Faculty & College Grant Awards - Academic Year 2023-24
Jennifer Acker, Editor in Chief of The Common, received an award of $15,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts. This grant will support the publication of The Common and The Common Online and promote emerging writers and underrepresented literary communities. The upcoming issues, which will be available in print and through The Common's open-access website, will feature place-based fiction, poetry, and essays from new and underrepresented writers, including a portfolio of Arabic fiction in translation connecting readers with contemporary voices from Kuwait. Emerging authors will receive intensive editorial guidance and dedicated promotional efforts. All contributors will be featured through a wide variety of outreach that will introduce high school and college students and aspiring writers of all ages to the diverse voices within pages of The Common.
Daniella Bardalez Gagliuffi, Assistant Professor of Astronomy, was awarded $44,472 from the Space Telescope Science Institute to carry out the largest high angular resolution survey of ultracool dwarfs using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive. She will leverage the HST archive in search for faint, close-in companions to all known ultracool dwarfs (UCD) previously imaged with HST with a post-processing technique in pursuit of the following scientific goals: (1) measure a robust close-in UCD multiplicity fraction at high angular resolution, (2) constrain the true peak of the UCD binary separation distribution, and (3) estimate the mass ratio distribution of the UCD population.
Erica Drennan, Associate Director and Head of Collections at the Amherst Center for Russian Culture (ACRC), received a $9,992 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The funding will support a preservation needs assessment, conducted by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, that will lead to the development of long-term preservation goals and plans for the ACRC’s collections. The grant will also allow for the rehousing and storage of archival materials, photographs, and artists books from recent acquisitions.
Marc Edwards, Assistant Professor of Biology, received $10,500 in funding from the Albree Trust in support of the Summer 2023 STEM Incubator program. The program, led by Edwards, along with Brittney Bailey, Assistant Professor of Statistics, and Christopher Durr, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, provides eighteen rising sophomores from under-represented groups with early STEM research experiences to strengthen their research and professional skills and lay the groundwork for a career in the sciences. The Albree Trust’s support fully funds two student research fellowships, and covers partially costs for a third student. In addition to discussing scientific literature, formulating research questions, and analyzing datasets, Fellows interact with science professionals to gain insight into the life of a scientist, and take part in a final capstone presentation of their work.
Rosemary Effiom, Director, MMUF Program and Academic Engagement & Student Success, and Catherine Epstein, Provost and Dean of the Faculty and Henry Steele Commager Professor of History, received renewed institutional support of $98,000 for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program. The grant was approved by the American Council of Learned Societies at the recommendation of the Mellon Foundation. The program provides mentorship and extensive development opportunities to a diverse pool of students to support their progression through Amherst and into successful careers as humanities professors and academic researchers, thereby helping build the national pipeline for a more diverse faculty. By supporting and highlighting the considerable talents and accomplishments of fellows and program alums, the program has an enormous impact on the Amherst community, providing inspiration and mentorship to peers and affirming Amherst’s commitment to humanities scholarship as integral to a liberal arts education.
Christopher Grobe, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI), was awarded $15,000 from the Mellon Foundation as part of a subaward from the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI). The grant supported a gathering at Amherst College in April 2024 of center directors and other humanities advocates from liberal arts colleges and small universities. Specifically, the funds were used to cover attendance for participants from underrepresented institutions (e.g., HBCUs and tribal colleges) as well as associated conference expenses.
Victor Guevara, Assistant Professor of Geology, was awarded $20,672 from the National Science Foundation for the acquisition of a Confocal Micro-Raman Spectroscopy System in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts. The equipment will support his research on the physical and chemical changes that occur in Earth's crust as mountains rise during continental collisions, and will give Amherst College student researchers access to cutting-edge analytical techniques based on Raman spectroscopy.
Rebecca Hewitt, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, received a $50,000 grant from Save the Redwoods League’s Research Grant Program to explore the redwood microbiome and functional implications of foliar fungal endophytes, which may play a role in the uptake of fog water on leaf surfaces. The unseen foliar microbiome of Sequoia sempervirens (D. Don) Endl. (coast redwood), may be the key to mediating drought stress as the climate warms.
Kiara Vigil, Associate Professor of American Studies and Dean of New Students, was awarded a Scholarly Editions and Translations grant of $100,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to translate and annotate issues from the Dakota-language historical newspaper, Iapi Oaye: The Word Carrier (1871-1939). Through an open-access website and print volume of annotated translations and historical and literary scholarship, the project will provide new access to the history of westward expansion as viewed through the multiple lenses of Christian missionaries, educators, Dakota writers, and the wider communities in which they were enmeshed. It will also help document the history of a critically endangered language and efforts to create and standardize written forms of Dakota.
Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum, and Megan Ramsey, Collections Manager, received a $117,237 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a two year project to improve collections documentation and management. In year one, the project will consist of the digitization of institutional records related to Dickinson family artifacts. In year two, the Museum will conduct surveys of archival material at other institutions to understand the extent of primary sources related to EDM collections objects, which will become the subject of a future digitization phase. Altogether, the work will enable the Museum to interpret the poet’s life and times more fully and provide public and scholarly access to an important cultural collection.
Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum, was awarded a $200,000 grant for environmental improvements at The Evergreens, historic home of the poet's brother Austin and his family. The grant was made by the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, a program of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, administered through a collaborative arrangement between MassDevelopment and the Mass Cultural Council. The project includes building envelope repairs and installing a museum-grade HVAC system. These improvements provide more nuanced control of changes in temperature and relative humidity to support the preservation of collections, significantly improve The Evergreens' energy efficiency, and prepare for eventual transition to ground source heating and cooling.