Awards Archive

The Charles R. Wood Foundation has awarded St. Lawrence University a grant to launch, in partnership with SUNY Potsdam, a youth literacy initiative.  Entitled "Branching Out with Books," the project will promote high quality, targeted early literacy education in the North Country. The project will enable faculty, staff, and students at St. Lawrence University and SUNY Potsdam to address a key community need of the North Country - that of increasing literacy.

Literacy of New York, a nonprofit organization that provides adult basic literacy and English language tutoring in St. Lawrence Country, estimates "that nearly one in five adults in St. Lawrence Country has trouble reading the newspaper, cannot fill out a job application, and cannot add up the prices of several purchases."  To combat this hardship, "Branching Out with Books" will build upon small literacy outreach programs already in place at Jefferson Elementary school in Massena and Hermon-DeKalb Central School and establish a new reading program at the Akwesasne Library on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation. Graduate students and undergraduates from both universities will travel to the program sites weekly to serve as after-school reading mentors; engage children in literacy activities using books, art materials, and other resources; and provide the children with books they can take home to read in their families.  The project will directly benefit over 50 children weekly, with the potential to have a positive impact on hundreds more.

"Branching Out with Books" will be directed by Brenda Papineau, Director of Community Based Learning Programs at St. Lawrence, and Tina Wilson Bush, Director of the Rebecca V. Sheard Literacy Center at SUNY Potsdam. 

 

In June 2011, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Department Erik A. Backlund was awarded a new grant for his project entitled "Community Well-Being, Satisfaction, and Attachment in the Adirondacks." The study's main objective is to develop a typology of communities to clarify for the public and policy-makers appropriate community development responses to the changing social landscape of the Adirondacks and New York's Northern forest.

Backlund will investigate questions of population and property value gains, employment opportunities, and economic opportunity to determine if environmental protections afforded by the public ownership of land and the land-use controls are at the root of the region's problems. He will also analyze whether global and national economic changes are impacting Adirondack Park communities and causing the variations in socio-economic well-being and community satisfaction in the region.

Professor Backlund's study is designed to inform policy discussions and to develop a better understanding of the effects of natural amenities and related development on socio-economic well-being at the community level and residents' perceptions of community satisfaction and attachment.

Assistant Professor of Biology Susan Willson was recently awarded a 2011 T. Urling and Mabel Walker Research Fellowship for her research project on "Bird-Friendly Hayfields as Refugia for North Country Grassland Birds." The purpose of the Walker Fellowship program is to encourage faculty from the North Country Region's 11 institutions of higher education to undertake research on critical issues confronting local communities and to make recommendations for possible solutions. Dr. Willson's project examines the impact of modern agricultural practices on the nesting success of native grassland birds, such as bobolinks, eastern meadowlarks, and Savannah sparrows, who depend on natural grasslands in Northern New York for habitat.

Willson and her students propose that nest success may remain above replacement rate (and therefore contribute to a net positive population gain) even if farmers hay earlier, in a mid-season hay, when compared with the later date of after August 15. They also suggest that family farms, which utilize less mechanized forms of haying are inherently different from large-scale modern practitioners that utilize much larger and faster machinery; at high speeds, this machinery creates an upwards vacuum effect on a field that sucks up everything in its path. Smaller-scale machinery allows fledged birds to flee in front of approaching machinery. Professor Willson plans to work on this project several successive summers to gather enough data that will help the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation and other agencies develop and implement policies that will help threatened and endangered grassland birds.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Richard Sharp is the Principal Investigator of a new Major Research Instrumentation grant award from the National Science Foundation. The grant was funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and will enable Sharp and a team of colleagues from both Computer Science and Biology to purchase a high performance computer and a microarray scanner. Together, the two instruments will enrich more than ten distinct research programs at St. Lawrence, including clarifying the role of DNA structure in gene transcription, understanding microbial communities through the phylogenetic analysis of gene sequences, examining patterns of gene expression during anoxia, and developing statistical methods to test significance in multivariate biological field data.

Dr. Marilyn Mayer has received an award from the New York Power Authority's St. Lawrence River Research and Education Fund to launch a project aimed at assessing mercury levels in wetland wildlife in the St. Lawrence River Valley region. With more than 20 years of experience conducting aquatic research, Dr. Mayer will collaborate with a student researcher to collect samples from tree swallows, Blandings turtles, bull frogs, and bass. All samples will be analyzed for mercury at St. Lawrence in order to assess the degree to which mercury impacts our local wetland wildlife and to increase understanding of organism and wetland traits that increase the impact of mercury on wildlife. Specific consideration will be given to the effects wetland origin (natural vs. created), water level management, wetland age, and wetland type (riparian, marsh, etc.) have on mercury levels and their impact on wildlife.

Professor of Government Alan Draper has been appointed a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Innsbruck in Austria during the spring 2011 semester. A member of the faculty since 1983, Professor Draper is the co-author of the 2007 book The Good Society: An Introduction to Comparative Politics and The Politics of Power: A Critical Introduction to American Government. He is also the author of A Rope of Sand: The AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education, 1955-68 and Conflict of Interests: Labor and the Civil Rights Movement. During his time at the University of Innsbruck, he will teach two courses: "Introduction to American Politics" and "Europe and the U.S.: Complements or Contrasts?" He will also conduct research on immigration, assimilation, and the different occupational niches immigrant groups have cultivated in Europe, and how these patterns compare with immigration to the U.S.

Two St. Lawrence University students have received awards from the 2010 Davis Projects for Peace competition to pursue projects constructed around their individual definitions of peace and their commitment to doing something important in their home countries. Brijlal Chaudhari '10 of Nepal will utilize his grant award of $10,000 to build a library for a school in a rural community and classrooms for a second school in the same region. During his first year on the St. Lawrence campus, Brijlal founded a student organization called "Literacy for Nepal," through which he and his fellow club members raised $8,000 to build a library for a school in Nichuta, Nepal, that will open this May. The second Projects for Peace award has been awarded to Melih Cokaygil '11 of Turkey. Melih will use his grant to bring Turkish and Kurdish children and university students together through a summer program designed to cultivate both cultural understanding and broader national dialogue.

In March 2010, a new X-ray diffraction system (XRD) arrived at St. Lawrence. Two grants, one from the George I. Alden Trust of Wooster, MA and one from the J. M. McDonald Foundation of Evergreen, CO, enabled the Department of Geology to acquire this important analytical tool that will replace an earlier model that has been on the SLU campus for 40 years! Because the XRD is a cornerstone equipment item within a comprehensive undergraduate geology curriculum, it was urgent to raise the funds to purchase a modern system. The XRD is extremely useful in helping scientists determine the composition and identity of natural and synthetic materials. It will be used at nearly all levels of the geology curriculum, from mid-level courses and labs, to higher-level research methods courses, to culminating independent senior-year experience (SYE) research projects, and student-faculty collaborative research. More than 60 geology students are expected to use the XRD annually through their coursework and mentored research. The XRD will also be used by faculty and students in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics.

In Chemistry, Associate Professor Samantha Glazier is a co-principal investigator on a new award from the NSF. The project, entitled "Major Research Instrumentation (MRI): Acquisition of an Isothermal Titration Calorimeter," is a partnership with investigators at nearby State University of New York at Potsdam (which served as the lead institution) and Clarkson University. The new ITC will facilitate Professor Glazier's investigations of the thermodynamic and kinetic parameters of drug-DNA threading mechanisms. Overall, the project is designed to prepare students for entry into the workforce and graduate or professional schools by introducing them to the latest scientific technologies and by training them on state-of-the art instruments that enhance their educational and research experiences.

With a grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a team of scientists from St. Lawrence purchased a scanning electron microscope (SEM) in September 2009. The instrument will facilitate multidisciplinary research, research training, and undergraduate education and will be shared by faculty and students from the Departments of Geology, Biology, and Physics. Expected to make a significant impact on research and teaching within the University's science programs, the new SEM is housed in the Microscopy and Imagery Center in the new Johnson Hall of Science. For more information on how this new instrument will enhance key scientific research at St. Lawrence, please see the link above.

Davis Projects for Peace - Summer 2009

For the third year of this competition, made possible by internationalist and philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis, St. Lawrence rising sophomore Grace Ochieng' traveled to Kenya, where she led a micro-financed sewing and education project. Working with A People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) support group in the rural village of Lwala, Ms. Ochieng' developed her project to empower women in Lwala by helping them build business skills and a viable source of income. The project was focused on producing reusable, washable, and environmentally friendly menstrual sanitary pads as a means to also enhance the local economy, to increase school attendance amongst young women, and to improve through education community health and hygiene. For more information on this project, Ms. Davis, and the Davis Projects for Peace program, please visit the Davis Projects for Peace website. http://www.kwd100projectsforpeace.org/

In spring 2009, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded St. Lawrence $800,000 for our Environmental Education Initiative for Active Learning, Research, and Advocacy. Over the next four years, this award will help faculty increase opportunities for students to experience and apply their learning about the environment in real world situations; develop interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations related to the study, sustainability, and protection of the environment; and work together to implement project activities, such as increased field study and advocacy activities, in environmentally-sensitive ways for short- and long-term benefit to the environment. In designing the proposed project, the St. Lawrence faculty team has set high expectations for both short-term and long-term outcomes that will be demonstrated by positive changes within the University curriculum, the lives of project participants, and the University's campus and local environment. 

 Please see the University's Green Pages for more information:  http://www.stlawu.edu/green/mellon-foundation-grant

A recent award from the American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund has enabled Assistant Professor of Geology Antun Husinec to launch a project this summer focused on studying how climate change during the early Ordovician relates to well-documented later Ordovician sea-level changes. His award, an Undergraduate New Investigator grant of $50,000, is designed to help him, as an early-career faculty member, launch his own research program. Dr. Husinec will travel with students to the Red River Formation in North Dakota this summer and next to carry out fieldwork that will increase understanding of cyclic carbonate depositional systems and potentially help with the creation of reservoir models for the oil industry. For more information on this award, please see our full press release.