INSTITUTIONAL AWARDS
Mellon Foundation – Higher Learning. “Beyond the New Normal: Building a Health Humanities Program – Phase Two.” $1,014,000. (Claire Seiler/English and Alyssa DeBlasio/Russian) This grant will support a four-year project to build a health humanities program at Dickinson. This project aligns with and expands the college’s long-standing commitments to humanistic liberal arts education and community-engaged learning. It seizes the unique opportunity created by the earlier grant entitled “Beyond the New Normal: Disability, Literature, and Reimagining Social Justice” to build a health humanities program to which social, medical, and cultural constructions of disability and normality are foundational. The core aims for this grant are to: 1) create a lasting institutional commitment to, and significant faculty expertise in, humanistic and community-engaged health education; 2) develop a robust interdisciplinary undergraduate course of study that culminates in a health humanities minor; 3) center both the categories of disability and normality and the practice of community-engaged learning in undergraduate health humanities education; and 4) share with other undergraduate-serving institutions the intellectual ambition and strategic thinking required to create sustainable health humanities programs as well as the many rewards generated for students, colleges and universities, and communities. Funds will be used for faculty seminars, follow-on grants for faculty research and pedagogical innovation, two rotating 'term chairs,' partnerships with local health organizations, two symposia in Health Humanities & the Liberal Arts, and related dissemination activities.
PA Department of Human Services, Office of Child Development and Early Learning – Child Care Staff Recruitment and Retention Award. $11,610. (Regina VanKirk, Dickinson College Children’s Center)
AmeriCorps VISTA. $30,000. (Samantha Ha-DiMuzio, Center for Civic Learning and Action) “Partners for Campus-Community Engagement (PCCE) AmeriCorps VISTA Proposal: Community and Campus Leader Empowerment Advocate at Supportive Partnerships for Youth (SPY) and Dickinson College's Center for Civic Learning and Action (CCLA)” The goal of this VISTA program, situated at the intersection of two educational institutions, Dickinson College and SPY, is to develop the capacities of young people such that they are able to meet the needs identified by the Carlisle community. With regard to SPY’s project, the VISTA will invest in the growth and leadership of middle-school aged youth living in poverty through program development and delivery of a “Counselor-in-Training” initiative. As related to the Dickinson branch, this professional will build the institutional infrastructure of a campus-wide engagement program that will ultimately serve all of our Carlisle community partners tackling social issues across the region.
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Preserving Diverse Cultures Division – Strategies for Success. $8,500. (Yvette Davis, Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity, Lynn Johnson and Naaja Rogers, Africana Studies, Victor Kendall ’73) “Pan-African Arts Festival” The purpose of the Pan-African Arts Festival is to educate Dickinsonians and surrounding communities about the many dimensions of Afro-diasporic life, as well as welcome everyone to engage with the expanded campus presence of African, Afro-Latinx, Caribbean, Afro-European, and African American students. The themes of the Pan-African Arts Festival are as follows: 1) Knowledge Production and Culinary Artistry highlights the gastronomy and food cultures of the African/African diasporic world. 2) Black Voices as expressed through music. Such attention affords a recognition of Black musical heritage. 3) Black Visual Artistry accentuates a range of Black artistic production and fashion design. Dickinson College received funding from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Berger Family Foundation. $10,000. (Shannon Egan/Trout Gallery) This grant provides support for student interns involved with the Trout Gallery’s Culture Studio program, through which students from Lamberton and Wilson Middle Schools in the Carlisle Area School District explore the lives and histories of people from around the world through creative hands-on activities and discussions. Each session's cultural theme is inspired by art objects on view at The Trout Gallery and includes a field trip to the museum.
Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Charitable Trust (through Vanguard). $100,000. This grant provides funding to supplement the existing Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation endowed scholarship fund.
The GIANT Company. Sponsorship for Pan African Arts Festival. $1,000 in-kind. (Yvette Davis/Popel Shaw Center) This in-kind contribution of gift cards from the GIANT Company will support the Pan African Arts Festival being organized through the Popel Shaw Center that is scheduled to take place on November 15, 2025. The festival schedule includes a variety of activities including performances, food events, an arts exhibition, and a musical recital with guest musicians.
AmeriCorps VISTA Program. $30,000. (Sam Ha-DiMuzio, Center for Civic Learning and Action) This programming is being collaboratively managed with Supportive Partnerships for Youth and administered by Partners for Campus-Community Engagement.
FACULTY AWARDS
One Hive Foundation. $147,874. (Maggie Douglas, Environmental Studies) “Putting pesticides on the map for pollinator research and conservation: Essential updates and new applications for pollinator protection” Agricultural pesticides are a major threat facing native and managed pollinators. To effectively understand this threat and address it through pesticide reduction, conservation, and policy, the pollinator and agricultural communities need an accurate understanding of the distribution of pesticide hazard on the U.S. landscape. To meet this need, together with colleagues I developed a novel methodology that synthesizes public data to estimate and map hundreds of pesticide active ingredients and bee hazard at 30-meter resolution for the contiguous U.S. from 1997 to 2017. The proposed project would support a critical update of this pesticide mapping effort to incorporate new data releases, fill key data gaps, and estimate several new pesticide indicators. It would also support the generation of an ‘atlas’ of pesticide use for the U.S. that will make the data easier to use and understand. The improved data would support multiple partners associated with three ongoing projects to which I contribute: (1) Beescape and BeeSpatial, (2) a decision-support mapping tool for the Great Lakes region to inform ten federal agencies in their efforts to locate safe pollinator habitat and mitigate pesticide use in the region, and (3) ‘State of the Bees,’ a collaborative effort of the Xerces Society, Dr. Hollis Woodard, several state agencies, and the VT Center for Ecostudies to evaluate all 3000+ bee species in the U.S. for extinction risk. Together, these updated maps and their applications would represent a significant contribution toward pollinator health and ecologically responsible agriculture.
Loeb Classical Library Foundation – Fellowship. $20,000. (Andrew Dufton, Archaeology) “The Acholla Archaeological Project: Surveying the Urban Landscape of an Ancient Port”
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority – Energy Social Science Research Projects (Category F-2: Scoping support for new energy social science research areas: Community partnership building). $24,291 (subaward through Network for a Sustainable Tomorrow). (Heather Plumridge Bedi, Environmental Studies) “Community partnership building to increase access to affordable clean energy”
Archaeological Institute of America – Julie Herzig Desnick Endowment for Archaeological Field Surveys. $4,500. (Andrew Dufton, Archaeology) “The Acholla Archaeological Project”
UCSB Carsey-Wolf Center – Media Industries and AI Research Initiative. $8,000. (Greg Steirer, English and Film Studies) “Media Industry Development of Artificial Intelligence Legal Frameworks” Research questions: How are U.S. media companies and trade organizations—and in particular the lawyers that work for them—developing strategies (legal, contractual, managerial, and political) to respond to AI? How are entertainment lawyers in the U.S. conceptualizing and (through lawsuits and the threats of lawsuits) realizing the legal frameworks through which AI will be/is being adjudicated? What areas of law besides copyright are being mobilized by U.S. media companies and trade organizations to define the legal parameters of AI? My approach to answering these questions is twofold: legal and ethnographic. For the first, I will undertake normative legal research, include case review, a mapping of current lawsuits, and a survey of recent law review literature concerning AI. For the second, I will conduct interviews with entertainment lawyers from film, television, music, game, and (print) publishing companies, as well as at least one trade organization, such as the Authors Guild. This project is made possible by the UCSB Carsey-Wolf Center Media Industries and AI Research Initiative.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration – Research Initiation Awards. $149,983. (Olivia Wilkins, Chemistry) “Laboratory Investigations of Chemical Evolution in UV-Photolyzed Cosmic Ices around Young Stars” The connection between interstellar ices and planetary solids (e.g., asteroids, meteorites) is not yet well understood. Isotope ratios in astromaterials can be used to gauge how much processing a material has undergone, but to what degree isotope ratios in large organics are inherited from simple precursor ices has not yet been established experimentally. Such experiments are needed to distinguish isotope signatures due to physical processes (thermal and radiative processing throughout star formation) versus chemical processes (kinetic isotope effects). To address this gap in our understanding of chemical evolution in the universe, PI Wilkins is preparing to build a cosmic ice experiment that will study photolyzed ices (with infrared spectroscopy) at cold temperatures (10-150 K) and high vacuum. Organic residues remaining after the samples sublimate will be collected and studied with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Initial experiments will focus on developing the experimental apparatus and procedures using previous studies as benchmarks. Then, the experiment will proceed to address the chemical lineage of isotope ratios in cosmic ices and meteorite/asteroid analogues. Funding requested includes summer salary for Wilkins, summer research students, and academic-year research students.
Cornell University, Society for the Humanities – Society Fellowship 2026-27. $64,000. (Andrew Dufton, Archaeology) “The Neighborhoods of Ancient North Africa”
Engagement Scholarship Consortium – Engaged Scholarship Research/Creative Activities Grants Program for Faculty and Staff. $5,000. (Andy Bale, Art & Art History) “Blueprints of Belonging: the Art in Photovoice”
National Park Service - American Battlefield Protection Program. $3,799 (subaward). (Jorden Hayes, Geosciences) “Fort Halifax Rediscovery Project” In the summer of 1756, as the Seven Years or French and Indian War engulfed British North America, a detachment of Colonial Militia under the command of Colonel William Clapham erected a 160-foot square fort along the Susquehanna River near the mouth of Armstrong Creek, in what’s now northern Dauphin County Pennsylvania. Fort Halifax was one of a chain of Colonial fortifications built along the river as militia depots and refuges for local settlers, and it played its role in the history of border raids and skirmishes along the Appalachian frontier for a little over a year, after which it was abandoned, partially dismantled, and forgotten. The suspected location of the fort was preserved in 2006 in a new municipal park, but the precise location remained unknown. In 2021, a SHPO and National Trust-supported Juniata College field school was implemented that brought together a partnership of academic researchers and students, deployed American veterans, and the non-profit Friends of Fort Halifax Park. The field school encountered the first concrete evidence for the former location of Colonial Fort Halifax (1756-1757). This included portions of the fort’s defensive works, interior structures, and artifacts associated with both Colonial troops and apparent Native American visitors to the fort. The proposed project will use technological innovations including magnetometry, metal detecting, drone enabled infrared LiDAR imaging, and traditional excavation techniques to define the site perimeter and seek additional evidence for the interaction of Native and Colonial populations at the site. This information will be crucial to the future management of the park, to the public interpretation of the park’s heritage, and to a new and more nuanced understanding of the relationship between British Colonial and Native American populations on the Pennsylvania frontier.