Grant Highlights
The Davis Educational Foundation has awarded Smith a $250,773 grant for strengthening writing instruction through an integrated approach to a writing enriched curriculum. This support will allow the college to integrate writing initiatives by building a new process for joining faculty and writing staff expertise, by innovating Smith’s service model for writing counseling so that it is consistent with the college’s pedagogical initiatives, and by capitalizing on the possibilities provided by a Learning Commons space.
Michael Barresi, professor of biological sciences, has been awarded a $399,649 grant from the National Institutes of Health for “The bioelectrics of axis determination during zebrafish embryonic development.”
Patricia Gonzalez, senior lecturer emerita in Spanish and Portuguese, is the recipient of a $283,150 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for “Lydia Cabrera’s ‘The Abakua Secret Society’ and its West African Sources,” an English translation of Cuban writer Cabrera’s landmark study of the Afro-Cuban Abakua religious society.
Laura Katz, Elsie Damon Simonds Professor of Biological Sciences, has been awarded a $443,222 grant from the National Science Foundation for “Collaborative Proposal: Combining single-cell ‘omics’ and community analyses to reveal functional and genetic diversity in marine planktonic ciliates.”
Susan Voss, Achilles Professor of Engineering, has been awarded a $387,220 grant from the National Institutes of Health for “Expansion of normative database for wideband acoustic immittance measures to include children and abnormal ears and analyses of data across students and underlying assumptions.” The project aims to improve methods for identifying the causes of hearing loss for people of all ages, including newborns.
Associate Athletic Director, Bonnie May, received funding from the NCAA for the position of Coordinator of Programs for StudentAthlete Development and Enhancement through the Division Ill Ethnic Minorities and Women's Internship Grant.
For the third year in a row, the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) has received funding from The Brown Foundation in support of the Museum’s efforts to enhance the undergraduate experience through student engagement, as well as allow the SCMA to continue to mentor emerging museum professionals and alumnae who work in museums and other cultural organizations.