The Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) awarded a Faculty Career Enhancement (FaCE) grant to Jamie Monson (History) in the amount of $3,000. The funds support enrollment in an intensive Chinese language and cultural studies program in Beijing, offered by CET Academic Programs in June and July 2008. Her current research project – a study of a Tanzanian railway project that was built with Chinese development assistance in the 1960s and 1970s – requires her to acquire language skills in Mandarin Chinese and deepen her understanding of Chinese history and culture. Read more on recent grants.

Nicola Melville (Music) was the recipient of a $5,200 Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund award. The grant supported the later phases of a project that has culminated in a CD “Melville's Dozen” of new piano music in various styles – jazz, funk, Appalachian, Andean, tango, et cetera – that build bridges to different kinds of audience, including high school and college piano students. This grant, along with one from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, have helped with the cost of commissioning the thirteen included pieces from well-known composers, premiering it at a concert here at Carleton last year, recording the music, and manufacturing the CD. Read more on recent grants.

Gao Hong Dice (Music) was chosen to receive The “St. Paul Listens” grant from the American Composer Forum with award amount of $6,000. This program will commission her to write a work to be performed and recorded by Zeitgeist that will engage children and adults in listening to a new musical work. Gao Hong is the one of the first three composers to be selected for this new project. Read more on recent grants.

In September, Susan Singer (Biology) received a National Science Foundation (NSF) award of $200,000 for a collaborative project with coPIs from Cornell University and the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR). Their research “Big Science at Small Schools Collaboration: Genomics of chamaecrista fasciculate, a native prairie plant with potential for mixed prairie biomass” will bring new-generation sequencing technology and the opportunity to work with whole transcriptome sequences to an undergraduate collaborative, and will generate an educational module accessible to high school teachers. Read more on recent grants.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a three-year grant of $220,156 to David Liben-Nowell (Computer Science). His Theoretical Foundations project, "Algorithms for Social Networks," has two main threads: the investigation of formal mathematical models and systematic analysis of large-scale real-world social networks. Prof. Liben-Nowell's research (and that of the students who will be funded by the grant) will use well-known online communities to better understand the general characteristics of networks. Read more on recent grants.

The Science Education Resource Center (SERC), directed by Cathy Manduca, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) REC award of $61,039 for a collaborative project with Columbia University titled "Synthesis of Research on Thinking and Learning in the Geosciences." Read more on recent grants.

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research was awarded to Joseph Chihade (Chemistry). These additional funds to an AREA grant support an African American female biology major to participate in his work exploring the evolution and specificity of an important enzyme family, with implications for antibiotic development and insight into several inheritable mitochondrial diseases. Read more on recent grants.

Sarah Titus (Geology) received an American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund Type G grant to investigate distributed deformation within the San Andreas Fault in central California. Read more on recent grants.

Gao Hong Dice (Music) received a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant to work on Chinese Temple Music in Beijing and Henan. Additionally, over the last six months, Gao received awards from the American Composers Forum Encore program providing support for performing a concerto for pipa by Changjun Xu, and from their Essentially Choral Program for a choral music composition entitled "Coming of Spring." She won a Meet the Composer Creative Connections grant for composing and outreach, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership Grant for composing music for Choral. For more information on Gao’s work and upcoming performances, visit www.chinesepipa.com. Read more on recent grants.

In May 2007, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations awarded a $200,000 grant to Carleton for use in planning the College's new arts center, which will occupy the old Northfield Middle School. The College will use the funds in selecting an architect for the center and developing initial plans for the project.

Prof. Melissa Eblen-Zayas (Physics & Astronomy) won a substantial and prestigious Cottrell College Science Award from the Research Corporation, an important supporter of scientific research and development. The award will facilitate Prof. Eblen-Zayas’ research on a magnetic semiconductor, and provide four summer stipends for undergraduate researchers in her lab. Read more on recent grants.

This spring, Stephen Mohring (Art & Art History) received two residential awards to support his work as a studio artist. A generous stipend allowed Prof. Mohring (and his wife, freelance writer Joanna Rawson) to spend May at the Can Serrat International Art Center, near Barcelona, Spain. A second grant, an “Emerging Artists Fellowship” from the Jerome Foundation, will enable Prof. Mohring to spend time at the Blacklock Nature Center in northern Minnesota this fall. These two grants follow on the unusual recent donation to Prof. Mohring of a portable sawmill which he will use in projects and courses that involve the use of wood harvested from the Arboretum (especially invasive species and windfall timber). Read more on recent grants.