophical essayist, and fiction writer. The spring semester of 2013 will be a particularly appropriate time for Şenocak to be in residence at Dickinson for a number of reasons. Professor Kamaal Haque will be teaching a senior seminar for German majors during this time. This is a capstone experience of German studies at Dickinson. The topic of the senior seminar will be Middle Eastern influences on German literature, a topic which Şenocak’s own work addresses. We are hopeful that he will also be able to make visits to several other courses, including Exploring German Cultures (German 210) and German in Performance (German 215). Finally, we look forward to having him deliver one public reading from his literary works, for which we will advertise widely on campus and among area colleges in Pennsylvania. The German department also will help him organize a reading tour at various colleges and universities on the East Coast if he desires.
Carlisle Area Health and Wellness Foundation. $2,000. (Joyce Bylander, Diversity Initiatives). CONNECT is designed to address these challenges by serving 20 at-risk, low-income middle school youth during a four-week summer program. CONNECT offers full-day programming that integrates health education and academic enrichment activities with cultural and recreational activities, opportunities for leadership, career exploration and community service. A $2000 mini-grant from CAHWF will strengthen the program’s focus on healthy teen lifestyles, by building on our programming last year that focused on nutrition, active and healthy lifestyles and the development of self-esteem which contributes to mental well-being and resiliency. Directed by Joyce Bylander at Dickinson College and first piloted with 15 youth in the summer of 2009, CONNECT is the result of a partnership between Dickinson College, the Carlisle Arts Learning Center, the YWCA, Carlisle Area School District and the United Way.
United States Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) Academic Engagement Program. $35,000. (Michael Fratantuono and David Sarcone). “The United States-India Relationship in the 21st Century: Challenges for Strategic Leaders; Opportunities for Cross-Sector Collaboration to Promote Sustainable Development.” The Dickinson Workshop on US-India Relations will be held on campus and include 12 to 18 participants who are international scholars, practitioners from the fields of business and civil society, and military and governmental personnel, plus some 10 observers. The workshop will contribute to outcomes that will be beneficial to the SSI, the USAWC, and to Dickinson College in four important respects. First, it will help deepen the ongoing academic relationship between the USAWC and Dickinson College. Second, it represents an endeavor that reflects the global perspective of each institution. Third, it will be an initiative that reflects the respective missions of each institution. Finally, given that it will deal with newly emerging issues in a novel way, it is expected to generate useful insights for leaders in the government, military, for-profit, and non-profit sectors.
Faculty Awards
Penn Humanities Forum – Regional Faculty and Professional Mellon Research Fellowship 2013-2014. $5,000. (Nicoletta Marini-Maio, Italian) “A Specter is Haunting Italy: Representations of the Aldo Moro Case in Film and Theater.” My project centers on the cinematic and theatrical representation of the Red Brigades’ abduction and murder of Italian political leader Aldo Moro in 1978. Propelling my research was the centrality and persistence of Moro’s spectral persona haunting Italian collective memory in several fictional venues. My work examines the ways in which artistic recounting has understood and processed political violence in conflicting narratives of guilt, innocence, disavowal, conspiracy, and reconciliation. I argue that these narratives are strategies by which cultural forces and social actors come to terms with their perceived responsibilities in the context of terrorist acts. I suggest that this process of self-reflection has served to rebuild a collective cultural identity, one which is purged of complicity with political violence.
National Endowment for the Humanities - Summer Stipend. $6,000. (Antje Pfannkuchen, German) “Tom Wedgwood and the Invention of Photography – A Reevaluation of the Earliest Photographic Endeavors.” In this project I will investigate Tom Wedgwood at the Wedgwood archives in Barlaston, UK, as a pre-photographer and one of the major importers of German ideas into England around 1800. In my dissertation I presented a novel perspective regarding the roots of the medium photography. The new answer I suggest is that photography needs to be taken seriously as a product of Early Romanticism, and of physical experiments and poetic imaginations surrounding electricity. Wedgwood was a friend of Romantic poets and scientists. He also conducted experiments and co-authored an article with Humphry Davy in 1802, which is seen as one of the foundational texts in photographic history. Wedgwood and Davy were able to produce images on a sensitive surface by the action of light. The crucial problem they couldn’t solve was the fixing of the images. I will produce a paper showing the influence of German ideas on Wedgwood’s thought, specifically before the background of these photographic experiments.
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art – Research Support Grant. £3000. (Antje Pfannkuchen, German) “Tom Wedgwood’s photographic experiments in their Romantic context.” This funding will support study of the papers and correspondence of Tom Wedgwood (1771–1805) and Sir John Leslie (1766–1832) in the investigation of the roots of the medium photography.
National Science Foundation – Penn State University Materials Research Facilities Network Faculty Fellow Program. $7,000. (Sarah St. Angelo, Chemistry) This program will provide access to the materials research facilities and staff for up to two weeks during the summer of 2013 to obtain electron microscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and other data for nanoparticles synthesized at Dickinson College.
Society for Community Research and Action―Community Mini-Grant. $1,200. (Sharon Kingston, Psychology) This project will target inhalant use among middle school youth in Cumberland and Perry Counties, Pennsylvania. Data from the 2012 Pennsylvania Youth Survey indicate that inhalant use among eighth graders in these counties exceeds statewide averages. The high rates of inhalant use in these counties is particularly concerning given the serious consequences of inhalant use which can include permanent brain damage (Ballad, 1998) and death (Ridenour, 2005) following a single use. The project represents the initial stage of a community mobilization effort to galvanize Cumberland and Perry communities to address inhalant use. This project includes partnerships with the Cumberland Perry Drug and Alcohol Commission, the Youth Advisory Board, and the Cumberland Perry Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition.
National Geographic Society. $19,630. (Maria Bruno, Anthropology/Archaeology) “Holocene Culture and Climate in the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin: clarifying lake levels and subsistence in the prehistoric Formative times.” This study will integrate paleoclimatological data generated from new cores taken from the small basin of Lake Titicaca (Lago Wiñaymarca) and archaeological data generated from previous excavations on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia to examine the dynamics of climatic and cultural change in the southern Lake Titicaca Basin over the past 4,000 years. This project includes collaborators from the University of California at Berkeley, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Duke University.
American Association of University Women – American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship. $30,000. (Sarah St. Angelo, Chemistry) “Bioreduced nanoparticles: Green synthesis and characterization of nanoparticles and platelets.” The proposed green nanoparticle (NP) syntheses will use lemongrass (LG) and ginkgo leaf teas to reduce metal ions to NPs via aqueous, nontoxic reagents and with low energy consumption for the synthesis. The complex leaf teas contain a mixture of chemicals that reduce and cap NPs, generating shapes/compositions that are difficult to predict. This work will explore the range of shapes/compositions available by varying reaction conditions, and it will work to identify the chemical agents in the teas responsible. Gold, silver, and copper have been used previously in the PI’s lab; however, palladium and ruthenium precursors will be tested as well. We have preliminary evidence that very rare square/rectangular platelets are formed with gingko tea and gold precursor – work will be pursued to identify the composition of the structures. Other platelet shapes will be evaluated for surface-enhanced Raman, a spectroscopic technique that relies on metal asperities to greatly enhance the Raman signal. Other metal and metal oxide NPs may be useful for catalysis applications, and the PI will learn more about how the NPs could be tested for catalytic activity.
Harvard University – William F. Milton Fund. $7,235. (Jacob Sider Jost, English) “The Magazine and the Economics of Eighteenth-Century Poetry.” “Poet” is more than a job description; it is an honorific title. Not everyone who writes verses is acclaimed as a poet. So who gets to decide? Where does poetic prestige come from? In premodern European cultures, the answer to this question was found at court, in the person of the king or queen or among courtiers, aristocrats, and clergy. Today, the power to consecrate poets has shifted away from political power centers to a diffuse network of academics, critics, publishers, foundations, prize committees, and members of the book-buying public. My research seeks to reconstruct the early eighteenth-century climacteric of this shift, focusing in particular on the invention of the magazine as a print medium. I will use historical and biographical records to track how poets earned money from their work during the period, and I will use these economic data to understand the changing channels through which writers sought poetic recognition and fame. This history will help us understand how we can most appropriately recognize literary achievement in our own time.
National Science Foundation RAPID Program, $25,000. (Ben Edwards, Earth Sciences) “Lava-Snow Investigation of 29 Nov 2012-ongoing fissure-fed lava eruption at Plosky Tolbachik, Kamchatka, Russia: field constraints for experiments and theoretical modeling of radiant and conductive heat transfer from lava to snow.” If awarded, funding will allow Edwards to conduct research a volcano in the Kamchatka peninsula that has recently erupted. Two trips are planned, one in January 2013, and a followup in August 2013. This is a $50K collaborative project with the University of Alaska - Fairbanks, and involves colleagues at the University of Oregon and the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia.
National Science Foundation. $161,571. (Ben Edwards, Earth Sciences) “Collaborative Research/RUI: Testing Hypotheses on Pillow Lava Production During Glaciovolcanic Eruptions.” Pillow lavas are one of the most common types of lava morphologies on Earth, yet compared to subaerial lava flows, the emplacement dynamics of pillow-dominated eruptions are less understood simply because of their relative inaccessibility. The main goals of this study are (1) to establish a comprehensive database of subglacial pillow characteristics for comparison to pillow lavas produced in other environments (e.g., marine), and (2) to test and potentially revise existing models for the construction of subglacial volcanoes. Modern field and analytical techniques will be used to document the three-dimensional structure, stratigraphy, and geochemistry of two different subglacial pillow ridges with excellent exposures: (1) aggregate quarries in pillow ridges on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland, and (2) natural exposures of Pillow Ridge in northern British Columbia. A broad-based research team has been established, comprising U.S., Icelandic and Canadian scientists working in full collaboration.
National Geographic Society. $19,840. (Ben Edwards, Earth Sciences) “Field documentation of water-ice-lava interactions in the 2010 Gigjokull lava flow.” The 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption made global news as ash from the eruption disrupted air traffic throughout much of Europe. The eruption had three distinct products: (1) basaltic lava flows erupted to the east of the main summit at Fimmvorduhals; (2) tephra erupted from the main summit vents; and (3) a lava flow that traveled down the edge of Gigjokull glacier. While the first two products have been extensively studied (e.g. Edwards et al, in review; Thordarson et al, in review), the Gigjokull lava flow has not been documented in detail. The PI and two student collaborators made two recognizance visits via helicopter and alpine trekking in 2011. These visits, while brief, discovered evidence for dynamically changing environments while the lava flow traveled along the edge and through the western side of Gigjokull glacier. We will spend 5-7 days in late summer/early fall 2012 to test hypotheses for mechanisms by which intermediate composition lava flows can advance through glaciers. Hypotheses to be tested include: (A) that lava flow paths are largely constrained by pre- to syn-eruption meltwater drainage channels; (B) that water-filled cavities can persist as lava moves through the ice; and (C) that evidence for initial water emplacement can by ‘hidden’ by subsequent subaerial lava flows that effectively bury earlier, subaqueous lava flow phases.
Earhart Foundation – Fellowship Research Grant. $4,000. (Nicola Tynan, Economics) “An Economic History of London’s Water Supply, 1582-1904.” This award provides funding for travel to London to conduct archival research for the prospective book that builds on Prof. Tynan’s previous research on the private water companies that operated in London from 1582 to 1904.