Community Engaged Scholars Faculty Research Mini-Grant Program
Are You Looking for Support for your Research?
The Community Engaged Scholars (CES) Faculty Research Mini-Grant Program is open to faculty who propose a research project that focuses on an investigation of service-learning pedagogy and practices here at Xavier University or pursues research that engages community partners through shared academic and community goals. The program provides the opportunity for a Xavier University Community-Engaged Fellow (four-year service scholarship recipients) to support the faculty member’s scholarly work during the summer and provides additional assistance with the project through the fall semester. Grant recipients participate in a community of practice, engaging with faculty across the university.
Up to eight upper-class Fellows are invited to be paid summer research assistants for Xavier faculty to support projects that address an identified community need or opportunity with a nonprofit partner and examine the broader impact of our teaching and learning.
2024 Participating Faculty and Research Projects
Surveying the Oral and Documentary History of the Fernald Atomic Feed Materials Production Site
Dr. Karim Tiro, Department of History
The Fernald Feed Materials Production Center (FPMC) was a foundry and smelter where uranium was processed for use in building nuclear weapons. It was located in northwest Hamilton County and employed thousands of Cincinnatians, primarily from the West Side, between 1951 and 1988. It was closed at the end of the Cold War, but not before controversy erupted over the exposure of workers and neighbors to radioactive elements. After Fernald was closed, it became an EPA Superfund site, during which time the more highly contaminated soils were shipped to radioactive waste disposal sites in the Southwest, less dangerous ones were buried, and extensive measures were taken to protect the aquifer. Due to activism and litigation, the remediation project did not simply render the site relatively safe; it created a wetland nature preserve where visitors come for recreation and to photograph its burgeoning bird population.
The purpose of this research is to preserve the history of Fernald, reflect upon it, and disseminate its story. Our community partner is the Fernald Community Alliance, a group composed principally of former workers, neighbors, and administrators at Fernald. They
meet regularly to promote the history of the site as a place that contributed to the US victory in the Cold War, as well as where citizen protest led to effective government action.
Social Movements Under Threat
Dr. Bashir Tofangsazi, Department of RIGS
Earlier studies of social movements showed that factors such as collective identity and personal ties motivate individuals to participate in political activism. This project aims to focus on the impact of erosion of rights on participation in social movements. In recent years, members of the LGBTQ community and immigrants have faced increasing challenges. This includes but is not limited to erosion of legal rights and hostile rhetoric in the media. Given this environment, it would be important to analyze whether threats against the rights of such minority groups could stir people into action. Specifically, this project will analyze if people who do not have any personal ties, and do not identify with either one of the groups mentioned above, are more likely to contribute to advocacy groups in the face of such threats.
To answer this question, this project will assess three local nonprofits; Cincinnati Pride, Cincinnati Black Pride, and Ignite Peace. The first two organizations mainly focus on organizing the yearly Pride event while the latter addresses a wider variety of issue ranging from immigration to criminal justice reform. What these organizations have in common is that they all serve communities whose rights have been under legal and rhetorical attack during recent years. This project will analyze whether such threats could encourage citizens to contribute to civil rights organization due to their personal values, rather than their social ties or identities.
Simple Paper-Based Assay of Copper Using Egg White as Chromogenic Reagent: A Green Chemistry Experiment Modified for High School.
Dr. Supaporn Kradtap-Hartwell, Department of Chemistry
In 2021, I received the CES grant to form teaching collaboration between two high school chemistry classes, at Purcell Marian (Cincinnati) and Chiang Mai University Demonstration School (Thailand). Students learn about green chemistry through the lab experiment, “Determination of iron in supplement pills using tea solution” that I have developed, and the CEF student assistant helped to modify it to suit high school level. Students from the two schools also gain intercultural working experience when meeting virtually to discuss the experimental results.
Green chemistry aims to minimize the use of high cost and harmful synthetic chemicals/materials which make it suitable for high school classes with limited budget and facilities. So far, students have opportunities to explore the use of a safe natural reagent (tea) and the spectrophotometric technique that measures light absorbance which correlates to concentration of the chemical substance of interest (iron-tea complex). I would like to further demonstrate another feature of green chemistry in using an alternative lower cost detection method.
This will be done through another green chemistry experiment “Paper Based Assay of Copper Ion Using Egg White Protein and Digital Image Analysis.” Paper platform will reduce the use of glassware, and digital image analysis using a free software will replace the high-cost spectrophotometer.
The addition of this new experiment will help to enhance chemistry classes at both high schools through a unique chemistry learning/teaching experience.
What We Learned From a Multi-Semester Community-Engaged Learning Cohort
Dr. Sheena Steckl, Department of English
This research project is centered on an experimental multi-semester community-engaged learning cohort of first-year students started at Xavier in fall 2023. A thorough review of literature tells us that both learning cohorts and community-engaged learning courses can increase student feeling of belonging on campus and improve both grades and retention. The community-engaged learning cohort took the same ENGL 101 and ENGL 205 instructor in the fall and spring semesters their first year in an attempt to discern is academic or interpersonal outcomes were more favorable than those of traditional first-year students.
Concomitant to the cohort learning in community was a survey to all first-year students given at the conclusion of their ENGL 101 course, which is taken in either fall or spring of their first year. The survey assessed student belonging and campus services or experiences that do or do not promote belonging on our campus. We are analyzing survey findings to ascertain if a community-engaged learning cohort model should be more broadly adopted on campus, or what practices and programs should be better supported.
2023 Participating Faculty
- Dr. Kathleen Hart, School of Psychology
- Dr. Richie Liu, Department of Marketing
- Dr. Renea Frey, Department of English
2022 Participating Faculty
- Dr. Leah Dunn, Department of Occupational Therapy
- Dr. Diane Ceo-DiFrancesco, Department of Classics and Modern Languages
- Dr. Kathleen Hart, School of Psychology
- Dr. Matthew D. Regele, Department of Management & Entrepreneurship
- Dr. Jeffrey Gerding, Department of English
- Dr. Terri Enslein, College of Nursing
2021 Participating Faculty
- Kathleen Timmerman, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
- ShaDawn Battle, Assistant Professor, Gender and Diversity Studies Program
- Lauren Angelone, Assistant Professor of Science Education and Instructional Technology, Department of Education
- Supaporn Kradtap-Hartwell, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry
- Kathleen Smythe, Associate Professor, Department of History
- Stacey Raj, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
- Mich Nyawalo, Associate Professor, Diversity and Gender Studies Program
- Thomas Wagner, Associate Professor, Department Communication Studies
2020 Participating Faculty
- Christine Anderson, Associate Professor, Department of History
- Diane Ceo-DiFrancesco, Associate Professor, Department of Classics & Modern Languages, Jennifer Gibson, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, and Leah Dunn, Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy
- John Fairfield, Professor, Department of History
- Anne Fuller, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
- Tammy Sonnentag, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
- Joan Tunningly and Stacia Galey, Clinical Faculty, Department of Occupational Therapy
- Carol Winkelmann, Chair & Professor, Department of English
2019 Participating Faculty
- Eileen Alexander, Assistant Professor, Health Services Administration
- Christine Anderson, Associate Professor, Department of History
- Leah Dunn, Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy
- Diane Ceo-DiFrancesco, Associate Professor, Department of Classics and Modern Languages
- Renea Frey, Assistant Professor, Department of English
- Jeffrey Gerding, Assistant Professor, Department of English
- Cheryl Jonson, Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Justice