Research Circles 2006-2007
Martha Groom (IAS), Robert Turner (IAS), Antony Smith, (Education) & Rebecca Price (IAS).
Our circle met frequently throughout the year, and worked on a number of manuscripts, grant proposals, and research ideas. The mix of backgrounds and experiences served each of us well, and it was a productive year.
- Martha worked primarily on a manuscript and policy briefing on biofuels that is part of collaboration with the WA office of The Nature Conservancy. In addition to improving the flow of the manuscripts, she received numerous hot tips on biofuels from Rob Turner in particular that strongly improved the depth of the paper. The briefing paper was presented to TNC in April, and the manuscript draft will be submitted to the journal Conservation Biology in late June.
- Becca worked on two grant proposals and one manuscript with the research circle over the course of the year. The circle helped her frame her ideas to communicate to a broad audience, necessary to gain funding from each source (RRF and TLC). She has received the TLC grant, and is awaiting word on the RRF grant. Becca also extensively revised, submitted, and is now newly revising a manuscript describing a career development workshop for minority science students that she co-designed and led while a post-doc in the SPIRE program at UNC.
- Antony brought excerpts of drafts of a manuscript to several research circle meetings. In early April, he submitted a manuscript, "The teacher-student writing conference: Exploring ideas and revising text," to the Journal of Classroom Interaction. The manuscript is currently under review. Antony also completed revisions to another manuscript, "The middle school literacy coach: Considering roles in context," which is now in press for the Annual Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. He has began work and received feedback on the early draft of a piece that he hopes to submit to the online journal Qualitative Researcher this summer.
- Rob worked on two papers that stemmed from a large collaborative project he completed while at Long Island University. One was a final report to the community that funded the study and the other was a collaborative research paper that describes the primary results entitled "Environmental Monitoring and Assessment of Trout Pond and Associated Surface and Ground Waters Down-gradient of the Golf at the Bridge Development, Town of Southampton, NY." Although he made strong progress, the paper has been stalled by its first author since the fall. Rob worked on a grant proposal that he prepared and submitted to the Seattle Biotech Legacy Foundation (Initiatives for Environmental Research and Community Sustainability at the University of Washington Bothell) in January 2007. Although this was not funded, it provided impetus to the VC office to prepare a related proposal to King County for some Brightwater funding. Rob has also vetted new ideas for future research directions with the circle.
Heidi Petry, (Nursing), Selina Mohammed (Nursing), Eric Stewart, (IAS) & Wadiya Udell, IAS).
Our research circle activities focused on our own personal scholarship and professional development. We utilized the time to discuss drafts for publications and grant writing. Important accomplishments included the following:
- A published editorial for a European Nursing Science Journal
- A successful proposal and application to the Geriatric Nursing Research Seminar of the John A. Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at New York University from July 15-20, 2007. Only 12 scholars nationwide are accepted to this seminar.
- The submission of an abstract that was accepted for podium presentation at the Western Institute of Nursing Research Conference and the subsequent development of a research presentation that was given at this conference in April, 2007.
- The submission of a paper to Social Science & Medicine as 4th author.
- The submission of an abstract as 2nd author to the Journal of Behavioral Medicine as part of a proposal for a special issue on the effects of ethnicity/race on health.
- The development and submission of an Investigator Research Supplement to the National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute of NIH to serve as a Co-Investigator on a 4-year cardiovascular and diabetes project in conjunction with University of Washington and the Tulalip Tribes.
- A revision and subsequent acceptance of an empirical manuscript on adolescent decision-making for the journal Cognitive Development, and the completion of an empirical manuscript on the psychosocial effects of early coitus on adolescent development.
Diane Gillespie (IAS), Bruce Kochis (IAS), Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (CUSP), & Bill Seaburg (IAS).
We began the year talking about the "phenomenology of reading," but quickly realized it would be more helpful to share writing-in-progress with each other.
- Diane Gillespie, who joined us at mid-year, is continuing her research on the effects of human rights in a non-formal education development project in Senegal, West Africa.
- Bill Seaburg continues his research and writing on NW coastal Native American stories and oral traditions. He finished and submitted an article entitled, "The Presence of the Dead: Ghosts in Upper Coquille Athabaskan Cosmology," to appear in 2008 in a collection of articles contracted with the University of Nebraska Press. He also worked on a detailed outline of a book manuscript, tentatively entitled "Indian Oral Traditions of the Northwest States: A Critical Introduction.
- Gray Kochhar-Lindgren shared his introduction to Spectral Aesthetics, his current book project, and has now moved into a chapter called "Ghosting Phenomenology."
- Bruce Kochis is focusing on two pieces of research, "Defining Human Rights from the Bottom Up," which was presented at the Global Studies Conference in May 2007 at UC Irvine, and "Human Rights in Eurasian Transitions: An Obligations Approach," which has been accepted for the International Global Studies Association conference in Manchester, UK, to be held in September 2007.
Andreas Brockhaus (Educational Technologist), Ron Krabil, (IAS), Martha Groom (IAS), & Carol Leppa (Nursing).
As a group our goal was to explore effective pedagogy facilitated by technology. Specific activities included: research on Wikipedia; review and experimentation with some free wiki programs; exploring Second Life and how it might be used in community involvement; and sharing specific course experiences (good and not so good) that incorporated new technology or old technology in new ways. We focused primarily on wikis with three specific and different uses in courses, but also considered other technology as well.
- Martha Groom created an assignment where students researched Wikipedia and wrote articles for submission. She also worked with colleagues at NCSU, ISU, and UWB to deliver a collaborative graduate research course using Jotspot Wiki. This collaboration has spanned the entire academic year, and we are working on publications from our work. About 11 UWB MAPS students and 6 additional students from UWS participated in the research.
- Ron Krabill is using Wikispaces, a free wiki program, in his Collaborative Undergraduate Research project to write a research article with a group of four UWB students. He is also using Peanut Butter Wiki, another free program, as a key tool for UW's Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities, which is focused on collaborative cultural research.
- Carol Leppa worked with Julie Planchon Wolf in the library to create an assignment that incorporates critical thinking in the review of Wikipedia (as well as other online sources).
- Andreas Brockhaus has led in the exploration of Second Life and thinking through how it may be used in effective teaching. During the year there were two abstracts submitted to Ed-Tech conferences (Groom and Brockhaus; and Krabil and Brockhaus) with one of these accepted for presentation at the national Educause conference in Seattle in October-07 (Groom and Brockhaus). We have also been collaborating on a manuscript for submission to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which will be submitted by August 15, 2007.
Elizabeth Thomas (IAS), Cinnamon Hillyard (IAS), & Nancy Place (IAS)
Our circle completed an interdisciplinary examination of teaching and learning with visual images. Two papers will be published by College Teaching in Autumn 2007, "Students and Teachers Learning to See: Using Visual Images in the College Classroom to Promote Student Capacities and Skills" and "Students and Teachers Learning to See: Using Visual Images in the College Classroom to Enhance the Social Context for Learning." We also discussed issues of teaching and learning with an eye towards another joint article. We have decided to focus on how we, as teachers in various disciplines, acknowledge and value the knowledge and experience that students bring with them to our courses, while at the same time challenging students unexamined assumptions about themselves and others.
Munehiro Fukuda (CSS), Michael Stiber (CSS), & Kelvin Sung (CSS).
During academic year 2006-2007, Professors Munehiro Fukuda, Michael Stiber, and I met frequently discussing our research. We typically help each others' research writings. Our more significant accomplishments include:
- Jumpei Miyauchi, Munehiro Fukuda, Joshua Phillips, "An Implementation of Parallel File Distribution in an Agent Hierarchy", In Proc. of the 2007 International Workshop on Scalable Data Management Applications and Systems, Las Vegas, NV, pages to appear, June 25-28, 2007
- Munehiro Fukuda, Emory Horvath, Solomon Lane, "Fault-Tolerant Job Execution over Multi-Clusters Using Mobile Agents", In Proc. of the 2007 International Conference on Grid Computing and Applications, Las Vegas, NV, pages to appear, June 25-28, 2007
- Joshua Phillips, Munehiro Fukuda, Jumpei Miyauchi, A Java Implementation of MPI-I/O-Oriented Random Access File Class in AgentTeamwork Grid Computing Middleware} In Proc. of IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Communications Computers and Signal Processing - PACRIM'07, Victoria, BC, pages to apear, August 22-24, 2007
- Munehiro Fukuda, Cuong Ngo, Enoch Mak, Jun Morisaki, Resource Management and Monitoring in AgentTeamwork Grid Computing Middleware In Proc. of IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Communications Computers and Signal Processing - PACRIM'07, Victoria, BC, pages to apear, August 22-24, 2007
- Stiber, M., ``Transient bifurcations in neural error correction'', BioSystems, vol. 89, no. 1-3, pp. 24-29, May-June 2007.
- K. Sung, "XNA Based Games-Themed Programming Assignments for CS1/2," Microsoft Research, Computer Gaming Curriculum in Computer Science, Award Number: 15871, $80,000, 2006-2008.
- P. Shirley, K. Sung, E. Brunvand, A. Davis, S. Parker, S. Boulos, "Rethinking Graphics and Gaming Courses Because of Fast Ray Tracing," to appear in SIGGRAPH 2007 Educator's Program Conference CD/DVD-ROM, August 2007.
- K. Sung, P. Shirley, R. Reed-Rosenberg, "Experiencing Aspects of Games Programming in an Introductory Computer Graphics Course," SICCSE Bulletin, Vol. 39, Issue 1, March, 2007, PP. 249-253, (Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 07).
Sundar Balakrishnan (Business), James M. Miller ( Business), S. Gowri Shankar (Business.)
The primary emphasis of our research circle was the development of a follow-up paper to our recent publication "Power Law and Evolutionary Trends in Stock Markets" in Economics Letters. (This publication derived from our research circle efforts during the 2005-2006 academic year.) Our present manuscript expands on this publication with a through cross-sectional analysis of some of our original findings.
We combine elements of economics, finance, marketing, and mathematics, and during a typical research circle meeting, we share writing describing our own disciplines' unique perspective on issues addressed in the research. We then synthesize these writings into a cross-disciplinary expression of the issues.
We believe these research circle meetings contributed greatly to our successful publication and are continuing to keep our research efforts disciplined and productive.