Six TWU Faculty Receive Summer Research Stipends

4/5/02

DENTON — Six faculty members at Texas Woman's University have been awarded Summer Research Stipends, totaling $75,000, for summer 2002 .

The Summer Research Stipend program is a new initiative at TWU, supported by funds from the Texas Legislature through the Texas Excellence Fund. The program's goal is to enhance scholarly productivity by providing faculty with time and financial support to pursue their research agendas. This may include initiating research, continuing work on an established research program or bringing a project to conclusion.

Stipends went to:

• Dr. Lettie Albright (reading) received $10,000 to work on three research projects, some in collaboration with other TWU faculty or graduate students. The projects include a descriptive study examining the practice of reading aloud to students in middle-level classrooms; revision of a manuscript about children's literature for resubmission to a peer-reviewed journal; and collaborating on an annotated bibliography of nonfiction picture books for students in middle grades.
• Dr. Sandra Cesario (nursing-Houston) received $14,347 to carry out the final stages of data collection and analysis on a quantitative descriptive study surveying 500 randomly-selected hospital labor and delivery units throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. She will also do research on a quantitative correlational study looking at the attitudes and knowledge of nurses as indicators of preparedness to fulfill their professional roles in cases involving the abandonment of newborn children. Dr. Cesario also will devote time to a qualitative study interviewing women who are in prison for abandoning their newborns.
• Dr. Susan kae Grant (visual arts) received $13,273 to create a monograph titled “Night Journey” that will include three academic essays; detailed information describing her research into the nature of dreams, memory and the unconscious; and 80 photographic images. Additionally, she will identify potential publishers for the monograph and continue her experimentation with the digital Giclee printing process to produce a limited edition portfolio of 22-inch by 44-inch prints of the “Night Journey” series.
• Dr. Camelia Maier (biology) received $13,388 to continue research on the functions of estrogen compounds in plants. The stipend will enable her to complete work on a project initiated through a TWU Research Enhancement Grant; to prepare two manuscripts for submission to two peer-reviewed journals in the field of botany; to revise and resubmit a grant proposal to a federal agency; and to prepare two posters for presentation at the summer meeting of the American Society for Plant Biologists.
• Dr. Huanbiao Mo (nutrition and food sciences) received $9,112 as salary support while working on research projects funded by grants from the TWU Research Enhancement Program; the American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant through an award made to the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth; and the Human Nutrition Research Fund. Dr. Mo's research looks at the impact that a diet with a high intake of fruits, vegetables and grain products can make on tumor growth.
• Dr. Lou Thompson (English, speech and foreign languages) received $14,880 to work toward completion of a literary response to Ernest Hemingway's collection of short stories titled Men Without Women. Her creative investigation, to be called Women Without Men, will explore the significance of female relationships with men or other women; it also will enable Dr. Thompson to experiment with varying points of view.

Twenty-five applications were submitted for Summer Research Stipends. A seven-member committee representing many academic disciplines evaluated the applications and recommended recipients.

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For Further Information Contact:

Roy Kron
Director of News and Information
Tel: (940) 898-3456
e-mail: rkron@twu.edu