Faculty Awards
Deutsches LiteraturArchiv – Marbach, Stipendium. $1,600. (Marion Picker, German Dept.). “Poetic Justice: on the shifting role of literature in German-Jewish modernity”. This funding will provide partial sabbatical support for a two week research residency at “Deutsches Literaturarchiv” in Marbach. The last generation of German-Jewish intellectuals before the Holocaust anticipated central aspects of the debate ignited by Adorno’s post-war verdict on the impossibility of “Dichtung” after Auschwitz. In their theoretical and literary writings, representatives of this generation – Franz Kafka, Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Jakob Wassermann, Arnold Zweig, to name but a few – thematized law and historical injustice with astounding frequency. In five chapters devoted to individual authors and their works I will examine this phenomenon, the new relationship of justice and literature, of which both the rediscovery of the role of Law in Jewish tradition, defended against the assimilated generation of the fathers, and the growing disillusionment with German and Austrian society are partial explanations. The LiberaturArchiv’s manuscript collections include most German-language authors, including those of particular interest to Picker’s project. The outcome will be a first draft of Picker’s second scholarly book.
Pennsylvania Geological Survey. $18,871. (Pete Sak, Geology). Constraints on Regional-Scale Deformation Across the Pennsylvania Salient as Deduced from Geologic Cross-Sections. This funding will enable a field-based investigation across the Valley and Ridge physiographic province along the Susquehanna River Valley. Here the south flowing Susquehanna River is oriented essentially perpendicular to the east-west tending Appalachian Mountains. Folded and faulted Paleozoic rocks are exposed in the riverbed, road cuts along both the east and west banks of the river, in quarries, and throughout agricultural and forested lands of the greater Susquehanna River Valley. By constructing a detailed geologic swath map along the shores of the river, working with Dr. Nadine McQuarrie (Princeton University), the hope is to constrain the amount of tectonic shortening between Harrisburg and Williamsport. Ultimately, results of this mapping effort will be used to construct a balanced geologic cross-section.
Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development – Keystone Innovation Zone Initiative. $10,000. (Hans Pfister, Physics & Astronomy). “Design, Construction, and Preliminary Testing of a Dental Device for the Non-Destructive Removal of Temporary Crowns and Bridges.” Every year, millions of people in the US alone receive dental crowns or bridges. The procedure for the installation of a crown involves at least two trips to the dentist. During the first session the tooth is being prepared to accommodate the crown and the patient leaves the dental office with a temporary crown. At the second office visit this temporary crown has to be removed to fit, seat, and finally cement the permanent crown in place. Different strategies exist to remove the temporary crown, such as cutting the crown with a high-speed bur and prying it off the dental core with a Christensen tool, or removing the temporary crown intact with a manual crown bumper. The importance of removing temporary crowns intact is indicated by the dental industry’s creation of a pneumatic crown and bridge remover. This device applies a relatively large force over a few milliseconds to the gingival margin of the crown. However, a tooth that requires a crown is typically a tooth that is structurally compromised by large fillings and possibly even a root canal treatment. It is of paramount importance that neither a tooth nor its root is fractured during the removal of a crown. Therefore we propose to design and build a device that applies in lieu of a single large impulse a series of smaller, “gentler” impulses in order to reduce the risk of root or tooth fracture. During preliminary trials we were able to produce small impulses with force amplitudes of less than 10 Newtons and pulse widths of 1 to 2 milli-seconds. We will explore different mechanisms (pneumatic, electromagnetic and piezo-electric) to create these MicroPulses.
Society for the Preservation of American Modernists (SPAM) Publication Grant. $1500. (Elizabeth Lee , Art& Art History) “The Grotesque Body Meets Modern Medical Science: Ivan Albright Paints in Post-WWI America.” Best known for his lurid painting of the aged Dorian Gray as depicted in the 1944 Hollywood film version of Oscar Wilde’s famous novel, the American artist Ivan Albright (1897-1983) created dozens of grotesque figures – with similarly scabrous and decaying gray flesh – over the course of a long and successful career. While Albright’s art is included within discussions of 1930s art movements, such as American Scene painting or Social Realism, and was recently the subject of a major retrospective organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, scholars have yet to examine his art in a serious and thoughtful way – specifically with a focus on his central theme, the grotesque body – within a post-WWI cultural context.
Spitzer Science Center Cycle-4 Archive Program, $53,525. Catrina Hamilton-Drager (Physics & Astronomy).“Extending the Timeline for Angular Momentum Evolution: What Role Do Disks Play in Regulating Stellar Rotation at 5 Myr?" A question in the theory of star formation has been the evolution of angular momentum. Most mechanisms dispersing the angular momentum have involved magnetic breaking. A magnetic interaction between stellar magnetospheres and circumstellar disks - "disk-locking" - is believed to cause the spin down of stars during the pre-main sequence (PMS) evolutionary stage. A key testable prediction of the disk-locking theory is that stars with longer rotation periods should be observed to have infrared excesses, indicative of the presence of a circumstellar disk. But at what age do stars typically decouple from their disks and begin to spin up, conserving angular momentum as they do? We propose here to test this prediction using the young cluster NGC 2362 (age ~ 5 Myr). We will use archival IRAC flux measurements together with rotation periods that we have determined for PMS stars in this cluster to search for a correlation between mid-IR excess and rotation. With its estimated age near the empirically derived disk lifetime limit, our observations can constrain the timescale for disk-locking by comparing them to the results in Orion (age ~ 1 Myr) and NGC 2264 (age ~ 2 Myr).
The Research Corporation, Cottrell College Science Awards. $29,226. (Lars English, Physics & Astronomy). English intends to investigate the generation of lattice solitons or intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) in the macroscopic lattice of an electronic transmission line consisting of periodically arranged capacitive and inductive elements. Funds would support supplies and materials, faculty salaries, support for two summer student researchers during summer 2007 and summer 2008.
Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters. $4,000. Davis Tracy, WDCV FM "Producing Public Affairs Radio Programming, Keeping Local Radio Broadcasting Alive and Well". Funds will support a project to produce public affairs programming to be aired daily, year-round on WDCV FM, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The project will enable Dickinson to build a model broadcast program connecting a stellar academic curriculum and the on-air public affairs presence of WDCV FM. Funds will support students and training costs.
Loeb Classical Library Foundation Research Grant. $30,000. (Marc Mastrangelo, Classics). Funds would support the completion of a literary and philological commentary on the Psychomachia Prudentius (348-c. 405CE). Complete with contextualized citations to patristic authors, pagan thinkers, and their rich ideas, this volume will help establish Prudentius as one of the most significant intellectuals and artists of Late Antiquity.
Beinecke Library Fellowship. $3,800. (Wendy Moffat, English). This funding will support a month of research in the Beinecke Library’s Wescott, Wheeler, and Lynes collections to complete research for chapter 11 (“My America”) of the forthcoming biography “A Great Unrecorded History”: A New Life of E.M. Forster.
National Endowment for the Arts, Literature Fellowship. $20,000. Adrienne Su (English).
Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), $300,000. Christofilis Maggidis (Classics, Archaeology). A five year grant towards Dickinson’s continuing archaeological excavation of the “Lower Town” of Mycenae, Greece.
U.S. Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) Costume Design and Technology Commission Costume Program. $1,150. (Sherry Harper-McCombs, Theatre & Dance) “Storage Solutions – A cross-referenced database”
Mathematical Association of America (MAA) – (Nancy Baxter Hastings/Math & CS/Joanne Weissman) Project to conduct the PREP Workshop at Dickinson June 11-14 2006. https://www.dickinson.edu/departments/mathcs/MAAPrep/prepindex.html
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) We the People Initiative / Landmarks of American History and Culture: Workshops for School Teachers program. $149,000. (Matthew Pinsker, History). "Landmarks of the Underground Railroad: From Christiana to Harpers Ferry." Two week-long workshops will challenge the way 100 K-12 teachers have been presenting this elusive subject. Site visits integrated with documentary evidence will push participants to broaden their understanding of what did - and did not - constitute an Underground Railroad escape. Participants will discover that fugitives and the northerners who protected them were often as likely to fight as flee when confronted by slave catchers in the 1850s. Study of two nearby historic sites: Christiana PA, and Harpers Ferry WV will provide new insights into the aggressive operations of the Railroad and help frame the story of the coming of the Civil War. By the end of the workshop teachers will draft lesson plans that incorporate both episodes and offer a fresh approach to the study of the Underground Railroad.
Institutional Awards
PA Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) $600,000. (Ann Dysktra, President’s Office). “Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Research and Prototype Development”. A proposal for academic research and prototype development in support of a high-technology biotechnology business in Carlisle, Cumberland County, PA. This proposal requests $600,000 for the detection of CWD, sheep scrapie, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in blood or other bodily fluids using an array biosensor capable of multianalyte, multiplexed sample analysis of 15 or greater simultaneous fluorescent sandwich assays. The funding will support the development of a live animal fluid test for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie and BSE, as well as the evaluation of commercially available bio-markers for the array biosensor to determine their sensitivity and specificity for chronic wasting disease and sheep scrapie. The project will be undertaken at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - site of Hanson Technologies, Inc. offices, and will be supported by faculty and student researchers. William P. Hanson, Ph.D., President & CEO, Hanson Technologies, Inc., will serve as Project Director.
NITLE (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education). $25,400. (Todd Bryant and Raphael Alvarado, LIS). “Games and Simulations for Situated Learning the Liberal Arts Classroom”. Support from NITLE’s Instruction Innovation Fund (IIF) will support a conference to address the concept of situated learning, using games and simulations as the vehicle for extending this new pedagogy. We will introduce the learning potential of games and simulations in general, provide demonstrations of successful uses of games in the classroom, including hands-on training for the participants. Participants will experience the games and simulations from the perspective of the instructor as well as the learner. Finally, we will conclude with participants forming groups based on shared ideas for future pedagogical uses of the technology, including gaming across campuses as part of clubs or collaborative classes.
U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative Study of the United State Institute for Undergraduate Student Leaders. $390,990. Harry Pohlman (Political Science) David Commins (Clarke Center), and Brian Bartosik-Velez (OGE). “The United States through the Prism of Leadership.” A cooperative agreement will support a 7 week summer 2007 session for 22 student leaders from the Middle East and North Africa. The underlying premise of this Institute is that leadership is an insightful prism through which the student leaders can understand the United States (US). The Institute has two objectives: a) to elevate the leadership and collective problem-solving skills of the student leaders by fostering communication skills, “teambuilding” capacities, and management skills through a number of individual and group projects, and b) to provide the student leaders with a challenging academic program that gives them a solid understanding of the US. The goal is to give the student leaders a working knowledge of American history, society, culture, economy, and politics through lectures, discussions, site-visits, debates, workshops, peer interactions, study tours, and community-service/civic-engagement opportunities.
Bringing Theory To Practice, -- through the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) -- “Extended Assessment of Engaged Learning Communities.” $90,000. (Shalom Staub & Joyce Bylander/Campus Academic Life) This proposal requests funding for Dickinson to extend for two additional years its current two-year study of the effects of student participation in its First Year Student engaged learning initiatives. The project will examine whether variously structured learning experiences—learning communities (classroom-based, service-learning), experiential learning, and non-credit residential interest clustering—yield different impacts on student learning and engagement, mental health, alcohol use, and civic engagement over the short- and long-term. The project will continue to be directed by Shalom Staub, and Prof. Ashley Finley will continue to serve as the principal investigator of the research.
McCormick Family Foundation $5,000. This award provides support for the Keystone Phase of the Science Campus, which will provide new classrooms and laboratories for four programs at the heart of our innovative efforts in science: biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB), biology, chemistry, and neuroscience.
League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania - Citizen Education Fund (LWVPA-CEF) – Water Resource Education Network (WREN). $4,000. (Julie Vastine/ALLARM) “Carlisle Stormwater Education Project.” Stormwater education has become a growing concern in Carlisle, which contributes to degraded water quality in the Letort Spring Run, the Conodoguinet Creek, and the Chesapeake Bay. The Borough of Carlisle and the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM) will engage in a five year partnership to raise awareness in the Carlisle community to promote alternative water stewardship behaviors to improve the Letort water quality. This WREN grant will support the first year, which will set the stage for stormwater education and behavior change for the duration of the project, with activities including: 1) design and distribution of stormwater education and healthy stream habits materials (including movie theatre ads); 2) creation of a Letort Spring Run documentary based on oral histories conducted in the area; 3) business and community outreach; and 4) creation of the first Annual Letort Festival.
Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development – Keystone Innovation Zone Initiative. $10,000. Jennifer Halpin, Matt Steiman (College Farm). “Using Solar Energy for Greenhouse Heating on a Pennsylvania Produce Farm.” This proof of concept study will test the use of conventional solar water heating equipment for provision of radiant in-floor heating of a greenhouse at the Dickinson College Organic Farm in Boiling Springs, Pa. Supplemental heat is essential for year-round production of crops in temperate climates. While greenhouses are most commonly heated with gas-fired forced air systems, research at Rutgers University has shown that heating the root zone via in-floor radiant heat is significantly more energy efficient and provides benefits for disease management as well. Solar heating with flat-plate collectors is a proven technology that is widely practiced in residential and commercial buildings, resulting in significant energy and cost savings. Use of solar heated water to warm the root zone in greenhouses is as of yet an uncommon practice that may significantly reduce fossil energy inputs to the agricultural system. This project will test the efficacy of solar heated greenhouses in terms of energy efficiency, energy savings, and overall thermal performance. Solar Tech of PA, a new small business located in Camp Hill, Pa., will consult on design and installation of the system. The Dickinson College Organic Farm will promote this innovative use of solar technology in hopes of generating business for Solar Tech of PA.
U.S. Department of State, Middle East Partnerships Initiative (MEPI) Democracy Initiatives Program. Brian Whalen, Bryan Bartosik-Velez (Office of Global Education). Dickinson has been approved as partner in the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Democracy Initiatives Program as an “Implementing Organization” and/or sub-contractor. Our demonstrated competency and functional experience resides in “Program Area 5 – Developing Leadership Skills among Youth” and “Program Area 6 - Civic Education,” and potentially other areas involving youth at or beyond the post-secondary level. This partnership with the State Department approves Dickinson to receive single-source contracts/cooperative agreements for MEPI projects as they are designed over the next three years.
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. $25,000. (Neil Weissman, Academic Affairs) This award provides a planning grant for an initiative in environmental and sustainability studies at Dickinson. The grant will support the activities of a faculty/administrative planning group responsible for designing the expansion of our curriculum and allied activities in this area. Funds will be used to enable a working group of administrators and faculty from disciplines across the curriculum to be involved in two intensive planning meetings in the summer of 2007. In addition, funds would be used during the fall of 2007 to bring several consultants from other institutions to campus. The working group would then reconvene in January 2008 to draft a planning document with recommendations for moving forward.
Mesa Energy, LLC Energy Farmers™ Program. $20,000. Jennifer Halpin (College Farm). This funding will support the installation of a solar electric system for the barn.
Pennsylvania Dept of Community & Economic Development; Keystone Innovation Starter Kit (KISK) Program. $103,929. (Neil Weissman, Academic Affairs). Proposal requests funds to support the recruitment of a new biochemist faculty hire. Support is requested for faculty startup funds and to offset acquisition of new instrumentation/equipment to support her/his research. This project was financed by a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority.
Li-Cor Biosciences “Acquisition of LI-COR 4300 DNA Analyzer”. $52,152. (Michael Roberts, John Henson Biology). The acquisition of a 4300 DNA Analyzer will have a profound impact on the curricula of the Departments of Biology and the Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Dickinson College. Although we have made every effort to incorporate state-of-art methodologies and instrumentation into our innovative discovery-based courses, one major deficiency has been the lack of an on site DNA sequencing capability. We see the purchase of the 4300 DNA Analyzer as a means of providing students in a number of our courses and our research projects with direct experience in automated DNA sequencing. Finally, we see the new DNA sequencer as one of the foundation instruments for support of our efforts in a newly constructed interdisciplinary science center that will help integrate disciplines such as biology, chemistry, neuroscience, computer science and mathematics.
Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. $1 M. (Bob Massa, Enrollment Management) “Access Pennsylvania.” Dickinson College is partnering with Franklin & Marshall College, Millersville University, and Shippensburg University to create a college advising corps that will serve nine school districts and their eleven high schools in Fulton, Huntingdon, Juniata, and Mifflin Counties in central Pennsylvania.
The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, $5,000. John Miyahara (Office of Religious Life & Community Services). The Bonner Leader Program Enrichment Grant will support the College's Bonner Leaders Program by providing funding for an orientation program, a service trip, a senior Bonner intern, and costs associated with travel to the service trip.
George I. Alden Trust. $150,000. This award provides support for the Keystone Phase of the Science Campus, which will provide new classrooms and laboratories for four programs at the heart of our innovative efforts in science: biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB), biology, chemistry, and neuroscience. To honor the Trust’s gift, the College will name the large chemistry and BMB research laboratory in Stuart Hall the “George I. Alden Trust Research Laboratory.” This laboratory will have hoods for organic chemistry experiments in addition to benchtop equipment such as microcentrifuges, electrophoresis equipment, ovens, and a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) instrument.
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection – Pennsylvania Energy Harvest Grant Program. $250,000. (Ken Shultes & Becki Walker/Facilities Management) “Rooftop Solar Panel Array at Dickinson College.” This grant will provide $250,000 for a project to construct a 60.28 kilowatt array of photovoltaic cells on the roof of the Facilities Management building at 5 North Orange Street in Carlisle. The goals of this project are: 1) to reduce pollution and improve the college's environmental “footprint” on our local air and watersheds; 2) to provide an academic resource for the college and local community; 3) to create another example of college leadership in the area of community involvement, societal responsibility, and citizen leadership; 4) to provide an independent source of electricity for the college which will reap future financial benefits; and 5) to improve Pennsylvania's economy by providing work for local contractors and consultants. The project is expected to decrease Dickinson's reliance on fossil fuels by approximately 13 percent and to improve the health of the surrounding air and watersheds.
Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board/FY 2006 Grant Application to Prevent Underage and High Risk Drinking for Colleges and Universities. $3,940. (John-Paul Checkett, Counseling Services). “Effective and Promising Strategies to Reduce High Risk Drinking at Dickinson College.” Funds requested to support a) PLCB-sponsored training; b) an additional iteration of the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey which will be administered on-line; and c) in conjunction with our Alcohol Education Committee, an external evaluation of our current environmental management plan.
The John and Patty Colburn Family Fund of the Philadelphia Foundation. $3,000. Through the generosity of John and Patty Colburn, Dickinson Class of 1952, The Philadelphia Foundation recently gave Dickinson College an unrestricted grant to be used in support of general operating costs.
AMIDEAST/U. S. Department of State - Partnerships for Learning Undergraduate Studies (PLUS) Program. $102,265. (Brian Whalen, OGE; Bob Massa, Enrollment Management). In partnership with AMIDEAST (America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc.), Dickinson proposes to enroll 5-10 academically talented undergraduate students from the Middle East and North Africa who exhibit leadership potential in contributing to the economic, political and social development of their region. The project will be comprised of spring and summer 2006 ESL language components, cultural enrichment activities, and community service opportunities. AMIDEAST is a private, nonprofit organization that strengthens mutual under-standing and cooperation between Americans and the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. Every year, AMIDEAST provides appropriate English language skills training, educational advising and testing services to hundreds of thousands of students and professionals in the Middle East and North Africa, supports numerous institutional development projects in the region, and administers academic exchange programs.
Academy for Educational Development (AED) U.S. Department of State - Partnerships for Learning Undergraduate Studies (PLUS) Program. $175,000. (Brian Whalen, OGE; Bob Massa, Enrollment Management). In partnership with AED, Dickinson proposes to enroll 10 academically talented undergraduate students from the Middle East and North Africa who exhibit leadership potential in contributing to the economic, political and social development of their region. They will conclude their baccalaureate degrees at Dickinson.
Institute for International Education (IIE) Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship Program. (Leon Blosser, Arabic; Bryan Bartosik–Velez, Global Education) Funding will provide a Teaching Assistant in Arabic from Iraq for academic year 2007.
U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative Study of the United State Institute for Undergraduate Student Leaders. $418,000. Harry Pohlman (Political Science) David Commins (Clarke Center), and Brian Bartosik-Velez (OGE). “The United States through the Prism of Leadership.” A cooperative agreement will support a 7 week summer 2006 session for 22 student leaders from the Middle East and North Africa. The underlying premise of this Institute is that leadership is an insightful prism through which the student leaders can understand the United States (US). The Institute has two objectives: a) to elevate the leadership and collective problem-solving skills of the student leaders by fostering communication skills, “teambuilding” capacities, and management skills through a number of individual and group projects, and b) to provide the student leaders with a challenging academic program that gives them a solid understanding of the US. The goal is to give the student leaders a working knowledge of American history, society, culture, economy, and politics through lectures, discussions, site-visits, debates, workshops, peer interactions, study tours, and community-service/civic-engagement opportunities.
Student Awards
Student Awards
Kathryn Wasserman Davis Foundation Projects for Peace Initiative, $10,000. Raju Kandel ’07, Shalom Staub. “Interfaith Dialogue and Religious Understanding of Peace among School-Level Students, Teachers, and Religious Leaders in Kathmandu, Nepal.” This project aims at training 15 “Interfaith Student Leaders” from five different schools of Kathmandu, Nepal for the period of three months. Religious leaders of different faiths (Hindu, Islam, Jam, Christianity, Sikh, etc.) will be brought together to share their experiences of “Interfaith Understanding of Peace through Religious Lens.” In coordination with the Inter Religious Council Nepal, the focus of the discussion would be to raise interfaith consciousness among the religious leaders and their roles in educating youths in promoting religious harmony in Nepal. Fifteen school-level students (age 15 and 16) with diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural background from the schools will then be selected as “Interfaith Student Leaders” and will be provided with a year-long scholarship. The “Leaders” will visit various religious congregations and leaders to understand religious diversity in Kathmandu, and develop ideas to promote interfaith understanding of peace and reconciliation through a specific community event.