Grants

Dr. Krishnendu Roy, Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, received a $12,500 award from Google for the project titled “Valdosta Computes v2.0.” This program will involve 10 area high school teachers in a four-day summer workshop that will help prepare them to teach introductory computer science and programming topics in their classrooms.  Additionally, a loan program will be established so that teachers can borrow Lego Mindstorms kits for student use. 

Scott Manley, Director of the Center for Business & Economic Research (CBER), College of Business Administration, on receipt of a $8,375 contract from First State Bank & Trust Company to conduct the “Annual Business and Real Estate Market Analysis.”  The analysis will provide a real estate industry overview at national, state, and county-levels based on data from 2012 and short-term projections of certain key real estate market indicators.  

Dr. Karla Hull, Academic Affairs, recieved a one-year $91,800 award from Georgia Tech, acting on behalf of the USG Board of Regents, for the project titled “eMajor Administration and Academic Coordination.”  This funding, which originates with the U.S. Department of Education under the College Access Challenge Grant Program, will support an administrative structure for development of additional online undergraduate collaborative programs and degree offerings across the USG that will target adult and military students.

Dr. Leslie S. Jones, Department of Biology, and co-project director Dr. Mark Groszos, Department of Physics, Astronomy & Geosciences, on receipt of an award of $24,960 from the University of Georgia for the project titled “Enhancing Teacher Content Knowledge through Inquiry Based Field Activities – Phase II.”  This U.S. Department of Education funded project extends opportunities for local teachers to participate in field studies and laboratory activities to learn about Georgia’s geologic history and to apply this new knowledge in the K-12 curriculum. 

Dr. Kathleen Lowney, Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal Justice, received continued funding in the amount of $19,950 for 2013 for the editorial office for Teaching Sociology, a refereed journal of the American Sociological Association.  

Mark Williams, Coordinator of Alcohol & Other Drug Education, received continued funding from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety for 2012-2013. This $7,370 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation will support activities to educate students and faculty about alcohol and highway safety and to increase seat belt use by campus drivers. Programs are offered through a peer educator model. 

Dr. Brian Gerber, Dewar College of Education, Dr. Thomas Manning, Department of Chemistry, received a $1,154,295 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the “Valdosta State University Noyce Scholarship Program.  Through this five-year project, 20 academically talented but financially needy undergraduate science majors who might not have otherwise considered a career in K-12 education will be recruited into the teaching profession.  The Noyce scholars will enter the program through a two-part summer science internship experience, which begins after their sophomore year, with the scholarship phase of the program beginning in their junior year.  Program participants, will receive up to $12,000 per year in scholarships while earning a bachelor’s degree with a science major and will obtain teaching certification through a post-baccalaureate program. It is expected that program graduates will teach at high-need middle grades and secondary education schools and that they will be retained in the teaching profession beyond the service repayment period. 

Dr. Mark Blackmore, Department of Biology, received continued funding for the West Nile Virus research during 2012-13 in the amount of $79,684 from the Lowndes County Board of Health. The research team will continue to sample adult mosquito populations in Valdosta and Lowndes County to determine genus and species, and coordinate testing of the samples for the presence of West Nile Virus.

Jacque Wheeler, Department of Theatre,received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Education in American Communities (AEAC) program, for the Valdosta State University College of the Arts Youth Outreach project. This grant will assist VSU in expanding its outreach activities for youth to increase understanding of the arts. Activities will include a touring Theatre for Youth production and a series of Youth Symphonies and a Family Concert performed by the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra, for which Dr. Doug Farwell, Department of Music, serves as Executive Director. These performances will be complemented with pre- and post-performance educational materials for the classroom and learning activities involving interaction with actors and musicians. An estimated 8,500 youth in South Georgia/North Florida are expected to be exposed to the performing arts during the 2102-2013 academic year.

Dr. Dorothy Dye, Division of Social Work, received additional funding from the South Georgia Regional Commission for Fiscal Year 2012-2013 for continued operation of My Friend’s House Alzheimer’s Adult Day Care Program. The $72,802 award, originating from federal and state sources, will allow continued provision of services to adults with Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias to help them function at the highest degree possible and prevent or delay their institutionalization. The program also provides respite for caregivers, allowing them, in some cases, to continue working.

Dr. Paul Vincent, Department of Physics, Astronomy & Geosciences, received a $1,265 task order award under a master agreement with South Georgia Regional Commission for additional Global Positioning System (GPS) survey work. This task order requires the capture of the location of each identifiable above-ground utility feature within the VSU campus to be completed within the next month.

Dr. Bob Gannon, Department of Biology, received a grant from the American Association of Colleges and Universities. This $850 competitive award will support a seminar on Promoting Involvement in Engaged Service Learning/Civic Engagement Among Students from STEM Disciplines. Traditionally, service-learning and civic engagement have not been as much a part of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) culture as they have been in other disciplines. Faculty and administrators from STEM disciplines, staff from other campus offices, and community representatives will meet for a day in September to identify opportunities and mechanisms for STEM students to regularly participate in service-learning and civic engagement and to begin acculturating these practices into the STEM curriculum.

Dr. Jerry Merwin, Director of the Office of Adult Degree Completion & Military Programs (AMP), and Dr. Mary Ellen Dallman, Department of Early Childhood & Special Education, received renewal funding for the Adult Learning Consortium project for 2012-2013. This $156,329 grant from the U.S. Department of Education College Access Challenge Grant program through Georgia Tech, acting as fiscal agent for the Board of Regents, focuses on improving implementing consortial courses, certificates, programs, and degrees which promote college completion by adult and military personnel; implementing a range of Prior Learning Assessment (PLA choices); and expanding, strengthening, and disseminating the work of the USG Adult Learning Consortium.

Dr. Jerry Merwin, Director of the Office of Adult Degree Completion & Military Programs (AMP), received renewal funding for operation of VSU’s Military Outreach Center. This $10,000 award from Georgia Tech acting as fiscal agent for the Board of Regents, provides funds to staff the center to provide services to active military and veterans who wish to complete degree programs. The program is funded by the U.S. Department of Education College Access Challenge Grant program.

Deborah Davis, VSU Archives and Special Collections, received a $1,250 from the Georgia Humanities Council for the project Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War. Funds will be used to digitize a hand-written Civil War diary from the Frank Roberson Reade archives collection, “In the Saddle with Stuart,” by Frank S. Robertson for Frank Robertson Reade, who was the third president of VSU. This manuscript will be one primary source introduced for discussion at one of five public programs offered between August and November, 2012. Dr. Chris Meyers, Department of History, is serving as the project scholar and will receive an honorarium directly from the Georgia Humanities Council for his contribution

Dr. Julie Lee, Dewar College of Education, received renewed funding ($50,000) for the Babies Can’t Wait project for 2012-2013. Through this project, funded by the Georgia Department of Community Health with the U.S. Department of Education, VSU faculty provide technical assistance and training to personnel who provide services to Georgia’s infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families. Babies Can’t Wait is one of VSU’s longest running grant programs.

Dr. Bob Gannon, Department of Biology, received funding for FY2013 for the project titled "Evaluation of Servier Compounds for Efficacy in Modulating Hamster Circadian Activity Rhythms" in the amount of $77,785. This project, funded by Institut de Recherches Servier of Suresnes, France, is now in its sixth year and continues to providing valuable data for drug development.

Frank Barnas, Department of Communication Arts on receipt of additional funding ($4,200) from the City of Valdosta for continued programming of the government access channel, Metro Valdosta 17, for the 2012-2013 fiscal year. Channel 17 provides valuable information to area residents about upcoming public events and activities.

Dr. Donna Sewell, Department of English, received a $20,000 award from the U.S. Department of Education through the University of California Berkeley for the Blackwater Writing Project., The National Writing Project: 2012-2013 Teacher Leadership Development Seed Grant will support teacher participants from Valdosta City Schools in the 2013 Summer Institute where they enhance their knowledge, understanding, and teaching of English language arts to increase quality of student literacy and writing.

Dr. Mark Groszos, Department of Physics, Astronomy & Geosciences, received a $52,984 subaward from the University of Georgia under the US Department of Education funded Improving Teacher Quality program. Groszos, along with Dr. Sandy Jones and Dr. Catherine Bush of the Department of Biology, will lead a seven-day field trip in June 2012 for at least twenty-two teacher participants, primarily from Brooks County, to study the natural history of Georgia. Through inquiry-based activities, the teachers will increase their knowledge of geology, botany, and ecology. They will collect display and student samples of rocks and will design new curriculum for their students to address Georgia Performance Standards.

Dr. Gretchen Bielmyer, Department of Biology, received renewal funding of $4,451 from the University of North Florida for participation in the fifth State of the [St. Johns] River monitoring and reporting project funded by the City of Jacksonville. Bielmyer will be updating nitrogen, phosphorous, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, and turbidity measurements and preparing a section of the annual report dealing with biological/toxicological effects.

Dr. Matthew Waters, assistant professor of Biology, received a $5,000 award from the VSU Foundation, funded by Georgia Power, for the project titled The Impacts of Land Used and River Inputs on the Primary Producer Ecology of Lake Seminole, Georgia: Evidence from Lake Sediments. The goal of this research project is to reconstruct the lake’s primary producer ecology and inputs of materials from the lake’s two distinct watersheds. It is hoped that sediment analyses will help identify conditions under which Hydrillaa verticillata was introduced into the lake and shed light on the role various inputs from the rivers feeding the lake played, and continue to play, in the proliferation of this nuisance aquatic plant.

Dr. Krishnendu Roy, assistant professor of Computer Science, received an award of $12,000 from Google, Inc. for a CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) project, Valdosta Computes. The goal of the project is to prepare five middle and high school technology or science teachers to introduce computing in their schools. This program builds on Roy’s prior years’ success in developing on-campus summer computing camps for middle and high school students.

Dr. Matthew Waters, assistant professor of Biology, received a one-month visiting scientist appointment at the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center/ICHAUWAY in Newton, Georgia.

Dr. James Nienow, professor of Biology, received $217,612 subaward from Florida State University for his participation in the research project Deep-C: Deepsea to Coast Connectivity in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. This research is funded by BP and is a collaborative effort of numerous academic institutions to assess the Gulf of Mexico marine ecosystem following the BP oil spill. Specifically, over a three year period Nienow’s team will be responsible for the analysis of the pelagic diatom assemblages present in the vicinity of De Soto Canyon which will involve collection of numerous samples and identification of diatoms through light and scanning electron microscopy.

Dr. Kathleen Lowney, Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminal Justice, received continuation of funding for 2012 for the editorial office for Teaching Sociology, a refereed journal of the American Sociological Association.

Dr. Catherine Oglesby, Department of History, received a $2,000 grant from the Georgia Humanities Council for the project “Dimensions of Personal Politics in the Deep South: Georgia Women Review Their Lives.” With collaborators Dr. Kate Warner and Dr. Martha Laughlin of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program, Oglesby will provide a venue for senior aged women from diverse backgrounds throughout Georgia to share their life stories through guided interviews. Objectives of the project include understanding and explaining the ways women from diverse backgrounds (racial, ethnic, religious, economic, and political) experienced and coped with the tension between public and private life, especially during times of intense cultural and social change; the effect of values associated with southern identity; and the ways in which women experienced the impact on themselves and their families of historical events, including the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Women’s Movement. The final outcome of the project will be a book that falls in the genre of collective biography, and the collected life stories will be archived for future use by researchers.

Publications

Professor's Book on Radio in the Movies Published

What began as a presentation about radio in film at a conference has led VSU Associate Professor Dr. Laurence Etling to have his first book published. Radio in the Movies: A History and Filmography, 1926-2010 was recently published by McFarland & Company, Inc., a leading publisher of non-fiction and academic books. A former disc jockey for more than 15 years, Etling became interested in movies that featured radio stations and DJs a few years ago. His curiosity led him to research how many movies actually included radio for more than a year. Read more>

Dr. Susan Wehling published "Post script" about the community practicum program ten years later and also enjoyed the first and only reprint of an earlier article "Service-Learning and Foreign Language Acquisition: Working with the Migrant Community," in Dimension 2011 of the Southern Council of Language Teachers, ed. by Carol Wilkerson and Peter Swanson. Wehling said, "Our community practicum outreach program is a national model and currently in vogue as the second language acquisition field delves into the development of cultural competency."

Dr. David Buehrer, professor of English, recently published an article titled "Garcia Marquez's 'Partial Magic': One Hundred Years of Solitude in Nabokov's Wonderland" in the anthology Critical Insights on One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Carcia Marquez, Ed. Ilan Stavans. Pasadena, CA: Salem P, 2011. 144-68.

VSU student Lacey Taylor, authored an essay titled, “It’s Not Just a Bike,” which was chosen for publication by textbook publisher Bedford-St. Martin’s Press for the ninth edition of The Bedford Guide for College Writers. The essay will appear as a sample student essay in the chapter titled, “Proposing a Solution.” Taylor’s essay was written during fall 2008 as an assignment for her ENGL 1101 class. Her instructor, Roy Pace, asked students to propose a solution to a problem students faced. Her essay suggests ways to protect bicycles on campus. Impressed by her essay, Pace suggested Taylor, who is a third-year student majoring in Mass Media, submit the article for publication.

Dr. Len Weld, department head for accounting and finance, published an article titled, “The Battle over the Current Deduction of Takeover Defense Expenses Continues,” in the April edition of Taxes – The Tax Magazine.

The Journal of Real Estate Literature will publish an article, titled "A Review of Service Quality Research in Real Estate," which was authored by Dr. Tim Reisenwitz, marketing professor, and Dr. Vicky Seiler, John Hopkins University.