Funded Projects
| Project Title | Overview of the Project |
|---|---|
| Locating Digital Storytelling in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Curriculum: Panel Presentation at the Association of Writers and Writing Program’s Annual Conference Laura Thomas LSA - Residential College $1705.00 |
I am requesting conference participation fees, travel and accommodation funding from the CRLT Lecturers' Development Fund to present a paper at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs 2015 Annual Conference and Bookfair in Minneapolis, MN. AWP was founded in 1967 to support the growing presence of literary writers in higher education, and is the professional organization for creative writing teaching professionals and writers. I will be a presenter on the panel Locating Digital Storytelling in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Curriculum based on a proposal I authored. This panel of university faculty will examine how electronic media is impacting the teaching of creative writing. |
| Global Cinematography Institute Workshop $2000.00 |
The Global Cinematography Institute (GCI) is devoted to the education of advanced/post-graduate filmmakers and professional cinematographers in the traditional techniques of the trade as well as the newly expanding digital and virtual creative methods in the filmmaking industry. Each summer GCI offers an intensive two-week workshop in Los Angeles taught by film professionals, including members of the American Society of Cinematographers, an elite group of award winning cinematographers whose artistic output has been recognized by critics and audiences internationally. I would like to attend a training session at GCI in order to integrate new technological changes into my work as a filmmaker, as well as gain experience with developing fields of cinematography for inclusion in my future courses. I am seeking support from the Lecturer's Professional Development Fund to help defray costs for attending a two-week intensive during the summer of 2015. |
| Soccer: New Goals for the German Curriculum $1200.00 |
Sports has been a major theme on our campus: not simply because of the University's past and present athletic achievement but also because of the integration of what seems extracurricular (sports) into the curricular mainstream (LSA theme semester) this term. Last Fall, I proposed a session at this year's ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Convention in San Antonio (November 21-23, 2014.) This panel, which is titled "Soccer: New Goals for the German Curriculum" and in which I will serve as chair, was approved: other participants include Professor Stephan Schindler (University of South Florida) and the Goethe Institut Chicago. My funding application is to cover expenses to attend the conference. |
| Gross Loss/Net Gain $2000.00 |
This proposal seeks a grant from the Professional Development Fund in the amount of $2,000 to research and develop a project exploring tactics of preservation as they intersect with health services in Detroit. Given the city's shifting structure, it is apparent that planned downsizing might be the best strategy to accommodate its changes. I would like to research how we might use "shrinking" as a preservation strategy on a building-by-building basis: looking at how a range of building scales, from single-family homes to factories, might be strategically preserved through restricted occupation. The project begins with research—reviewing sites of potential preservation and understanding precedents of "shrinking" and re-use—to begin experiments in architectural form and methods of transposing new organizations onto old structures. Such formal inquiries begin to make demands on the value of preservation itself: what does closing down existing architecture in turn open up? Concurrent and related to this project of preservation is an investigation into public health issues in the city. As the infrastructures of the city transform, so too might its public services. This project produces two strands of inquiry: interpreting historical character while understanding new modes of collective and transient occupation with a focus on healthcare facilities. Development funds would go primarily towards research, documentation, and material production—the project begins with analysis but results in a novel design strategy. It is conceived as a teaching tool: a methodology of experimental preservation that will be used as a studio model and pedagogical approach. |
| Photopolymer printmaking workshop $1062.00 |
I am applying for this LPDF grant to attend a professional workshop at Zea Mays Printmaking studio in Florence, Massachusetts, on the topic of photopolymer plates. I will be teaching two art-printmaking classes at the Residential College during winter 2015 semester. I am interested in covering as wide a range of printmaking techniques as possible, while still maintaining the classroom as a non-toxic studio. I believe that, given current ecological and environmental concerns, it is important to shift towards processes that minimize use and exposure to hazardous substances. Under typical circumstances the last directive would unfortunately eliminate intaglio, as etching is a process which traditionally uses an acid to etch copper/zinc plates, along with the use of powerful solvents and tar-based compounds. However, in the last decade non-toxic alternatives, such as photopolymer plates, have emerged in the field of printmaking. These plates feature a steel-backed photopolymer plate with a photo-sensitive polymer emulsion on top. The only equipment and chemicals that this process requires is an exposure-unit (already available at the Residential College), and water for developing. There are no acid or toxic solvents required at all. The results are comparable to traditional copper plates. The use of these plates would allow the students a unique opportunity to explore intaglio printmaking within the parameters of a non-toxic studio. I would like to attend this workshop to learn more about the process so that I may be able to incorporate it into the curriculum for winter 2015 and future semesters. |
| Enhancing scholarship and collaboration through attendance at a scientific meeting Aki Morikawa Medical School $2000.00 |
I am requesting funds for travel to a scientific meeting (San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium) in December of 2014. This is one of the largest scientific meetings devoted only to breast cancer research and is attended by breast cancer researchers from around the world. Attendance at this meeting will highly impact my development as a breast cancer researcher. Practice changing study results are often presented at this meeting. In addition, there are seminars and lectures providing a general review of basic science, translational science, and clinical topics. Moreover, there is always an opportunity to foster collaborations with academic researchers and industry. Since my outside collaborators will be attending the meeting, it would provide me with a face-to-face time to follow-up on various scientific collaborative projects with others from outside institutions. Attendance at this meeting will not only enhance my breast cancer research endeavor and career but also will allow for professional networking in the field. |
| Impact of age and comorbidity on thyroid cancer decision making $2000.00 |
The incidence of thyroid cancer is rising and its aggressiveness increases with age. There is a recognized association between older age and worse outcomes. Surgical intervention remains the standard of care, in accordance with recent management guidelines. However, although age is not a contraindication to thyroid surgery, recent studies found that older patients with thyroid cancer are less likely to receive guideline concordant care, despite proven benefits. In addition, post-operative thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) suppressive therapy is now considered standard of care for high-risk patients with differentiated thyroid cancer and results in improved clinical outcomes. Nevertheless, due to its adverse effects especially in older adults, the degree of TSH suppressive therapy may need to be adjusted accordingly in this population. In summary, although surgery and post-operative TSH suppressive therapy are considered standard of care for patients with differentiated thyroid cancer, the factors involved in thyroid cancer management decision-making in older adults remain unclear. Our project aims to determine whether patients with thyroid cancer aged ≥65 years receive optimal surgical treatment, including referral to experienced high volume surgeons, through the use of provider surveys. We expect to find unique barriers in the referral of patients ≥65 years versus younger adults. We will also determine the providers' role in post-operative thyroid hormone replacement in older adults with thyroid cancer. We expect to find that providers will not factor age, comorbidities, functional status, and risks for complications in their treatment algorithm regarding post-operative TSH suppressive therapy in older thyroid cancer patients. |
| Attendance at the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting $1960.00 |
With the advent of the Ophthalmology Milestone Project, educators across the country are seeking new ways to better assess resident performance. Residents currently keep records of every patient seen on call in accordance with Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requirements, and these logs are potential sources of valuable information on resident clinical experience and progress if stored in an easily accessible format. An iPad application was developed to document information about each on call patient encounter in real time. The application was implemented at the Kellogg Eye Center starting January 1st, 2014 and preliminary data was gathered for 5 months. The number of patients seen per call ranged from 0 to 21 with a mode of 2. The average number of patients seen on a weeknight was 3.5 versus 9.5 on a weekend day. Additional data was compiled regarding types of consults seen, types of diagnoses seen, and duration of encounters. The digital call log application is a useful tool for ascertaining numerous parameters of the resident call experience. This will be helpful in assessing the call system as a whole for quality improvement as well as evaluating individual residents according to ACGME milestones. The project will be presented at the annual meeting of the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology in Tucson, Arizona in January 2015. This will be an invaluable experience to share our data and to learn more about the current challenges and innovations in ophthalmology education across the country. |
| Paper Presentation at a Professional Conference (SCS) Donka Markus LSA $1100.00 |
Travel to the annual convention of the Society for Classical Studies (aka APA) held in New Orleans, LA Jan 8-11, 2015 to give a paper entitled "Dialectic as autopsia: a lesson in Neoplatonic rationality" as part of a panel on The Greeks and the Irrational. In the paper, I discuss a fragment from Damascius' Philosophical history which captures a unique teaching moment from Late Antiquity (5AD). The philosopher Isidore triggered a life-changing transformation in the mind of the obscure Dorus from Arabia, who was a learned Aristotelian. Isidore revealed to him aspects of dialectic, which were until then unknown to Dorus. I will argue that despite the fact that Neoplatonism since the work of Dodds (The Greeks and the Irrational) had become heavily associated with the ‘irrational', late antique Neoplatonist philosophers themselves viewed their teaching activity as the pinnacle of rationality both in content and approach. The term describing Isidore's teaching of dialectic in this fragment is autopsia, a scientific term for disinterested objectivity that researchers since Herodotus had used to distinguish their empirical and data-based methodology from hearsay and myth. |
| Corsica Project, Residential College Martin Walsh LSA $1130.00 |
In November of 2013 I brought a small performance project (an interface of medieval and modern drama) involving of myself and three RC Drama students, to a cultural festival in Patrimonio, Corsica. This festival focusses on the traditional 11 November feast day of the town's patron saint, Martin of Tours. (See report in the Fall issue of RC News attached.) Our production was well received by the festival participants and got a very favorable notice in the local Corse Matin and the national Nouvel Observateur. We were enthusiastically invited back for 2014. |
| Bottom-Up Detroit Ana Morcillo Pallares Architecture and Urban Planning $2000.00 |
"Bottom-up Detroit" is a proposal which seeks support for research on small-scale, small-budget, and light-infrastructure urban projects in Detroit. The project evolved to the idea of "Placeholders" and the exploration of alternative uses of Detroit's available space through interventions that hold, denote or reserve a space for public use. The work has been developed in an exhibition titled "Place-holders" which have brought a different reading of Detroit's urban density through the analysis of eleven initiatives in the city which negotiate the unique spatial condition between the citizen demands and municipal regulations. The funding have provided an opportunity to visit, document, and analyze projects which are based on the urgency of solving the continual problem of open space in Detroit. The study is of importance to my own research and pedagogical ambitions. |
| Improving Student Pronunciation: A Two-Step Self Evaluation for Non-Heritage Learners of Korean Kyongmi Park LSA $2000.00 |
Project OverviewI am applying for support from the Lecturer's Development to support my participation in the 2014 Summer Program in Quantitative Methods in Social Research offered by the Institute for Social Research here at the University of Michigan.During this past year, I was awarded an Investigating Student Learning Grant by Fund from the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching to support my ongoing research on teaching and learning of Korean. Central to that project is to develop a two-step self-evaluation process to help non-heritage learners of Korean improve their pronunciation.Key to the project is collecting and analyzing data from student self-evaluations. To this point, I have collected and, with the help of Mary Wright of CRLT, analyzed data from two semesters and will be presenting preliminary finds in a paper to be delivered this November at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages annual meeting. Because of the centrality of data collection and analysis to this project I would like to attend the ISR's summer program in quantitative methods in order to improve my ability to analyze the data on my own and allow for the development of new modes of analysis as this project progresses. I have some background in quantitative methods from my undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan, but lack formal training in the application of these methods to social research of the kind I am now pursuing. |
| Funding for Two Conferences: Wwise software training at GameSoundCon and paper delivery at the inaugural North American Conference on Video Game Music Matthew Thompson Music, Theatre & Dance $2000.00 |
I write to request funding to attend two contrasting conferences on Video Game Music. The first conference, GameSoundCon, is the only conference that focuses solely on video game music creation and audio design. I am a gamer, lover of game music, and researcher, teacher, and writer about game music, but I have no practical experience creating it or practical experience imbedding it into video games. At GameSoundCon, I would receive training in Wwise, one of two ubiquitous software programs used to implement music into video games. This training would not only improve my personal scholarship and research, it would be something I could immediately demonstrate to my game music students in future iterations of a highly successful course I'm currently piloting, MUSPERF 300: Video Game Music. Wwise training would also provide a foundation of knowledge for an upper level course in game audio implementation I'm exploring to offer in 2015. The second conference is the inaugural North American Conference on Video Game Music. This is the first ever purely academic conference on video game music in North America. Continued in Project Objectives.... |
| A Self Directed Residency in New Mexico and Arizona to do Creative Research and Curriculum Development Relating to Native American Traditions and Culture Nancy Thayer Art & Design $2000.00 |
The Professional Development Grant will provide funds for a two month self directed residency in New Mexico and Arizona where I will be immersed in Native American communities allowing me to become more acutely aware of the complex and vexing challenges facing modern Native American societies. This residence will directly benefit my professional development as an artist and enrich the course content of my drawing and painting classes. Assignments that specifically refer to cultural concerns of Native Americans will be woven into the syllabus. The residency will also allow me the opportunity to develop new courses that would examine Native American attitudes, traditions and challenges and offer the students a means for greater understanding, respect and appreciation for these diverse communities. In a vision statement President Mary Sue Coleman wrote, "The University of Michigan celebrates and promotes diversity in all its forms, seeking the understanding and perspective that distinct life experiences bring." My immersion in national communities such as Hopi and Zia will provide distinct first hand experiences that I will share with my students and express through my own work as an artist. |
| Professional Development at the Americas Hepato Pancreato Biliary Association Annual Meeting Susanne Warner Medical School $2000.00 |
I am currently a surgical fellow pursuing additional training in hepatopancreatobiliary (HPB) and advanced gastrointestinal surgery. In this role, I am learning many complex surgical techniques and state-of-the-art treatments of pancreas, liver, and biliary diseases. In my role as clinical lecturer, I work very closely each day with residents and medical students. My goal is to teach them as much as I can both about HPB surgery and about general medical concepts and debates. The Americas Hepato Pancreato Biliary Association (AHPBA) is the flagship organization of HPB surgery. The annual AHPBA meeting held in Miami, FL each February assembles the nation's top HPB surgery experts, and they bring with them their latest data regarding surgical techniques and patient care. These data guide HPB surgical therapies around the world. The programming at this conference is excellent, and each year I leave inspired to learn and teach more, and I go home to make improvements in my practice and patient care based on data presented. The conference also offers instructional courses in techniques like liver ultrasound which can be a valuable tool in assessing hepatic anatomy. Additional instruction in this will help me both operatively and as a teacher in order to better explain and display anatomy for the students. I have submitted two publications for possible presentation at this conference: one is a needs-assessment for online education platforms, and the other is a surgical technique video. I am seeking funds to attend this conference and the preceding post-graduate ultrasound course. |
| Authenticity Reconsidered, II: Reconstructing a London Jewelers in the Shadow of the Rouge Plant Bradley Taylor Administration $2000.00 |
I am requesting $2,000 in CRLT funding to support travel related to a publication/ presentation project that will require primary resource research in Manchester, England. As a result of a previous research trip to London, I have learned of a repository in Manchester which holds the personal papers of Henry Ford's English agent Herbert Morton, the man who negotiated the purchase and supervised the dismantling of the Sir John Bennett Jewelry Store and Ford's other major English building purchase—two sixteenth-century stone cottages near Oxford that were "married" as a single building when Ford moved them to Dearborn. A colleague in the UK has traveled to Manchester and suggests that there is considerable material in Morton's papers to tell the "English side" of these purchases. I propose to travel to Manchester to examine these materials, thus allowing me to complete my research and write up the Bennett Store and transition to a book proposal to tell the larger story that stems from the problematic nature of Ford's preservation work. The project I propose relates directly to my teaching in the Museum Studies Minor (LS&A) and classroom discussions of the unique nature of original works of creation, the quintessential nature of experiencing those objects in person, and issues relating to originality and authenticity. |
| Teaching with Technology, in the Presence of Life's Challenges Gavin LaRose LSA - Mathematics $1375.00 |
Technology is used extensively in a wide range of manners both in and outside of today's collegiate classroom, with varying degrees of success and varying knowledge of what that success actually is. This grant proposal will allow me to travel to the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore in January, 2014 to organize a paper session titled "Teaching with Technology: Impact, Evaluation and Reflection," and to present a talk titled "Some Thoughts About Teaching in the Presence of Technology and Life" which I was invited to give as one of the recipients of the Mathematical Association of America's Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics. These will have a direct impact on my professional development, providing both visibility in the mathematical community and a forum for communication about and reflection on the wide variety of uses of technology to enhance student learning. |
| Diné Bizaad and English Composition $1512.00 |
I applied for the Lecturers' Professional Development Fund to establish an ongoing dialogue between my students in the English Department Writing Program and the Navajo (Diné) students Diné College in Tuba City, Arizona. Through an in-person visit and online student connection, I endeavored to establish a collaborative discussion of composition and craft, worldview and identity, and applications of academic writing in life. The collaboration ultimately allowed me to visit and speak with four Diné College classes and allowed for two conference calls between UM students and Diné College students. |
| To Map a Hidden World: African American and Jewish Cooperation During the Age of Jim Crow -- Research Trip for a Forthcoming Book $2000.00 |
For more than a decade I have been researching and writing a new book on forgotten precursors to the Civil Rights Movement in the American South, specifically on an illegal, racially integrated, precedent shattering—and previously unknown—college basketball game that took place in North Carolina in 1944. My book, titled The Secret Game, will be published by Little, Brown next year. Unearthing this story has required extensive and wide-ranging historical research, including site visits to more than a dozen different states, and scores of oral history interviews with elderly African American and white Southerners. This summer, however, I made a surprising discovery, one which has prompted this grant proposal. continued in Project Objectives... |
| Benton MacKaye and the Appalachian Trail $1150.00 |
In support of research on the history of the Appalachian Trail, this proposal seeks funding for travel to the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College. An interdisciplinary book-length history of the trail—drawing on planning, history, and environmental studies—is the ultimate ambition of this project. Specifically, this research trip will focus on the authorship of the article that first proposed an Appalachian Trail, written by a man named Benton MacKaye and published in 1921. Two overall questions will organize the research: 1) What influenced MacKaye in developing the trail idea along the lines that he did? His article, "An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning," described an exercise in community building that was much more ambitious than a mere venue for adventure. How did he arrive at this formulation, and how did he react to the subsequent watering down of his ideas? 2)How was the early trail work organized? In the years immediately following MacKaye's article, there was widespread enthusiasm for the project, but very haphazard organization of the monumental task of actually blazing and clearing the trail. How did these unfocused efforts eventually coalesce into the kind of multi-state effort necessary to build the trail? |
| International Conference AIDS and STI's in Africa - "Now More than Ever: Targeting Zero New HIV Infections, Zero Discrimination, and Zero AIDS-Related Deaths" Okeoma Mmeje Medical School $2000.00 |
The 17th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) is an opportunity to renew the global commitment to HIV treatment and prevention. This year's conference is an opportunity for the international community, and all Africans, to join efforts in committing to achieving an AIDS-free Africa with the participation of the world's leading scientists, policy makers, activists, people living with HIV, government leaders – as well as a number of heads of state and civil society representatives – will be joining the debate on how to achieve this vision. The objectives of ICASA 2013 are to: 1) serve as an advocacy platform to mobilize African leaders, partners and the community to increase ownership, commitment and support to the AIDS response; 2) provide a forum for exchange of knowledge, skills and best practices in Africa and from around the globe; 3) mobilize support to scale up evidence-based responses to HIV and AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis and malaria in order to achieve the millennium development goals; 4) act as platform to hold accountable all stakeholders to scale up and sustain the AIDS response; and 5) create opportunities to define priorities and set policy and program agendas to enhance mobilization and effective utilization of resources. |
| High + LOw Dens(C)ities Claudia Wigger Architecture and Urban Planning $1950.00 |
The proposed project, High + Low Dens(C)ities, aims to research about urban density, verticality, domesticity, urban infrastructure and ecology to develop a set of operative tools to be used in future design processes. Besides tackling urgent problems that come with an increasing world population the project will include collecting data and building critical analysis in various cities of different densities in order to fully understand the meaning of urban density and its conditions both quantitatively and qualitatively. The aim of the course is to evaluate which qualities of urban density can be described, distilled and transformed into concrete parameters to be transformed into tools to design lively, diverse, intimate and healthy communities. |
| Opportunities to deepen instructional knowledge, innovate course design, discuss pedagogy, and form professional connections at the 2014 AMTE Conference. $1540.00 |
The mathematical preparation of teachers is of national importance to our country's education system. I work as the sole full-time math teacher educator in the Department of Mathematics and my duties include: designing the math courses for future teachers, teaching the math courses for future teachers, and mentoring other instructors in teaching these courses. I seek professional development opportunities and professional connections to better equip me to serve these important functions within my department. The annual conference of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators is a meeting devoted to the bringing math teacher educators together for presentations, discussions, and collaborations. The program includes over 150 presentations, lectures, and open discussions on issues surrounding curriculum, pedagogy, and technology in courses for future teachers, and research about the mathematical education of teachers. The sessions I attend at the conference and the professional connections I make will serve as resources as I continue to design these courses, refine my pedagogical strategies, and train new instructors in these specialized courses. |
| Social Work in a Global Setting: Learning from the Hong Kong Model Katie Lopez Social Work $2000.00 |
The goal of this proposal is to fund a trip to Hong Kong that will enable me to learn about social work in an international context. During this trip I propose visiting the University of Hong Kong Department of Social Work and Social Administration, the Hong Kong Social Workers Association, as well as local social work agencies. My position as a lecturer at the School of Social Work centers on working with students preparing for, engaging in, or returning from international social work experiences. I am proposing this visit 1) to gain a better understanding of a social work education structure outside of the US, 2) to learn about the social welfare structure in another country, 3) to strengthen personal relationships with institutional and agency partners, and 4) to gather feedback about how the School of Social Work can better prepare students undertaking a global professional internship. The U-M School of Social Work has long prioritized educating our master students to engage and practice at an international level. This makes our school one of the few MSW programs that offers semester long, funded global field placements. As one of two individuals primarily responsible for creating, maintaining, and managing these programs I would greatly benefit from this opportunity to learn firsthand about social work in foreign country. As a licensed social worker this would be an incredible professional development opportunity. Additionally, the students I teach would also benefit from my enhanced understanding of global social work. |
| Presenting at the Conference on College Composition and Communication Convention in March 2014 and the American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference in June 2014 Stephanie Sheffield Engineering $2000.00 |
I am requesting funds to support my attendance at two professional conferences: 1) the Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention (March 19–22, 2014), at which I will be co-presenting the results of research conducted within a first-year, project-based engineering course, and 2) the American Society of Engineering Education 2014 Annual Conference (June 15-18, 2014), for which I have submitted a presentation proposal (co-written with two of my teaching partners) to share results of our research into effective teaming and collaboration in our co-taught first-year engineering course. |
