Kate Arrington, Professor of Psychology. Building from an NSF-funded conference to be hosted in May 2024, Kate will lead the effort for a center-level proposal to the newly formed NSF CRISES program. The proposed center will merge computational social science and community-based participatory research approaches to address specific community crises.
Joe Kramer-Miller, Assistant Professor of Mathematics. Joe is hoping to be a visiting scholar at Columbia University for the Spring 2025 semester. In addition, Joe will be visiting Tohoku University, National Taiwan University, and Heidelberg University, to work with collaborators and give presentations on his research.
Clay Naito, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Clay will use the sabbatical fellowship to advance the state of the art on concrete bridge construction. Specifically, he will be collaborating with the Federal Highway Administration on the use of Ultra High Performance Concrete for improving the resilience of US infrastructure. He will also be collaborating with the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute on developing concrete bridge design and assessment standards for U.S. designers and transportation officials.
Monica Najar, Associate Professor of History. Monica is looking forward to finishing a book manuscript on the life of Maria Monk, the famous (infamous) “runaway nun” of the nineteenth century. Monk claimed she had been abused in a Catholic convent and her narrative became an international bestseller. Moving beyond what her book can teach us about anti-Catholicism before the Civil War, Monica explores Monk’s fame, and descent in poverty and prostitution to understand the gender and sexual politics of the antebellum era.