Inside Furman is published monthly during the school year by the Furman University Department of Marketing and Public Relations. For story ideas, e-mail John Roberts, editor.
Manyé awarded NEA fellowship
Lourdes Manyé, an assistant professor of Spanish, has been awarded a 2005 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literary Fellowship.
Manyé was awarded the prestigious fellowship along with her husband, Wayne Cox, who teaches at Anderson College. The two will oversee the translation from Catalan into English of “Selected Poems” by the late Miquel Martí i Pol (1929-2003), one of the most widely read poets in contemporary Catalan literature. In 1995, they published Vacation Notebook (Lang Press), a translation of one of the poet's earlier collections, Quadern de vacances .
The NEA proposal by Manyé and Cox was among 1,600 applications nationwide, and their project was one of 14 chosen in translation fellowships. The Literary Fellowship includes a $10,000 award.
Manyé joined the Furman faculty in 1995.
Staff scholarship deadline is March 15
Applications are now being accepted for the 2005 Staff Community Fund Scholarship.
Furman staff members make annual gifts through payroll deduction to the scholarship fund, which was established in 1999. The first $500 scholarship was awarded in 2002. Two $500 scholarships will be awarded this fall.
Full-time Furman staff, their spouses and dependents are eligible to receive the scholarship. Scholarship funds must be used to assist with educational-related expenses.
Each applicant must submit a biographical sketch.
Applications for the scholarship are due by March 15. Recipients will be notified by April 16. A subcommittee of the university's Staff Advisory Committee will review applications for the scholarships and make the final decisions.
For additional staff scholarship guidelines, see the staff notices folder in First Class.
Seven receive Mello grants
Several members of the faculty and staff have received career enhancement grants from the Mellon Cluster Group of liberal arts colleges.
The purpose of the grants is to enhance the careers of faculty by addressing the need for more effective use of time, individual intellectual growth and development, and by providing more opportunities to participate in intellectual communities. The awards were presented in the areas of “Local Initiatives” and “Inter-institutional Initiatives.”
Furman is one of eight liberal arts colleges from across the country to share in a four-year, $2.5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support faculty career enhancement.
Grant recipients in the “Local Initiative” category are:
• Music professor Daniel Koppelman, $22,000. His project: “Live Sampling: A New Direction in Electroacoustic Music Performance.” Other Furman music faculty participating in the grant are Tamara Matthews (voice) and Matt Olson (saxophone).
• Biology professor Joe Pollard, $24,800. His project: “Trace Metal Distribution and Accumulation on Ultramafic Outcrops: Comparative Studies of Puerto Rico and the Southern Appalachians.”
The Inter-institutional Initiative recipients are:
• Economics professor Mary Jean Horney (and faculty from seven other “cluster” institutions), $25,000. Her project: “Liberal Arts Economics Conference.”
• Idella Glenn, director of multicultural affairs, and Jane Love, director of the Center for Collaborative Learning and Communication (and faculty from four other “cluster” institutions), $50,000. Their project: “Model Institutes for Faculty on Social Justice Education.”
Grant to fund River Basins Initiative
Two professors have been awarded a $323,244 grant that will allow undergraduate students from across the country to spend their summers on campus studying the impact of urbanization on the Upstate's river systems.
The grant was awarded to professors Brannon Andersen and Dennis Haney by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through its Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Andersen teaches in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Haney in the Department of Biology. Five additional faculty members helped write the grant.
The three-year grant will help fund Furman's River Basins Research Initiative, an ongoing study of water quality in the Upstate that has involved both students and professors. Since the project began in 1996, there have been major studies on the impact of wastewater treatment plant discharge on rivers, changes in biodiversity between drought and non-drought conditions, and the resistance of microbes such as E. coli to antibiotics found in river water.
Oakes named outstanding sponsor
Margaret Oakes, associate professor of English, received the Sigma Tau Delta Outstanding Sponsor Award this month in recognition of her commitment to encourage reading.
Sigma Tau Delta (STD) is the international English honor society that recognizes the accomplishments of English students and promotes the appreciation of literature and writing. Oakes, who will be honored next month during a national ceremony, helped found Furman's STD chapter in 1998 and has worked to encourage the growth and activism of the organization.