CAS Faculty Awards and Grants 2008-09

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dr. Anne Bentley received a $100,000 Faculty Development Award in Chemistry from the National Science Foundation. This award will support Dr. Bentley's research on nanoparticles; the integration of research, teaching, and service; and outreach to undergraduate researchers at Lewis & Clark and Portland Community College. For the full story, please see News Story (7/08)

Dr. Niko Loening, assistant professor of chemistry, received a $191,764 award from the National Institutes of Health. This Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) program grant will support a research program aimed at discovering interesting peptides and proteins from the venom of the brown recludes spider and its relatives. Spider venom peptides and proteins are of interest for their potential use as ttherapeutic drugs and as tools for neurophysiology research. (6/08)

The National Science Foundation has awarded two associate professors in the Lewis & Clark psychology department, Dr. Brian Detweiler-Bedell and Dr. Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell, $149,698 for their project, "CCLI - Using Laddered Teams to Promote a Research Supportive Curriculum". This project is being supported through NSF's Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program. The work will support the development, dissemination, and implementation of an innovative curricular model for engaging undergraduates in research, with an emphasis on enhancing faculty-student collaborations at primarily undergraduate institutions. (6/08)

NITLE, a non-profit initiative dedicated to promoting liberal education, has awarded $19,000 for the project "accessCeramics at Liberal Arts Colleges". This project is being led by Mark Dahl, Assistant Director for Systems and Technical Services at Watzek Library, and Ted Vogel, assistant professor of art and program head in ceramics. The team also includes Margo Ballantyne and Jeremy McWilliams. accessCeramics is a growing collection of images and contemporary ceramics contributed by established, professional artists. (6/08)

CAS Faculty Awards and Grants 2007-08

The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust has awarded Dr. Gary Reiness, professor of biology, a grant in support of his research project, Mechanism of Export of Chicken Ciliary Neurotrophic Factor. This two year project will involve undergraduate students and contribute to the general understanding of non-classical cellular communication. (3/08)

Dr. Peter Kennedy, assistant professor of biology, received a National Science Foundation grant in support of his collaborative research project "Dispersal Limitation as a Primary Factor in Determining Ectomycorrihizal Community Structure". Dr. Kennedy will be working with Lewis & Clark undergraduate students and colleagues from the University of California-Berkeley to present a new model incorporating differences in spore and mycelial disperal. (3/08)

Dr. Elliott Young, Associate Professor of History, was awarded a Chatauqua lectureship from the Oregon Council for the Humanities. With this support, Dr. Young will be speaking throughout Oregon on Chinese Diaspora in the Americas: Making the First "Illegal Aliens". (3/08)

The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation has provided funding in the amount of $30,000 to support assistant professor of chemistry Anne Bentley's research on Synthesis of Luminescent Lanthanide Nanoparticle/Solid State Think Film Composite Materials via Electrochemical Co-Deposition. The 2007 Camille and Henry Dreyfus Faculty Start-up Awards Program provides external research support to new faculty at the beginning of their first full-time academic appointments. Nationwide, only eight faculty members were selected as awardees this year. (10/07)

The National Science Foundation has awarded Greg Hermann, associate professor of biology, $365,015 for his project, "Cellular and Genetic Analysis of Lysosome and Lysosome-Related Organelle Biogenesis in C. Elegans." This three-year project will involve numerous undergraduate students and will provide molecular insights into the assembly of lysosomes in multicellular animals. (9/07) Dr. Hermann received a supplement to this award in March 2008 through NSF's REU program.

Jens Mache, associate professor of computer science, was awarded an $85,355, two-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Mache will work with a colleague at Portland State University and Lewis & Clark undergraduates on this "Collaborative Project: CSR-CSI Making Sensor Networks Accessible to Undergraduates Through Activity-Based Laboratory Materials." With input from students, industrial advisors, and an educational consultant, the PIs are developing exemplary lab exercises, identifying appropriate topics, and presenting the material in a suitable format. (8/07)

Paulette Bierzychudek, professor of biology, has been awarded grants from both the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to support a research project focusing on restoring habitat for the endangered Oregon silverspot butterfly. This support will enable Dr. Bierzychudek and colleagues to study the survival and host-plant searching behavior of the butterfly larvae to determine host-plant density needed for their recovery. These studies will provide the basis for effective habitat restoration for this species. (6/07, 7/07)

CAS Faculty Awards and Grants 2006-07

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Bethe Scalettar, professor of physics, $200,279 in support of her research project, "Release and retrieval of dense-core granule proteins in hippocampal nuerons." The results of this three-year project will provide fundamental insight into cellular processes that may underlie long-term potentiation, a cellular model of learning, and will elucidate the behavior of tissue plasminogen activator, a dense-core granule protein that has been implicated in physiological and pathological functions in the nervous system, including learning, memory, and neurotoxicity associated with Alzheimer's disease. (5/07)

David Campion, assistant professor of history, recently received funding to participate in the second international research seminar hosted by the National History Center and the Library of Congress. This seminar, to be held during Summer 2007 in Washington, D.C., will focus on the history of decolonization in the 20th century and is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This award will support four weeks of research in the Library of Congress on his project, “From Rubble to Republic: the decolonization of Malta, 1940-1974” and participation in the seminar. (3/07)

The Kinsman Foundation has awarded Lewis & Clark $5,000 in support of a literary arts reading series. These activities are being coordinated by Rishona Zimring, associate professor of English, Mary Szybist, assistant professor of English, Doug Erickson, Special Collections, Watzek Library, and Paul Merchant, Special Collections, Watzek Library. This series will include a one-day symposium on poetry and the humanities, to be held during the 2007-08 academic year. The public will be invited to participate; details will be posted as they become available. (3/07)

Andrew Bernstein, associate professor of history, has been awarded two grants for his project, "Fuji: The Making of a Japanese Mountain"; one is a Fulbright Scholar grant from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars and the second is a Research Fellowship from the Japan Foundation’s Japanese Studies Fellowship Program. This support will allow Dr. Bernstein to do extended research in Japan. In addition to conducting research in libraries and archives, he plans to interview shrine priests, government bureaucrats, and U.S. and Japanese military officials to analyze the differences between Fuji as an imagined object and a physical place. See related story at: http://www.lclark. edu/cgi-bin/shownews. cgi?1175182800.0 (2/07, 4/07)

A grant from the National Science Foundation will support the creation of research teams during the next three summers that will bring together two Lewis & Clark faculty members, four undergraduate students, and one teacher from the K-12 or community college level. Elizabeth Stanhope, assistant professor of mathematics, is the project director at Lewis & Clark. This program is part of a larger Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site award given to a consortium of four math programs, led by professors at Willamette University. In addition to the programs at Willamette and Lewis & Clark, faculty members at the University of Portland and Linfield College will also lead research programs. The total grant amount that will be divided up among the four schools is $491,400. More information is available at: http://www.lclark. edu/cgi-bin/shownews. cgi?news_item=1173315600.0 For program information: http://www.willamette. edu/cla/math/REU- RET (2/07)

Janis Lochner, Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr. Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded a $195,711 grant from the National Institutes of Health to support her project, "Real-time imaging of tPA fluorescent hybrids in hippocampal neurons." (1/07)

The Kansas City Arts Coalition (http://www.kansascityartistscoalition. org/) awarded Theodore Vogel, assistant professor of art and program head in ceramics, the "Lighton International Artists Exchange Program Grant". This $5,000 grant enabled Mr. Vogel to participate in a two-month residency, have a one-person exhibition, and lecture at the Center for Ceramics in Berlin, Germany (http://www.ceramics- berlin.de/) during Fall 2006. In addition, Mr. Vogel was invited as a visiting artist and lecturer at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, Ireland. (1/07)

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant of $4,893 to support a Preservation Assessment of the Aubrey R. Watzek Library. This project was also deisgnated a National Endowment for the Humanities "We the People project; the goal of the "We the People" initiative is to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture through the support of projects that explore significant events and themes in our nation's history and culture and that advance knowledge of the principles that define America. Jim Kopp, the director of the Watzek Library, will lead this project. (12/06)

As part of their Research Start-up Grants for New Science Faculty program, the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust has awarded Lewis & Clark two $25,000 grants. These awards will augment start-up research packages for two tenure-track faculty members to be hired in the biology and chemistry departments. (12/06)

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Lewis & Clark a three-year, $300,000 grant to advance environmental studies. Professor and director of Environmental Studies Jim Proctor will lead the development of an innovative approach to undergraduate environmental studies that cultivates better and more relevant interdisciplinary student research. (11/06)