Arts & Science Alumni Organization funds faculty projects

Sixteen proposals receive funding

To recognize the ingenuity of College of Arts and Science faculty members, the Arts and Science Alumni Organization offers limited funding for research purposes, scholarship of teaching or professional development projects. Individual awards range from $500 to $1,500. The following faculty received these 2007 awards.

Anthropology

Frances Hayashida received a grant to help support one month of pilot research in Peru to interview north-coast farmers. At one time Peru’s northern coast was productive farmland that supported dense populations; now that same area is plagued with salinization and desertification, loss of dry forest and poverty. Hayashida’s research will observe modern behaviors and their material consequences and compare that to what is learned from archaeological excavations there. The goal is to understand long-term, human–environmental dynamics and possibly identify strategies for sustainable land use.

Biological Sciences

Raymond D. Semlitsch was awarded a grant to continue efforts in a new approach to ecotoxicology. Despite the effects of herbicides for weed control, herbicides enter surface water as runoff and pose threats to non-target organisms like amphibians. In Semlitsch’s project, a graduate and undergraduate student will complete a field study, focusing on the effects of contaminant mixtures on amphibian larvae placed in cages in streams in northern Missouri. With a better understanding of the contaminant effects in surface water, his team can help ensure that water-quality criteria more accurately reflect the risk and help protect aquatic wildlife.

Communication

With the funds awarded him, Jonathan A. Hess will be able to conduct in-depth interviews that examine how married couples talk to each other about sex. Research has found sexual satisfaction to be strongly linked to overall marital satisfaction. Recent data indicate that 15 to 20 percent of Americans have sex no more than once a month. Hess’ project will help establish a database of information on how exactly men and women talk to each other about sex—a topic that has had the benefit of very little research.

English

Elizabeth Chang received a grant that will fund the purchase of a dedicated, portable digital projector to be housed in Tate Hall. This projector will provide new ways of accessing the texts and concepts that students learn in class. After purchase of the projector, a faculty committee will work to create a database of visual images available to all instructors for use in courses.
 

English

William Kerwin requested support for a research trip to the British Library in London. Kerwin is writing a book, City Satire: Encountering Renaissance London, and with this financial support he will be able to examine several major manuscripts of satiric epigrams.The manuscripts are connected with the Inns of Court, the center of much literary and dramatic wit in the period.

English

Devoney Looser and George Justice were granted funds to help them in their editing endeavors. Their efforts will result in one volume of a 12-volume set on the works of 18th-century British novelist Samuel Richardson. The grant will allow Looser and Justice to hire an undergraduate research assistant and to pay for copies and microfilms of Richardson letters that will be necessary for their volume.

 

English

Nancy West will use her grant money to defray the travel costs for a doctoral student to accompany her on the English department’s first study-abroad program in Preston, England. The four-week course is called "Locating Literary England," and it is designed to have students read a range of British authors and visit the places where the authors lived and aboout which they wrote.

Geography

Yingkui Li received a grant to help him evaluate the impact of urbanization on surface runoff and water quality for the Dardenne Creek Watershed in St. Charles County. As conversion of land use/cover creates a greater amount of impervious surface that significantly increases the volume and rate of surface runoff and degrades water quality, urbanization presents considerable challenges for urban planners and decision makers.

Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies

Sam Bullington will use the funds he was awarded toward a return trip to South Africa where he will continue research to revise his dissertation into a book. Bullington’s topics concern nation-building in contemporary South Africa, analyzing the impact of government policy and law on everyday lives.
 

Museum of Art & Archaeology

Alex Barker will begin creation of customized MP3-based audio tours of the museum that can then be played on any personal audio device, including iPods, cell phones and notebook computers, allowing greater flexibility for visitors. Different series of tours can be created, by the museum or by others, to serve different grade levels, different languages or to support particular curricular sequences for classes at the University.

Physics & Astronomy

Using a CCD camera, Ping Yu will use his grant funds to develop an improved method for performing 3-D fluorescence molecular tomography with higher sensitivity and faster acquisition rates than is currently available. This work will be adapted for biomedical imaging.
 

Physics & Astronomy

Maikel C. Rheinstadter will use inelastic neutron scattering to study the dynamics of artificial membranes to better understand how molecules are transported through biological membranes. This work can then be applied to pharmaceutical development at the molecular level to optimize the transport of drugs through the cell membrane and into the cell. In the future, this kind of research will be conducted locally at the MU Research Reactor, which is the strongest university-based neutron source in the U.S.

Physics & Astronomy

Using a high-resolution Internet camera, Louis M. Ross Jr. will establish the first telepresence microscopy capability on campus. This camera will be controllable by the user/lecturer and will enable live demonstrations for undergraduate courses as if the students were touring the scanning electron microscope lab housed inside the Electron Microscopy Core facility. Students will be introduced to sophisticated scientific instrumentation they might never encounter otherwise during their time on campus.

Psychological Sciences

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and making comparisons between people with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Shawn Christ hopes to better understand ASD and the associated cognitive impairments experienced by individuals with the disorder. The resulting knowledge may aid in the development of more effective learning strategies for individuals with ASD.

Romance Languages

Michael Ugarte will use his grant funds to travel to Ghana to deliver a conference paper. He is writing a book on the impact of African culture in Spain the late 20th century and the beginning of the 21st; his research focuses on exile literature from equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony.

Theatre

Patrick Atkinson will use the grant funds to travel to New York City to visit several major theatre and art collections to do research on little-known images of everyday life in theatre on the other side of the curtain—images of the backstage area and crew people rather than actors onstage during a production. He will locate and catalog as many of these images as possible for use in a book-length publication.