Spark MicroGrants Have Been Awarded to Support Collaborative Faculty Research

The Office of the Vice President for Research has awarded $15,000 in Spark microgrants to support collaborative faculty research.

The funded projects are as follows:

• A collaboration stemming from a Women’s Commission survey will develop ways to frame personal and professional development opportunities for women in higher education settings.
• A joint effort between SLU-Madrid and the English department will study the feasibility of the creation of an interdisciplinary transatlantic center to support issues of education, health and inequality through the humanities, social sciences and health sciences.
• Special education, physical therapy and occupational therapy faculty will develop and evaluate an after-school enrichment program for children with developmental and coordination difficulties.
• Doisy College of Health Sciences and the Department of Theological Studies will conduct focus groups with area employers to gauge and broaden their understanding of experiences of long-term employment. This aligns with Initiative Three of the MAGIS plan to “bring community-responsive research and scholarly activities into the community setting.”
• Faculty from the School of Education will pilot a document-based history-learning curriculum at Roosevelt High School, aimed at increasing critical thinking and student engagement, reading comprehension and empowering identity.
• Another collaboration from the School of Education will bring together interdisciplinary scholars to plan and propose funding for research about the workforce readiness needs of adults in the households of students in three ACCESS Academies in St. Louis City.
• The Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Biology will gather clinicians and researchers from 11 different departments across campus to share their research at the Second Annual Wound Healing Symposium. Roundtable discussion will help determine the mission, goals, and steps to develop and sustain a Wound Center at SLU.
• Medicine, surgery, statistics and public health faculty will use a survey instrument to analyze health literacy and attitudes toward organ transplantation in an urban dialysis population, where there is a high rate of opiate use, and a lower referral rate to transplantation.
• Researchers in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science will dialogue with other departments about the creation of a national environmental center that would advance the research capabilities in the fields of engineering and science.
• The Departments of Communication and Fine Arts will combine social justice inquiry and art activism as methodology to address social injustice and urban engagement in the construction of a Mobile Social Justice Museum that will focus on radical forgiveness.
• The Department of Biology and School of Social Work will investigate genetic and environmental approaches on variations in human and insect behavior. Hypotheses about personality, aggression and mating cross disciplines and expand to a wide range of fields.
• The Department of Political Science will host diverse units within the social sciences, humanities and behavioral sciences to create a working group that will lay the foundation for the establishment of robust facilities that will support student and faculty research.
• The Departments of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training have combined efforts with the Biomedical Laboratory Science Program to research platelet function and energy drink consumption, examining how the body responds to energy drinks and why significant health issues occur in collegiate athletes who consume them.
• A collaboration between the Departments of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering will study macrophage phenotype transitions that play an important role in the immune system using a more in vivo representative technology.
• Health care management and policy faculty and music therapists in the School of Medicine will research the perspectives of current and future health care administrators on music therapy.