Richelle Winkler (SS) has received $14,148 from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for a 26-month-long research project titled “Geographic Analysis of Age-Period-Cohort Dimensions in Michigan Deer Hunter Participation.”
From Tech Today
Richelle Winkler was recently awarded a Phase 1 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s P3 (People, Prosperity, and Planet) program to supervise an interdisciplinary team of students to develop a guide that former mining communities can use to self-evaluate the feasibility of tapping into water in abandoned mines for geothermal energy. The student design team, led by Environmental and Energy Policy MS student Edward Louie, will present their guide at the Sustainable Design Expo in Washington DC in April 2015 and compete for a Phase 2 award of $90,000 to implement the project. Social science students are partnering with an Alternative Energy Enterprise team led by Jay Meldrum (Michigan Tech’s Keweenaw Research Center) on this project. The full team is also working closely with a community advisory board made up of leaders in the Calumet, MI community. It was Calumet community members partnering in Winkler’s community-engaged research with Main Street Calumet that started the idea for this project.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $330,000 for a three-year project to Daisuke Minakata (PI: Civil & Environmental Engineering) and Mark Rouleau (Co-PI: Social Sciences) for a project on “Coupling Experimental and Theoretical Molecular-Level Investigations to Visualize the Fate of Degradation of Organic Compounds in Aqueous Phase Advanced Oxidation Systems.” Rouleau’s contribution will be to design and implement an agent-based computer simulation to forecast the fate of organic compounds during the process of waste water treatment. His goal is to develop a simulation that will be capable of “grading” treated waste water for potential chemical contaminants prior to public reuse. For the full abstract see NSF Award Abstract #1435926.
Prof. Patrick Martin and Ph.D. candidate Sean Gohman of Social Sciences have been awarded a two-year grant for archaeological surveys at Fort Wilkins State Park in Copper Harbor. The grant, for $19,487 each year (total of just under $39,000), comes from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and will be used to support graduate students investigating the remains of the Pittsburg and Boston Copper Harbor Mining Company sit, now located on the Fort Wilkins property. This summer and fall the crew of archaeologists from Social Sciences will survey the site, and next year do some selected test excavation and recordation. If funding becomes available in 2016 and beyond, the team hopes to continue similar work on the Copper Harbor Range Lighthouse site.
Fort Wilkins was built in 1844 by the fifth U.S. Infantry Regiment to keep order in the Michigan copper mining district, though it was abandoned two years later (but re-garrisoned from 1867-70). In the absence of the military (1847-66 and 1871-1923) civilians frequently occupied fort buildings as residences and later as hunting camps and cottages until the property became a state park in 1923. Today Fort Wilkins State Park interprets three primary themes: early Keweenaw copper mining by the Pittsburgh and Boston Copper Harbor Mining Company, Lake Superior maritime history with the Copper Harbor Lighthouses, and nineteenth-century military history at the fort itself.
Since 1974 the Michigan Historical Museum has been responsible for historical activities within the park. Today, there are nineteen historical buildings: twelve original structures from the 1840s and seven reconstructions based on the historical and archaeological record. Archaeological research has been carried out intermittently at the fort from 1975 to present under state contracts and over that time various projects have investigated a number of the military buildings, the fort’s blacksmith shop, the Copper Harbor lighthouse, various trash and dump sites (often excellent windows into past material culture) as well as parts of the Pittsburgh and Boston Copper Harbor Copper Mining Company activities. This current grant will support phase I and II (surface survey and selected test dings, respectively) archaeological projects in the P&BCMC site along the northern boundary of Fort Wilkins State Park along the southern shore of Copper Harbor.
Research Excellence Fund Awards Announced
The Vice President for Research Office is pleased to announce the 2015 REF awards and would like to thank the volunteer review committees, as well as the deans and department chairs, for their time spent on this important internal research award process.
Melissa Baird, SS, will receive a Scholarship and Creativity Grant.
Guy Meadows (GLRC) and Carol MacLennan (SS) have received $199,406 from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget and Environmental Quality, for a research project titled ” Source Identification of PCBs in Torch Lake.”
From Tech Today.
Graduate Student Government Travel Grant Award Winners for Spring 2014
Travel grants for spring 2014 have been awarded. Among the Presenting Travel Grants ($ 250) recipients are social sciences graduate students Mayra O. Sanchez Gonzalez and Ronesha Strozier.
The full list of graduate recipients can be accessed online.
Travel grants are awards that help subsidize cost of attending and presenting at conferences. These awards are sponsored by the Graduate Student Government (GSG) and the Graduate School. For more information on travel grants, please visit the webpage.
Should you have any questions, contact the GSG treasurer Jennifer Winikus (jawiniku@mtu.edu).
From Tech Today.
Melissa Baird, assistant professor of anthropology, social sciences, is part of an international group of scholars who received the 2013 Perth USAsia Centre Seed Funding Research Grant. The grant, “Western Resource Frontiers: How Indigenous people, mining and heritage in Australia and the US shape our nations” analyzes issues of heritage, rights, and sustainability on the Australian and US Western ‘resource frontiers’ to broaden our understanding of global heritage and environmental politics. The project includes Jane Lydon (UWA) the PI, Aileen Walsh, UWA; Alistair Paterson, UWA; and Lynn Meskell, Stanford University.
From Tech Today.
C2E2 Endowed Equipment Awards Announced
Vice President for Research David Reed has announced the following Century II Campaign Endowed Equipment Fund (C2E2) awards at the recommendation of the C2E2 Committee.
In the Department of Social Sciences, Chelsea Schelly was awarded $5,000 for Bringing Small-scale Distributed Solar Technology to Campus.
Read more at Tech Today.
Kathleen Halvorsen (SS/SFRES) has received a $200,000 grant to study interdisciplinary science teamwork associated with investigating the socioecological impacts of bioenergy development.
The InterAmerican Institute for Global Change Research issued the call for Interdisciplinary Science Integration Grant proposals that study the integration of social and natural sciences.
Read more at Tech Today, by Danny Messinger.