Office of Research Programs and Services (ORPS) Active Awards

Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation awarded $500,000 to the New College Foundation to launch Access Leadership, a new program targeting low-income, high-potential high school students from Sarasota and Manatee counties who have demonstrated outstanding leadership and service to their communities.

New College dean of outreach and chief diversity officer Dr. Bill Woodson stated, “Increasing access to high-quality postsecondary education and diversifying the educated workforce are matters of local, regional and national urgency. The vitality of the Sarasota-Manatee area and the state of Florida gains a tremendous boost when we successfully tap the talent of all of our young people, regardless of their economic status.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a five-year, $750,000 grant to New College of Florida to support curricular and research initiatives that preserve local history, integrate social and racial justice work into artistic practice and teaching, and explore questions of special interest to the local community.

The grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Higher Education and Scholarship in the Humanities program is a testimony to New College’s strength in the humanities, to the vibrancy of the arts community in the Sarasota-Manatee area, and to the promise of the Cross College Alliance. Relatively few such grants go to public universities.

New College and the Cross-College Alliance in the Community will be headquartered at a newly created Office for Community Outreach and Engagement and will involve a multi-pronged collaboration with the other four institutions in the Cross College Alliance: Ringling College of Art and Design, State College of Florida, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee and The Ringling Museum.

Professor of Biology and Marine Science Sandra Gilchrist secured a grant from the HDR Foundation to address microplastic pollution in nearshore waters. Her project will give an annual baseline of microplastics in water and sediment that can be added to state and 5 gyres databases, providing information for a reduction/clean-up strategy. Dr. Gilchrist expects to engage at least 120 college students and 30 teachers in her project and will continue to process and collect samples as part of class work and senior projects with New College students.

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Christopher Kottke achieved a multi-year grant from the National Science Foundation for his project entitled “RUI: Analysis on HyperKahler Moduli Spaces.” Dr. Kottke will collaborate with national and international colleagues to contribute to the body of work on moduli spaces, which are important objects of study in geometry. This work will complement Dr. Kottke’s classroom teaching, supervising of original undergraduate research, mentoring student-led project-based independent study projects, and an ongoing initiative to improve diversity and gender parity in the math major.

Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies David Brain secured additional funding from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology School of Architecture and the Built Environment to continue his and New College students’ work on Public Space and Urbanism Research Database Development. Through this work, Dr. Brain and students will continue to identify and review available research in the social sciences for inclusion in the Center’s database. Dr. Brain also secured new finding from KTH to perform his work on Civic Urbanism: Configuring the New Urban Commons.

Join ORPS in celebrating AWESOME news for Assistant Professor of Biology Brad Oberle and Assistant Professor of Biology Jayne Gardiner. Brad and Jayne have been selected for funding under the EPA Gulf of Mexico Program!!! Together they will partner with Professor of Biology and Director of Pritzker Marine Biology Research Center Sandra Gilchrist and with the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program. The team will implement a novel experimental restoration to identify how alternative methods for exotic deadwood disposal alter mangrove carbon cycling, fish communities and native revegetation. The fieldwork will take place at Tidy Island, the most extensive intact mangrove habitat in Sarasota Bay, and will engage underserved high school students who will learn how the health of the bay affects citizens through Sandra’s PUSH/SUCCESS program. In times of federal funding slashes, especially at the EPA, this award is truly significant for the researchers and New College.

Let’s give a round of applause to Associate Professor of History Thomas McCarthy. Tomas was awarded a scholarship under the program Research Stays for University Academics and Scientists by the German Academic Exchange Service. Thomas will apply for his scholarship during his sabbatical at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich during Spring 2018. Congratulations Thomas!

Professor of Biology and Director of Pritzker Marine Biology Research Center Sandra Gilchrist for securing funds from the Bay Partners Grants at the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program (SBEP) for her PUSH/SUCCESS project! PUSH/SUCCESS provides a comprehensive educational activity for local, middle-school and high-school youth on campus. The program offers students an opportunity to enrich their science interests and includes a stay at New College dorms. Other activities for participants include a guided tour of Sarasota Bay on the Bay Explorer, an educational vessel, to learn about important habitats and how humans affect them. Congrats to Sandra and the participants!

Third-year Environmental Science student Carlos Mejia and Natural Sciences Division Chair Katie Walstrom have also secured funding from the Bay Partners Grants at the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program for their project on Phytoremediation of Contaminated Groundwater. Guided by Katie, Carlos and Carolyn Reidy, a third-year undergraduate at Penn State University, will install a specialized phytoremediation garden designed to contain phyto-accumulators in the Caples side of NCF campus. This sustainable, solar-powered initiative will result in cleaner groundwater in the proposed high-priority area. Way to go Katie and Carlos!

Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies Emily Heffernan secured funds from the University of Florida to partner with them in performing research on the conservation and recovery of key at-risk butterflies, including listed taxa and those of conservation concern across Florida and California. Emily and select New College students will perform bioinformatics and genetic data analysis, among other related tasks. Way to go Emily! Much success to you and students!

Professor of Biology and Director of Pritzker Marine Biology Research Center Sandra Gilchrist has secured funding from Publix Super Markets Charities for her PUSH/SUCCESS program’s 15th year anniversary. With New College faculty and students working together, PUSH/SUCCESS provides a comprehensive educational activity for local, financially-challenged middle-school and high-school youth in a college setting. Focus is placed on assuring that students interested in science, not always tops in their classes, are given a chance to explore their interests. This year Sandra’s happy to report that one of the students from past sessions is working with her on a project for the MaST program on ocean acidification effects on sea urchins. Congrats to Sandra and participating students!

The American Philosophical Society has awarded Professor of History David Harvey a Franklin Research Grant in support of David’s research. With this grant, David will make a research trip to France to examine French efforts to secure new colonies in Guyana, the Falkland Islands, and Madagascar, and to reform and regenerate existing colonies in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. The product of David’s research will be a book titled Enlightened Colonialism? France and the World, 1763-1789. Congratulations David!

ORPS is excited to report that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a five-year grant (2016 through 2021) of $750,000 to New College of Florida. The project has three central goals.

To elevate New College’s capacity to contribute to public discourse on humanities and arts in our region.
To build sustainable relations with local arts organizations.
To establish sustainable academic connections with local colleges that comprise the Cross College Alliance.
The grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Higher Education and Scholarship in the Humanities program is a testimony to New College’s strength in the humanities, to the vibrancy of the arts community in the Sarasota-Manatee area, and to the promise of the Cross College Alliance. Relatively few such grants go to public universities.

With the help of many New College students, Dr. Steven Shipman received generous support from the National Science Foundation to stare into space. Well, more accurately he’s been staring into the atmosphere, and it’s not him that’s doing the looking, it’s a high-speed digital oscilloscope. Dr. Shipman’s project has made data collection and analysis much faster and easier for scientists working with chemical spectrums. The work done on the project includes the creation of new data-collection methods and spectral analysis software, which were all made freely available to the greater scientific community.

What is perhaps most interesting about this project is the fact that many of these methods and pieces of software were created by New College students. This is the other side of Dr. Shipman’s project, not only has he been able to take important steps forward in the field of chemical spectroscopy, he is making an opportunity for New College students to engage directly. For its three-year duration, this project has become part of many students’ ISPs as well as some theses, making it an important part of the New College educational landscape.