2013-2014 Faculty Professional Development Grant Awards
Three 2013-14 Faculty Professional Development Grants have been approved for funding.
Patricia Loew, Life Sciences Communication; This is an opportunity for me, as a humanities scholar, to collaborate with scientists on a project to promote climate change literacy and promote activities that reduce climate change impacts, especially in Native American communities.
Melanie Manion, Political Science; I propose to develop a new large freshman course with new curricular materials to strengthen undergraduate knowledge about the political economy of China. The course would develop empirically accurate cases to augment lectures. In addition to cases, I propose to write an introductory textbook on the Chinese political economy.
Anne McClintock, English; I will train in the field of twentieth century Irish Literary Studies, focusing on writings about violence and its traumatic aftermath. This training will enable the development of an undergraduate course on Irish literature, violence and sexuality and a comparative graduate course on violence in Irish and South African literature.
2012-2013 Faculty Professional Development Grant Awards
Three 2012-13 Faculty Professional Development Grants have been approved for funding.
Lisa Gralnick, Art; To obtain training in a new state-of-the-art metal casting technology, called Vacuum Pressure Casting, in order to teach a design class in this process to art students.
Anne Hansen, Languages & Cultures of Asia; To develop two new interdisciplinary courses for undergraduates on Buddhist ethics of care, including an international service-learning course in Cambodia, through substantive reading in new fields of Buddhist social work and cognitive studies of medication, and feminist ethics of care.
Anna Wanner, English; To train in the area of computer-mediated communication, and develop courses and supervise dissertation projects that deal with the impact of the new media on the English language from a linguistic viewpoint.
2011-2012 Faculty Professional Development Grant Awards
Two 2011-12 Faculty Professional Development Grants have been approved for funding.Charles L. Cohen, History/Religious Studies; I plan to create an interface that consolidates visual resources for time-based art forms. Working with students and library staff, I will assemble a data base of artists, find images associated with their work, create descriptive texts, and develop a comprehensible organizational design. The resource will be used by students and teachers in the Art Department while the model will be available for use in related fields.
Maryellen MacDonald, Psychology; I will learn to develop computational models of human cognition, which have become a critical part of cognitive science research. I will take a laboratory class in models and attend other lectures and seminars about computational modeling. I will incorporate the computational modeling into my graduate and undergraduate teaching.
2010-2011 Faculty Professional Development Grant Awards
Four 2010-11 Faculty Professional Development Grants have been approved for funding.
Guillermina De Ferrari, Spanish and Portuguese; To train in the field of Caribbean visual arts in order to supplement my expertise on contemporary Caribbean literature and theory. I expect to develop two courses (a topics graduate course and an undergraduate culture course) based on aesthetic and political questions dominant in Caribbean literature and visual culture.
Stephen Kantrowitz, History; To retrain in Native American history in order to develop an undergraduate research seminar on the continuing Indian presence in the Madison area after removal; revise and refocus an existing lecture course to fully incorporate Indian history; and develop resources and questions for a scholarly work on this subject.
Mara Loveman, Sociology; To train in demographic methods to develop a new line of research on approaches to modeling racial and ethnic population change. This training will also facilitate collaboration with demographers on current and future research. I also propose to develop a new course on the politics of the census.
Basil Tikoff, Geoscience; To develop the syllabi for three new courses (The Science Illuminated series: Deciphering the past, Investigating the present, Predicting the future), which are designed to be a general science introduction for pre-service teachers.
2009-2010 Faculty Professional Development Grant Awards
Three 2009-10 Faculty Professional Development Grants have been approved for funding.
Aristotle Georgiades, Art; To obtain training in computer-aided design programs in order to enhance my classroom abilities in teaching Sculpture and Public Art.
Robert Howard, Communication Arts; To study the new forms of literacy emerging from digital media, develop a syllabus, and create a course Web site that would serve as the basis for a pilot of a new undergraduate Communication A course focusing on digital media.
William Jones, History; To permit a comprehensive revision of classes on labor history and to develop a cross-disciplinary and comparative perspective for my research on race and service in the post-industrial United States.
2008-2009 Faculty Professional Development Grant Awards
Six 2008-09 Faculty Professional Development Grants have been approved for funding.
Susan Friedman, English and Women’s Studies; To develop expertise in and develop a course for English and Women’s Studies on feminist theory about women and Islam and on women’s writing among women of Muslim migrant and exile backgrounds.
Stephen Hilyard, Art; To support the development of software skills that are specifically important to my teaching and to the development of a cohesive Digital Media program in the Art Department.
Lea Jacobs, Communication Arts; I will prepare an undergraduate survey course on animation that will cover the development of technology and techniques of animation, its evolution as an art form, and the historical and industrial conditions of its production.
Lynn Keller, English; To retain in environmental literacy criticism, I will I read widely in ecocritical theory; to identify works of literature to teach to undergraduate and graduate students in conjunction with that theory, and to select the books of poetry for focus in the scholarly study. I intend to write on experimental ecopoetics.
Caroline Levine, English; To build expertise in the rapidly emerging field of transatlantic studies in order to develop two new courses, foster a rethinking of the English Department’s curriculum, and contribute to scholarly and collegial exchange.
Yongming Zhou, Anthropology; To obtain a systematic training in environmental studies to help complete a cross-disciplinary book on “History of Road Construction in Chinese East Himalayas,” and to enable me to serve as a competent leader of the cross-campus and multi-disciplinary research circle “Biocultural Diversity and Socio-Ecological Resilience.”
2007-08 Faculty Professional Development Grant Awards
Five 2007-08 Faculty Professional Development Grants have been approved for funding.
Ivan Ermakoff, Sociology; To train in simulation techniques that will help me complete my cross-disciplinary book-length project on processes of mass-scale persecution, and develop a new course focused on explaining persecution.
Steve Feren, Art; To pursue research through three areas of investigation: workshops and symposia; visiting studios of designers and artists who are involved in this type of work; and researching the current methodology and technology used.
Rick Jenison, Psychology; To retrain in the field of neuroeconomics. I will spend the fall semester at the California Institute of Technology immersing myself in the study of behavior economics and decision theory, and applying this knowledge to the study of neural coding of decision-making in the human cerebral cortex.
Steffen Lempp, Mathematics; To develop course materials for a new algebra course Math 135 (Algebra for Middle School Teachers).
Jane Zuengler, English; The “Global Spread of English” course will be developed into a “global” experience for the students. Plans involve linking it with a course at a university in Morocco. Via videoconferencing, webcams, and web resources, students at both sites will share readings and discussion.