SMCM Hosts Third Annual Research Excellence Workshop on January 17, 2020

March 16, 2020

Provost Michael Wick Provides Opening Remarks at the 2020 REW

St. Mary’s College of Maryland held the third annual Research Excellence Workshop (REW) on January 17^th, 2020 in Daugherty-Palmer-Commons. The REW provides broad research development opportunities (beyond grants), and institutional support for and recognition of faculty research, scholarship and creative activities. The specific goals of the 2020 REW workshop were to: present and discuss internal support for research at SMCM, present relevant funding and research opportunities, formally recognize the efforts of faculty and staff in seeking external funding to support their endeavors, and provide a forum for networking with external guests and colleagues across campus.

The day’s events included:

Panel on Internal Support for Research at SMCM

Part 1 – Provost Michael Wick, Associate Dean Katie Gantz, former and current department chairs Drs. Adriana Brodsky and Aileen Bailey presented ways to support faculty and undergraduate research from a College and departmental perspective.
Part 2 – Drs. Bailey and James Mantell presented an innovative workload model that allows for improved scholarly, creative, and research experiences of students while appropriately compensating faculty mentoring.

Session on External Funding and Networking Opportunities

This was one 2-hour session with three informal, sequential presentations (~30 minutes each) followed by ~30 minutes for questions from the audience.

Fulbright Scholars Program: Dr. Carleen Velez, IIE Fulbright Outreach Specialist, provided an overview of Fulbright programs popular with SMCM faculty, and offered tips for writing successful fellowship applications.
Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU)- and National Park Service (NPS)-facilitated research for faculty and students: Mr. Danny Filer, CESU Research Coordinator provided an overview of research and funding opportunities afforded to SMCM through our partnership with the Chesapeake Watershed CESU Network. In addition, Dr. Joshua Torres discussed research collaborations with NPS, specifically opportunities for SMCM undergraduate students to conduct archival research with NPS in the National Capital Region.
MD State Arts Council (MSAC) Funding and SMCM as MSAC Folklife Network Hub: Dr. Chad Buterbaugh, MSAC Director of the MD Traditions program provided an overview of MSAC funding and the MD Traditions Program. He also discussed SMCM’s new role as the southern MD hub for the MD Folklife Network, a new collaboration to which faculty can contribute. To discuss this new initiative with SMCM stakeholders, the executive directors and some board members of the Arts Councils for Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s County were also in attendance.

Clockwise from left: Dr. Gili Freedman, Dr. Shanen Sherrer, and Nick D’Antona ’19 (on behalf of Dr. Troy Townsend) receive 2020 REW Awards

Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) Award Presentations and Networking Lunch

In addition to providing networking opportunities with external speakers and campus colleagues, this annual REW lunch celebrates and recognizes all SMCM faculty and staff who submitted proposals for external funding during the previous year, and we present the annual ORSP awards. As the Most Successful Grant Seeker in FY19, Dr. Troy Townsend, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, received the ORSP River Hawk Award; and Dr. Shanen Sherrer, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, and Dr. Gili Freedman, Assistant Professor of Psychology, were recognized as ‘Go-Getters’. To celebrate all grant seeking efforts, we held a drawing where the number of free raffle tickets per individual faculty or staff member was equal to the number of proposals they submitted for external funding in FY19. Dr. Holly Blumner’s ticket was selected from the random drawing, earning her a note of congratulations and $25 gift card to the campus bookstore.

NEH Funding Opportunities and Grant Writing Tips

Jeff Hardwick, Deputy Director of the NEH Division of Public Programs led this 2.5-hour afternoon NEH workshop that introduced popular NEH funding opportunities and tips on how to write a successful NEH grant proposal.

Sincere thanks to all the attendees and congratulations again to our sponsored research awardees! The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs plans to hold annual research-focused workshops in support of faculty and staff scholarship. If you have ideas about future topics of interest or networking partners, please contact Sabine Dillingham at x4192, sldillingham@smcm.edu.

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SMCM Faculty Members Selected for Office of Naval Research 2020 Summer Faculty Research Program

March 2, 2020

Three SMCM faculty members were recently selected to participate in the U.S. Navy’s Summer Faculty Research Program at the nearby Naval Air Station Patuxent River (NAS Pax River). The awarded fellowships will fund Dr. Joshua M Grossman, Professor of Physics and Physics Department Chair, Dr. Charles Adler, Professor of Physics, and Dr. Daniel Chase, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, during research at NAS Pax River in the summer of 2020. The Summer Faculty Research Program is run through the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research and provides science and engineering faculty members from institutions of higher education the opportunity to participate in research of mutual interest to the faculty member and peers at U.S. Navy laboratories for a 10-week period.

Professor Grossman and his students research atoms captured and cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, using lasers and magnetic fields. Dr. Grossman’s fellowship project is titled: “Second-order quantum correlations for enhanced contrast in an atom interferometer”. This work seeks to increase the precision and utility of extremely sensitive instruments in the presence of phase noise or other interference. The technique will aid in the transition of atom interferometers from the laboratory to the field where they can be applied as necessary. Undergraduate Harry Bauman ’22 will work on the same project as Dr. Grossman during his fellowship, via the Navy’s STEM Student Employment Program.

Professor Adler’s research focuses on atomic physics and atmospheric optics. His summer 2020 research project is titled: “Modeling the scattering of orbital angular momentum beams by particulates and diffuse reflectors”. He plans to develop mathematical and computer models to simulate light scattering of orbital angular momentum beams propagating through water. Understanding this physics will help inform how optical vortices can be used for Naval applications in ocean remote sensing, enhanced communications for command and control, and improved undersea domain awareness.

Dr. Chase’s lab uses synthetic organic chemistry to explore research avenues such as designing fluorescent dyes with useful properties and examining the activation of industrially important small molecules. Dr. Chase’s summer 2020 research project is titled: “Fluorescence detection of mechanical stress”. Among other applications, these stress-responsive fluorescent dyes may help evaluate sustained damage on fixed-wing aircraft, which is a recurring maintenance issue for the Navy. At present, maintenance personnel have difficulty determining whether or not a fixed-wing system has undergone sufficient fatigue to warrant repair or replacement. Adding stress–responsive fluorescent dyes to existing epoxy coatings may allow for on–site maintenance personnel to quickly locate and accurately determine if structural fatigue has reached unacceptable stress thresholds.

The Office of Naval Research Summer Faculty Research Program webpage states that “program participants have an opportunity to establish continuing research relationships with the R&D personnel of the host laboratories which may result in sponsorship of the participant’s research at their home institutions.”

Professor Sue Johnson awarded prestigious Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Visual Arts Fellowship

February 24, 2020

Sue Johnson, professor of art, is one of ten artists who have been awarded a VMFA Visual Arts Fellowship in the professional category for 2020-21. This is an $8,000 award to be used by the artist to support their creative practice, and also includes opportunities for fellowship recipients to exhibit their work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and other museum sites. Veronica Roberts, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas was the juror for the professional fellowship entries. A private reception honoring this year’s fellows will be held on March 6, 2020 at the museum.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Program is a vital source of funding for the visual arts and art history in Virginia. The VMFA is committed to supporting professional artists as well as art and art history students who demonstrate exceptional creative ability in their chosen discipline and, as such, has awarded nearly $5.8 million in Fellowships to Virginians. “The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Program is proud to support student and professional artists working across the Commonwealth,” said Alex Nyerges, VMFA director and CEO. “We offer one of the largest fellowship programs of its kind in the United States and recognize this effort as a core part of our mission.” The Fellowship Program was established in 1940 through a generous contribution made by the late John Lee Pratt of Fredericksburg. Offered through VMFA Statewide, Fellowships are still largely funded through the Pratt endowment, supplemented by gifts from the Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation and the J. Warwick McClintock Jr. Scholarship Fund.

Johnson plans to use the award to support material expenses needed to create new works, pursue new exhibition opportunities, and hire a studio assistant.

Documenting Chesapeake History

February 21, 2020

The region surrounding the Chesapeake Bay is rich in history. Originally settled by Native American tribes, the area is also home to the United States’ earliest English colonial settlements and the beginnings of American slavery. Since 2001, Julia King and a consortium of researchers have been advancing the archaeological study of the region through digital methods, collections-based research, and more traditional field excavations. Their work has made archaeological data more accessible to researchers and students and yielded new insights into colonial and pre-colonial history. It has also had an impact on Native American tribes who still live in the region.

As the first director of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, King was charged with organizing and relocating archaeological collections from across the state to one central location. NEH grants helped preserve and electronically catalog records documenting more than 1-million objects from archaeological sites located throughout the Chesapeake Bay region, making them more broadly accessible to researchers. NEH funding also supported two comparative studies of English, Indigenous, and African culture in the Chesapeake. A consortium of researchers from around the region worked on these projects, contributing and digitizing their archaeological catalogs.

Through this work, archaeologists came to see nuances in interactions between Native Americans and English settlers, as evidenced through objects found in excavated sites. For instance, between 1660 and 1680, the colorful beads Native Americans traded changed from blue and white to black and red, indicating a growing antipathy for the settlers: among Native people, the color black was often closely associated with death. Beyond these insights, the funding resulted in two websites: ChesapeakeArchaeology.org and ColonialEncounters.org. These continue to be used by students and researchers as they explore the region’s history.

Now a professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, King has continued her work in the region’s archeology and history through an NEH grant to excavate and analyze Indigenous sites along the lower Rappahannock River in Virginia. Throughout the project, King has worked closely with Rappahannock people who live in the area and whose ancestors settled the river valley. The excavations and GIS work associated with the project have proven crucial to helping the Rappahannock Tribe verify the accuracy of some of their oral traditions. More than subtle changes in historical interpretation and their echoes in museum exhibitions in classrooms, outcomes like these have been among the most significant in King’s career. All of this work, with its focus on Indigenous sites, has helped boost the efforts of Native tribes seeking recognition. As King states, “10 or 15 years ago, many people wouldn’t believe there were Native Americans here. They thought they were long gone, when in fact they are still here.”

This article first appeared on the National Humanties Alliance NEH for ALL webpage. This project has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Assistant Professor Gurbisz Awarded Maryland Sea Grant

February 19, 2020

Cassie Gurbisz, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, recently received her second grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Maryland Sea Grant program (Federal Award Number NA18OAR4170070). The $71,023 grant will fund a two-year project titled: Effects of Oyster Aquaculture on Submersed Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) Habitat. Dr. Gurbisz is working with co-Principal Investigators Jeremy Testa and Dong Liang from UMCES Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

After decades of ambitious habitat restoration and species recovery attempts in the Chesapeake Bay, we are now seeing some signs of success including, most notably, the recovery of bay grasses, or “SAV”. Although populations of the native oyster—another iconic Chesapeake Bay species—are still at an all-time low, the Maryland oyster aquaculture industry is rapidly growing. SAV recovery and oyster aquaculture growth are both good-news stories because both are valued for their ability to provide habitat, process pollutants, and protect shorelines. Furthermore, aquaculture is an important source of income for thousands of Maryland residents.

The issue is that as these important living resources expand, they are increasingly coming into conflict because they both tend to occupy shallow water. Current regulations restrict aquaculture in areas that contain SAV under the assumption that aquaculture will impair SAV growth. This has created a burden for growers who are required to cease operations when SAV spreads into their lease area. However, it is unclear whether aquaculture actually harms SAV. Gurbisz and collaborators’ research aims to address this information gap by 1) analyzing existing spatial datasets to assess the extent of past conflict and predict where future conflicts are likely to arise and 2) conducting a field study to identify how aquaculture alters SAV habitat. The broad goal is to generate scientifically defensible information that can guide a reevaluation of policies that address SAV-aquaculture conflicts to maximize both continued SAV recovery and aquaculture expansion. SMCM student Victoria Lusk has already begun the spatial analysis, and Ellyse Sutliff and Lindsey Stevenson will help conduct the upcoming fieldwork. All three students are Environmental Studies majors.

Gurbisz is a coastal ecosystem ecologist who takes a holistic approach to studying the environment. Her research has been published in journals such as BioScience and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as recently featured in the Baltimore Sun.

Professor Crawford Awarded Whitman Fellowship Award

February 13, 2020

Karen Crawford, professor of biology, has recently been awarded a Whitman Fellowship from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). The award will be used to cover laboratory space and housing at MBL in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Crawford will use the award to continue her sabbatical research project investigating the use of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing to knockout specific gene functions in developing embryos.

The title of her proposal is: Beyond Proof of Concept – using CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in Doryteuthis pealii embryos to determine: 1) the role of ADAR1 and ADAR2 RNA editing enzymes in development, morphology and behavior; and 2) the impact of Homeobox gene function on embryonic pattern and development.

In addition to the genes mentioned in her proposal title, she will attempt to knock in genes into the cephalopod genome for the first time.

Professor of Biology Karen Crawford Presents “CRISPR-Cas9 Genome Editing in the Cephalopod Doryteuthis (Loligo) pealeii” at the Annual Meeting for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology

February 6, 2020

Professor of Biology Karen Crawford’s presentation was selected as an oral presentation in a complementary session in the 2020 SICB Symposium “Building Bridges from Genome to Phenome: Molecules, Methods and Models,” held January 3-7, in Austin Texas.

This presentation represents an important breakthrough for her research and impacts the work of many scientists studying the development, neurogenesis and evolutionary relationships of cephalopods, animals including: squid, octopus, cuttlefish and nautilus. It is an important “proof of concept” study demonstrating the first successful use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology to employ genome editing in a cephalopod species. In this study, Crawford used the CRISPR-Cas9 system with specific RNA guides to the Tryptophan 2,3 dioxygenase enzyme (TDO) to specifically knock out the first step in the ommochrome pigment pathway in squid embryos. In English, this means that she successfully knocked out one gene to generate completely normal embryos lacking only reddish brown pigmentation. This work is in preparation for publication. Expanding the study of cephalopods to include predictable genome editing, the knocking out and knocking in of specific genes, opens an important door to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that drive normal development, neurogenesis, and behavior in cephalopods; a group of diverse and evolutionarily successful organisms that possess not only a camera like eye similar to our own along with the largest and most complex invertebrate brain on the planet, but also our imagination for their extraordinary life histories and complex cognitive behaviors.

While most of this work is performed at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, Massachusetts, students working on their St. Mary’s Projects, often choose to explore fundamental questions of developmental biology of cephalopods by working with preserved embryos in the Crawford laboratory at SMCM. Last year, Sylvia Klein explored the role of Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) on two cephalopod species. As part of her SMP work, Sylvia was the first to observe the conservation of MAPK expression in the Pajama squid embryo, complementing studies Crawford had done with embryos of the long-finned squid, Doryteuthis pealii. Before graduate school, Sylvia, is expanding her experiences as a research assistant in the laboratory of Karen Echeverri at the MBL, where she is studying regeneration in both invertebrate and vertebrate species.

This work has most recently been supported by fellowships from the MBL to Crawford (2018, 2019), as well as a National Science Foundation – Enabling Discovery Through GEnomic Tools (EDGE) Grant to the MBL for which Crawford is a Principle Investigator. That grant supports the Cephalopod Strategic Initiative at the MBL.

Professor Sue Johnson Awarded Fully-Funded Residency Fellowship

February 5, 2020

Sue Johnson, professor of art, has been awarded a fully-funded residency fellowship by The Millay Colony for the Arts. The colony is one of the oldest multidisciplinary artist residencies in the world. Since its inception by Norma Millay in 1973, thousands of writers, poets, visual artists, screenwriters, playwrights, filmmakers, and composers have been invited to come to Steepletop, the estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and activist Edna St. Vincent Millay, to reflect, refuel, and create in quiet solitude.

The seven-acre colony is located in the Hudson Valley of New York State in the foothills of the Berkshires. Johnson is one of only 30 visual artists, composers, and writers selected from more than 800 international applicants for this highly competitive fellowship. She will be in residence for the month of June 2020 during which time she will continue work on her project, “Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines.” Works completed during the residency will be part of Johnson’s upcoming one-person exhibition at VisArts in Rockville, Maryland, opening in September 2020.

Professor and Chair of Educational Studies Angela Johnson Awarded NSF Collaborative Research Grant

January 13, 2020

Angela C Johnson was recently awarded a $103,473 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in support of her project titled: Centering Women of Color in STEM: Data-Driven Opportunities for Inclusion. The two-year grant began September 2019, and will fund a continuation of Johnson’s collaborative research with Apriel Hodari of Eureka Scientific, Inc. to identify and share what helps women of color thrive in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

Johnson and Hodari have worked over the past two years with SMCM undergraduate students Rose Young ’20 and Elizabeth Mulvey ’20 to conduct and analyze interviews with faculty, staff, and students at SMCM and two United Kingdom institutions. The researchers compiled these fine-scale qualitative data from the interviews along with broad-scale quantitative data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) in collaboration with Eleanor Sayre, Associate Professor of Physics at Kansas State University. They then identified major themes to provide guidance for organizations committed to creating better, more inclusive, environments for women of color in physics, math, computer sciences and other typical STEM fields. Results thus far include surprising patterns about institutions where women of color study STEM fields, and have been shared at conferences in Washington DC and London, England. Results will also be shared at the winter meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in January 2020.

This recent award will allow the investigators to:

expand their dataset to additional STEM disciplines using data from IPEDS,
develop a public online portal for the final database and study user analytics to improve the portal’s utility,
identify institutions where higher than typical numbers or percentages of women of color graduate in each discipline and work with these institutions to serve as models or case studies for others, and
present research findings from the database and make STEM professionals aware of the portal.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1933383. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Receives Chesapeake Cultural Studies Grant

November 4, 2019

St. Mary’s College of Maryland has been awarded a $24,000 Chesapeake Material Cultural Studies Grant from The Conservation Fund.

The grant will advance the College’s work using archaeological artifacts to examine how Native American groups in the Chesapeake’s major river drainages responded to the region’s occupation by European settlers. SMCM Professor of Anthropology Julia A. King and Project Archaeologist/GIS Specialist Scott M. Strickland will compare artifact collections from 17th- and 18th-century Native sites in Maryland and Virginia to document post-Contact Indian lifeways and experiences. King and Strickland will be assisted by tribal consultants from the Pamunkey, Piscataway, and Rappahannock tribes.

The Conservation Fund—a national nonprofit dedicated to providing environmental solutions that make economic sense for communities—presented grants to SMCM and 10 other research, education and historical institutions and specialists to support the conservation, preservation and study of cultural artifacts from the Chesapeake region dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

“Funding from The Conservation Fund provides an excellent opportunity to understand how the Chesapeake region’s many Indian groups shaped the colonial encounter,” Scott Strickland noted. “Tribal participation in this project will provide an important but often missing Native perspective for interpreting early American history.”

Ranging from $15,000 to $25,000, the Chesapeake Material Cultural Studies Grants help further research and expand current knowledge of artifact collections from previously excavated archaeological sites at Jamestown, Martin’s Hundred, Carter’s Grove, Kingsmill and other locations in the Chesapeake region to better understand and interpret the colony’s first settlers and their response to the new environment and climate.

“American history is intrinsically connected to the land. In Virginia and especially in the Chesapeake region, our land can tell a variety of stories going back multiple centuries,” said Heather Richards, Virginia state director for The Conservation Fund. “While we at The Conservation Fund focus on protecting the places where history happens and conserving important natural resources, we depend on our peers in the archeological field to research and interpret how human lives intersected with these places. We are honored to support St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s ongoing work.”

A full list of the eleven Chesapeake Material Cultural Studies Grant recipients can be found here: http://bit.ly/ChesapeakeGrants.

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