2015 Award Winners Celebrated at 4th Annual Grant Recognition Reception

‌On April 19, the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) and University Advancement jointly hosted Montclair State’s Fourth Annual Grant Recognition Reception. Nearly one hundred Montclair State University faculty and staff were in attendance, joined by CSAM Dean Robert Prezant, CEHS Dean Tamara Lucas, Provost Willard Gingerich, and Vice President for University Advancement Jack Shannon. The event spotlighted the efforts of MSU’s faculty and staff in securing external sponsorship for their research and other service and scholarly programs in 2015.
The event, jointly organized by ORSP and University Advancement, was held in the Student Center. Representatives from across the University were on-hand to recognize a strong year of grants and gifts: 86 awards were received, totaling more than $10.7 million.
4th Annual Grant Recognition Reception Booklet (PDF)

Provost’s 2016 Grant Recognition Award

‌Meiyin Wu, Director of the Passaic River Institute, was recognized by the Provost for her consistent efforts in seeking and receiving sustained funding, since her appointment in 2009, from many public and private sources. Examples include: the National Science Foundation, Department of the Interior, NJ Department of Environmental Protection, National Park Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Lake Hopatcong Foundation, and the Victoria Foundation, totaling more than $1.5M over 7 years. In addition to her own grant and research productivity, Dr. Wu advises and mentors junior faculty in their grant seeking activities, and advises students, advancing their research and efforts in applying for grants. Meiyin is always willing to collaborate with others, promoting the reputation of MSU’s research.

Largest New One-Year Grant Awardees

Robert Cart (Director of the John J. Cali School of Music, CART) received recognition for his $40,000 award from the Frank and Lydia Bergen Foundation, in support of the “Graduate String Quartet.” The quartet members, mentored by the Shanghai Quartet, are the lead recruiting agents for the Cali School, providing a mobile ensemble exemplifying the School’s excellent quality to draw the highest-caliber players from major performing arts high schools and ensembles in the tri-state area. The Julius Quartet joined the graduate program for the 2015-16 academic year and represented the Cali School at Carnegie Hall with a performance of works by Mendelssohn, Bartók, and Beethoven.‌‌

Zoe Burkholder (Educational Foundations, CEHS) was recognized for her $50,000 award from the Spencer Foundation. Her grant, “An African American Dilemma: The Problem of School Integration and Civil Rights in the North,” will support the research and writing of an upcoming book–a social history of northern black debates over school integration.

Fran Prezant (Communication Sciences and Disorders, CHSS) received recognition for her $20,000 award from the Kessler Foundation, for her grant supporting the “Montclair ReelAbilities Film Festival.” The NJ ReelAbilities Film Festival is dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with disabilities. The festival provides opportunities to access film media focusing on, or merely including people with disabilities as part of the landscape of humanity while challenging stereotypic notions about disability and providing forums for post-film discussions with filmmakers, actors, and others.

David Talaga (Chemistry and Biochemistry, CSAM) (not pictured) was recognized for his $283,164 award from the National Institutes of Health, for his grant titled, “Interfacially activated aggregation of alpha-synuclein,” which will investigate the progression of Parkinson’s Disease in order to evaluate drugs, promotors, or genetic causes of Parkinson’s Disease. His Dean, Dr. Robert Prezant, accepted the award on Dr. Talaga’s behalf.

Steven Shapiro (Library Services) and Sandra Passchier (Earth and Environmental Studies, CSAM) were recognized for their $20,000 award from the N.J. Council for the Humanities for “Rising Tide: What We Can Learn From the Dutch and their Relationship with Water,” which consisted of a series of lectures, film screenings and discussions exploring the Dutch, their uneasy relationship with water, and what New Jersey can learn in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. It also addressed related themes such as the Dutch Republic and its legacy in New Jersey and New York, and the history of human understanding regarding the sea and natural disasters from a local and global perspective.

Largest New Multi-Year Grant Awardees

Jennifer Urban and Miriam Linver (Family and Child Studies, CEHS) were recognized for their $1,796,560 award from the John Templeton Foundation for “Inspiring Youth Purpose through Reflection on the Laws of Life: Improving, Implementing, Evaluating & Researching the Inspire>Aspire Poster Program.” The program seeks to help youth identify and reflect on positive values and transform these into meaningful sustained actions that hold promise for helping youth thrive in today’s world.

Christopher Matthews and Katherine McCaffrey (Anthropology, CHSS) received recognition for their $26,096 subaward from ValleyArts for the ArtPlace America-funded “Unearthing the Future: the Art of Reverse Archaeology – Interstate 280 in Orange, NJ.” The project will uncover lost knowledge about the City of Orange, and the City of Orange and ValleyArts will link that knowledge to a new counter-narrative for Orange through a series of arts interventions.

Jorge Lorenzo Trueba (Earth and Environmental Studies, CSAM) was recognized for his $365,594 subaward from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The National Science Foundation-funded project “Coastal Processes and Human Response to Shoreline Change” will investigate the interactions between the natural processes that sculpt the shore with human measures adopted locally in response to shoreline change. NJ and Massachusetts are test cases.