22 College of Arts and Sciences professors awarded faculty fellowship during 2022-23

The Ohio University Board of Trustees has approved 22 College of Arts and Sciences faculty members for faculty fellowship leave during the 2022-23 academic year. The Board of Trustees approved fellowship leaves for Ohio University faculty members during the Board's June 13-14 meetings.

"Faculty fellowship leaves provide invaluable opportunities for faculty to devote substantial time to scholarship," said Florenz Plassmann, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "All tenured Ohio University faculty have the opportunity to apply for a faculty fellowship after 12 semesters of teaching. Faculty often use the leave to visit archives in other cities or countries, undertake field research, spend extended time with co-authors, follow through with time-consuming experiments, and find time to engage in uninterrupted writing. Very often, the scholarship that emerges during faculty fellowship leaves leads to significant advances in our scientific understanding.

"I am very much looking forward to the results of the many interesting scholarly projects that the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences will pursue during their fellowship leaves," Plassmann added.

College of Arts and Sciences faculty members awarded faculty fellowship

Jixin Chen, Chemistry and Biochemistry, fall semester: Learn a new field in materials science (battery research) by working with a leading research group at another university in order to develop new research projects and grant proposals in the field.

Brian Collins, Classics and Religious Studies, spring semester: Conduct research into the myths and rituals associated with the folk god Baital in Maharashtra and Goa for a book on South Asian sorcery and demonology.

David Curp, History, fall semester: Finish a current book project, The Mystery of Faiths: Poland's Ruined Secular and Sacred Cultures, 1945-1987 and begin a new project—Paying the Costs and Reaping the Rewards of Transition: Central Europe and the World since 1989—that builds upon (but expands) this work both chronologically and geographically.

Jared DeForest, Environmental and Plant Biology, spring semester: Establish new research plots in Ohio to act as a negative control with a previous experiment, work with German collaborators to select and sample soils in Germany, and process soils to provide data for a paper.

Glenn Dutcher, Economics, fall and spring semesters: Pursue a research project examining how a college education alters both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, which includes a comparative analysis between France and the United States' system.

Christopher France, Psychology, fall and spring semesters: Analyze and publish the results of our NIH-supported Phase 2 clinical trial of a virtual reality intervention for chronic low back pain, develop an NIH grant to support the next phase of this work, and learn new strategies to integrate virtual reality experiences into my graduate and undergraduate teaching.

Hee-Jong Seo, Physics and Astronomy, fall and spring semesters: Optimally reconstruct cosmological information from the first year of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which will be released in summer 2023.

Yolande Helm, Modern Languages, fall semester: Write a monograph on the oceanic metaphors and the Antillean subjectivity in the works of Martinican author Roland Brival.

Nicole Kaufman, Sociology and Anthropology, spring semester: Write a book proposal on the role of religion and science in policies on community corrections (for instance, probation and parole) and collect data on social scientists who have influenced community corrections policy since the 1950s.

Matthew Layton, Political Science, fall and spring semesters: Develop a book proposal/manuscript that provides a retrospective analysis of the politicization of conditional cash transfer (CCT) anti-poverty programs in Latin America, with a particular focus on the case of Brazil's Bolsa Família program.

Frank LoSchiavo , Psychology, fall Semester: Write a journal article that introduces psychology instructors to new software that offers unique opportunities for teaching basic and advanced statistical techniques to undergraduate students.

Vahe Lskavyan, Economics, spring semester: Conduct research about the economics of secret service recruitment in the Soviet Union and learn ArcGIS, a geographical information software for handling and analyzing geographic information.

Robin Muhammad, African American Studies, fall and spring semesters: Complete a book manuscript covering the history of African Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early to mid-twentieth century.

Smoki Musaraj, Sociology and Anthropology, fall semester: Conduct ethnographic research, data analysis, and writing of publications on the project "Measuring Wealth, Reframing the Rule of Law in Southeast Europe."

Dywayne Nicely, Mathematics, spring semester: Develop original research related to numerical analysis on developing two new algorithms called Lan-DR and NLan-DR.

Harold Perkins, Geography, fall and spring semesters: Conduct field research in Northwestern Montana and Southern Arizona/New Mexico on the purposeful respatialization of cold water fish species in the face of climate change, conduct archival work on the history of Callery pear as the tree that built suburbia but now is considered an invasive pest, and edit completed master's thesis (written by advisee) on geographies of resistance to a natural gas pipeline on environmental justice grounds.

Sergio Lopez-Permouth, Mathematics, spring semester: Participate in activities of the center for cryptography research of University of South Florida in order to better incorporate cryptography to our offerings at Ohio University and to my own research and invest a significant amount of time to finish writing several papers (at least 10) that are in the pipeline.

Dorothy Sack, Geography, spring semester: Conduct research and write two articles on Marie Morisawa (1919-1994), one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in the scientific study of landforms (geomorphology).

Tatiana Savin, Mathematics, fall and spring semesters: Develop an online graduate course on partial differential equation (PDE).

Tony Vinci, English, spring semester: Edit a special issue of Extrapolation on how speculative fiction engages emerging theories in the posthumanities, complete an article in the aforementioned special issue, and develop another article.

Vladimir Vinogradov, Mathematics, fall and spring semesters: Collaborate with researchers on several joint projects pertaining to a detailed investigation of the short-term evolutions of the increments of various birth-and-death processes with a growing number of initial particles.

Linda Zionkowski, English, fall semester: Edit as well as write an essay and introduction for a volume of essays titled "Representing Exile: Displacement in the Texts of the Long Eighteenth Century."