Twenty-one faculty have been awarded support through the UAB Faculty Development Grant Program, which provides assistant professors with less than $100,000 annual funding with seed money to pursue research, creative works and scholarly activity.
“The program helps faculty take on creative new efforts for which funding is not generally available,” said Provost Pam Benoit. “Funding faculty in this way enables them to build new skills to enhance peer recognition across campus and beyond UAB.”
The Office of the Provost provides one-year funding with a match from the recipients’ departments and schools or colleges. Applicants provide details of their research or project and also submit letters of support from their department chair and dean. The applications are reviewed by the FDGP committee led by Chris Biga, Ph.D., associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Sociology.
“The committee is grateful to the funding received from the departments and the Office of the Provost,” Biga said. “The recipients get such a unique opportunity to further commit to their areas of interest and that benefits our campus from faculty development to undergraduate research opportunities.”
The recipients received $3,000-$5,000 to pursue these projects in the 2021-22 academic year:
- Vidit Bhargava – Predicting difficult laryngoscopy using bedside sonography in pediatric patients
- Curry Bordelon – Complex simulation experience to assess readiness for practice for neonatal nurse practitioner students
- Cindy Cain – Sacred selves of people with dementia
- Kathryn Carpenter – The great escape: A novel approach to team-based learning
- Caitlin Clevenger – Psychometric validation of the suicide-related alcohol expectancies questionnaire
- Danielle Edwards – Development of IDEX-3D printed human skulls for instruction in large classes of health professional students
- Jie Gao – The association of homelessness-associated factors and cellular aging
- Ashley Holder – Eliminating the exit strategy for macrophages in cutaneous melanoma
- Jesse Jones – Focused ultrasound for the treatment of cerebral cavernous malformations
- Mohamed Khass – Role of the immunoglobulin DQ52 DH gene segment in fetal immunosuppression
- Jordan Kiper – An anthropology of propaganda: Bridging cultural history and digital divides
- Jennifer Larson-Casey – Ly6C monocytes drive air pollution-mediated acute exacerbations in pulmonary fibrosis
- Hui-Ting Lee – Next-generation sequencing of coronavirus RNA for secondary structures and their roles in virus mutation
- Braden McFarland – Examining the role of the gut microbiome in pre-clinical tumor models
- Teaira McMurtry – Foregrounding Black language as a justice-oriented strategy in secondary classrooms across rural, suburban and urban contexts: A formative research study
- Katherine Meese – Does accountable care team membership improve well-being?
- Lauren Rast – Remotely accessible interdisciplinary STEM education (RAISE)
- Anna Thalacker-Mercer – Skeletal muscle deterioration in chronic kidney disease
- Carissa Thomas – Identification of oral cavity and gut microbiome biomarkers of cancer pain in oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma
- Carolina Tsouroukdissian – A pedagogy of horror: Social protest in Latin American short fiction (1830-1920)
- J. Ruzmyn Vilcassim – An assessment of adverse respiratory health impacts associated with primary and secondhand exposure to electronic cigarette aerosols
The Faculty Development and the Research committees of the UAB Faculty Senate work with the Faculty Development Program directors and the Office of the Provost to manage the Faculty Development Grant Program. Learn more about faculty development grants at uab.edu/faculty/senate/.
Karen Templeton, director of communications for the Office of the Provost, wrote this for UAB Reporter.