The public is invited to presentations by Jackson State University Academy Scholars for external funding of their projects on Friday, April 17.
Academy Scholars from the College of Business, College of Education and Human Development and College of Science, Engineering and Technology will present their proposals from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Auditorium, Room 100, of the Engineering Building, said Kenya A. Hudson, faculty development specialist, JSU Center for University Scholars.
“Members of the Jackson State University Community and broader community are invited to attend and celebrate the achievements of the entire third cohort of Academy Scholars,” Hudson said.
Dr. Loretta A. Moore, vice president for JSU’s Research and Federal Relations, said Cohort 3 continues a successful tradition for the Academy for Research and Scholarly Engagement because it is designed to promote faculty success in acquiring external funding. “When the faculty succeeds, students succeed,” she said. “Over the past two years, individuals have submitted and published articles based on research and delivered many presentations — a critical juncture for junior faculty members.” Moore said the academy builds a community of people working together to address national challenges across many disciplines. “Recognition of cohorts validates the importance of their research.”
Recently, faculty from departments in the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Public Service presented their proposals. The proposals targeted diverse granting agencies and foundations.
Those receiving the proposals include: American Heart Association, Canadian Council of the Arts, Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, New Orleans Photographers Alliance, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Initiated in 2012, the Research and Scholarly Engagement Academy seeks to broaden the community of faculty members who submit proposals as principal investigators and who receive funding for their research and scholarly agendas. It does so through an intensive yearlong series of activities including workshops, mentoring and engagement with foundations and federal agencies.
For more information, contact Hudson, faculty development specialist for the JSU Center for University Scholars, at 601-979-0691 or visit https://www.jsums.edu/scholars. A reception will be held from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Engineering Building Atrium. Note: To stream the live event starting at 4 p.m., click on the following link: https://livestream.com/jacksonstateu/events/3978058.
Scholars include:
Okechukwu Anyamele, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Finance and General Business
Dr. Anyamele’s work investigates three research areas: the roles of race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status in health outcomes among Mississippians; racial and ethnic differences in loan delinquency rates in the US; and the roles of wealth and education in infant and child mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa. For the Academy he proposes a financial literacy and debt management program for African-American and Latino households. Dr. Anyamele is an article editor for the Sage Open Journal of Social Science and member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Economics and Management Science.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-dayone/#anyamele
Gauri Bhattacharya, D.S.W.
Professor, School of Social Work
Dr. Bhattacharya’s community-based study on aging, living well with chronic illness, and self-care among African Americans in the Mississippi Delta develops contextually based interventions that will prove outcomes. Broadly, her research focuses on achieving health equity in the areas of health care access and utilization, and health care outcomes. She has explored these interests in multicultural contexts including African-Americans in the Mississippi Delta region and South Asian immigrants in New York City. A licensed clinical social worker, Dr. Bhattacharya has extensive clinical practical experience particularly with substance-abusing adolescents and families.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-dayone/#bhattacharya
Janice Brockley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of History and Philosophy
In the late 1950s, Mississippi was forced to consider the integration of Ellisville, the state school for the feebleminded. Dr. Brockley’s Academy proposal investigates the ways Mississippi tried first to avoid and then to delay integration of Ellisville and the patterns and dynamics of race relations among inmates and staff post-integration. A social historian, Dr. Brockley Dr. Brockley explores the history of intellectual disability. Her broader interests include the history of health and disability, the history of childhood and the family and methods of teaching history.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-dayone/#brockley
Kathy J. Bryant, Ed.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education
A former kindegarten and first grade teacher, Dr. Bryant brings years of real-world experience to her teaching and research in elementary and early childhood education. For the Academy, Dr. Bryant proposes a structured peer-based mentoring and advisement program to improve retention, graduation and certification of pre-service teachers. Previously, she has received educational resource grants from the Education Foundation Trust.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-dayone/#bryant
Sarah Buxbaum, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management
Dr. Buxbaum is a genetic epidemiologist who has published in Nature, Lancet, American Journal of Human Genetics, European Journal of Human Genetics, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. (Eleven of her papers have been cited over 50 times.) She is particularly interested in analysis of quantitative traits pertaining to complex diseases and in family-based genetic analyses. With a Co-PI, Dr. Buxbaum submitted a research grant, Racial Differences in Inflammation and Dysfibrinolysis among Post-Menopausal Women, to the American Heart Association.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-dayone/#buxbaum
Miguel Centellas, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Dr. Centellas is an expert on Bolivian politics with numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Latin American Research Review, Latin American Perspectives, Electoral Studies, and The Latin Americanist. He is also interested in evaluating measures of democracy, and previously co-authored a methodological critique of existing measures in Political Analysis. With Co-PIs at Rice University, Wake Forest University, and Washington College; Dr. Centellas submitted a multi-year, multi-site collaborative project studying candidate selection in ten Latin American countries to the National Science Foundation.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-dayone/#centellas
H. Tomaz Cunningham, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages
Dr. Cunningham’s research interests explore eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French literature, cultural and historical relationships between the United States and France and adult second language acquisition. In response to a National Endowment for Humanities request for proposals, Cunningham developed a proposal to investigate staged theatrical productions featuring black characters that were staged in Paris, France from 1825 to 1850.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-dayone/#cunningham
Ivan Elezovic, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Music
Dr. Elezovic’s compositional output ranges from acoustic to electroacoustic works including mixed media and has been recognized and performed at national and international competitions and festivals. In 2014, he was awarded a Performing Arts Fellowship by the Mississippi Arts Commission. Dr. Elezovic submitted The Sound of Drawing Instruments to the Canadian Arts Council. The prooposal extends previous work on, Drawing Noise, a multimedia collaboration (with Profs. Chang and Geil) that blends experimentation in sound engineering with explorations of the sound, image and movement of drawing instruments on paper. Drawing Noise has been shown at the International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition in the UK.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-dayone/#elezovic
Mark Geil, M.F.A.
Assistant Professor, Department of Art
Prof. Geil recently collaborated with Prof. Chung-Fan Chang and Dr. Ivan Elezovic on the multimedia composition, Drawing Noise, which had its international debut at the International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition in the United Kingdom. His photography will be featured in the upcoming Mississippi Museum of Art pop-up show Analog v. Digital and has been awarded an honorable mention in the City of Jackson’s Sky Through My Eye competition. His funding proposal to the New Orleans Photographers Alliance explores Southern museum culture.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daytwo/#geil
Lolita Gray, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
With a Fulbright-Hayes award, Dr. Gray conducted extensive research on environmental health issues and public policies attempting to ameliorate those issues in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Togo. Among her research interests are urban communities and politics, environmental justice and minority health disparities. She has submitted a grant proposal, “System-Level Health Services and Policy Research on Disparities,” to the National Institutes of Health.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daytwo/#gray
Hung-Chung “Joe” Huang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
Dr. Huang’s drug-design related molecular dynamics simulation article was featured on the journal cover of Biopolymers. Among his other publications are two-coauthored articles in Science. Dr. Huang has worked as a bioinformatics system engineer or computational biologist at three major university medical centers in the United States. His proposal, “Discover Susceptibility Genes for Airway Diseases via Expression Quantitative Trait Loci (eQTL) Analyses” will be submitted to NSF or NIH.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daytwo/#huang
Hyunju Kim, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
As a member of the initial Academy Scholars cohort, Dr. Kim submitted and was funded as a PI for the Student-Centered Open Source Software Community by the National Science Foundation. She has also been a co-principal investigator or senior personnel on grants funded by the NGA, NSF and US Department of Energy. Her research interests include open source software, data mining and multimedia information systems. Her current proposal, “Visualization of Relationships among Health Determinants that Are Associated with Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes in African Americans,” will be submitted to the National Institutes of Health.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daytwo/#kim
Jae-Young Ko, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Public Policy and Management
Dr. Ko’s research interests focus on human dimensions of natural ecosystem management, environmental and energy policy, urban management and the evolution of environmentalism. He has previously worked on projects funded by the Houston Advanced Research Center and Galveston Bay Estuary Program, Louisiana Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities, Louisiana Sea Grant College Program and Texas Sea Grant College Program. Ko is drafting a proposal for the US Department of Agriculture that addresses sustainable community development for the Mississippi Delta Region in the context of a globalized economy.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daytwo/#ko
Ranjani Kulawardhana, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
A recipient of the National Research Council of Sri Lanka’s Presidential Award in Scientific Research, Dr. Kulawardhana investigates remote sensing and GIS applications for the inventory, monitoring and assessment of ecosystems and natural resources; the monitoring and assessment of carbon, biomass and vegetation productivity in natural and managed ecosystems; the study of ecological issues relating to climate change and wetland ecosystems. She submitted two proposals: Remote Sensing Estimates for Quantifying and Mapping Carbon Sequestration Ability of the Estuarine Wetlands in Mississippi” to the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium and “Development of Climate Indicators for US Rangelands” to NASA (Co-PI).
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daytwo/#kulawardhana
Catherine Kyeyune, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Lifelong Learning
A founder and co-director of the professional development resource of JSU’s School of Lifelong Learning, Dr. Kyeyune’s research focuses on the impact of mentoring in academic and professional settings especially for minority and non-traditional students. Specifically, she investigates the efficacy of peer mentoring for non-traditional students. Her proposal; “Higher Education and Continuing African American Students: Impact on Employment, Civic and Social Outcomes;” responds to a solicitation by the Spencer Foundation.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daytwo/#kyeyune
Jaegoo Lee, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work
A recipient of the 2013-2014 College of Public Service Dean’s Faculty Research Development Award, Dr. Lee has published articles in Death Studies, Journal of Public Child Welfare, Journal of Social Work Education, Adoption Quarterly and the Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association. Her work addresses minority children’s well-being and the role of parents therein, mental health parenting education in schools and communities and mental health training for social workers and social work students. Dr. Lee proposes to to investigate the relationship between substance abuse and HIV prevention programs among college-age African American gays.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daytwo/#lee-jaegoo
Jung Hye Lee, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Epidemiology and Bio-Statistics Program
Recently funded as PI for the Delta CHES Data Processing and Data File Delivery program by the Mississippi State Department of Health, Dr. Lee has participated as a statistician in several NIH grants: Health-Promoting Programs on CVD Risk (R01), Sleep-Disordered Breathing and Risk for CVD and Stroke (R01), Clinical and Genetic Determinants of Vascular Endothelial Function (R01), and RCMI/RTRN Data Coordinating Center (U54). She was awarded the Faculty Excellence Award at JSU, 2014, College of Public Service Faculty of the Year- Research and Scholarship Award (2013) and One JSU Faculty Excellence Award (2012). Her current NIH proposal examines the roles of perceived racial discrimination and social support on acculturative stress among immigrant communities.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daythree/#lee-jung
Chandar Lewis, Ed.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership
Dr. Lewis brings more than 15 years of classroom and school leadership experience to her research. She has been a classroom teacher in the Jackson and Canton Public School Districts and principal and assistant principal in the Jackson Public School District. Using that experience, Dr. Lewis has given presentations to the Alice Varnado Harden Center for Service and Community Engaged Learning Conference, the National Association of Hispanic and Latino Studies and the Hinds Community College Annual Child Development Conference. Her current proposal builds on JSU’s burgeoning expertise in cyberlearning to rethink and reconfigure principal certification courses for online learning environments.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daythree/#lewis
Kristie Lipford, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work
Dr. Lipford is a NIH Research Trainee in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Health Disparities Research Training Program and the Jackson State University Center of Excellence in Minority Health and Halth Disparities. She has participated in extensive professional development opportunities including the Summer Institute in Sexual Minority Population Health, ICPSR Quantitative Methods Program and UNCF/Mellon International Faculty Seminar. Her current research is for a NIH career development grant. It is titled “The Effect of Medical Discrimination of Medical Adherence and Complementary Medicine Use in the Jackson Heart Study.”
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daythree/#lipford
Tzusheng Pei, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
Dr. Pei’s research interests include the blending of object-oriented analysis and design in database design, open source software development, biology and consciousness-related issues, self-regulated learning communities, randomness and structures for representation and quantum computing. He has served as PI on a grant awarded by the JSU Institute for Multimodal Transportation and co-PI on grants funded by the National Science Foundation and the Mississippi NSF-EPSCoR. Dr. Pei has published in ADMI Conference Proceedings, International Journal of Computer Science and Security and the Journal of Information Systems Technology and Planning.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daythree/#pei
Chester Robinson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Public Policy and Administration
Dr. Robinson possesses extensive experience in the praxis of administration managing federal health care and social insurance programs including as Chief of the Evaluation Branch of the Health Resources and Services Administration, Director of the Policy and Analysis Office of US Public Health Service and Director of the Division of Community of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Additionally, he has authored or co-authored two book chapters and multiple articles in Public Administration Review and Public Health Reports. Dr. Robinson is developing a NIH research proposal on racial disparities in end of life care decision making.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daythree/#robinson
Gloria Smith, Ed.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Lifelong Learning
Selected as one of the 2013 JSU Innovators, Dr. Smith is a director of student services for the School of Lifelong Learning. She has received the 2014 Service and Professional Activities Award from the School of Lifelong Learning. Dr. Smithis a program monitor for the Southwest Mississippi World-Class Teaching Initiaitve. Her current proposal suggests a qualitative approach to investigating the variables that contribute to retention of non-traditional learners and minority students in online courses and programs. She plans to submit this proposal to the Lumina Foundation.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daythree/#robinson
Talya Thomas, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning
A recipient of the College of Public Service’s Junior Faculty Research Award, Dr. Thomas’ research agenda scrutinizes housing satisfaction of public housing residents. She submitted a local model project, the Healthy Homes Community Assessment Model, to the Environmental Protection Agency. The project would increase environmental awareness via community outreach (including education, home inspections and testing for lead and other toxins), a healthy home expo and workshops and training.
https://www.jsums.edu/researchscholaracademy/spotlight-iii-daythree/#thomas