Sewanee faculty members have received four awards from the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Faculty Advancement Program, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This ongoing program gives preference first to collaborative efforts across ACS campus boundaries, and second to initiatives on a single campus that could serve as a model and lead to broader inter-campus programs.
The four awards to Sewanee faculty went to Woody Register for a pilot undergraduate “research apprenticeship” project; a team of faculty in history, German, and art history, along with staff from University Archives, to develop an exhibition on World War I; a team from forestry, geology, biology, chemistry, and environmental policy for an interdisciplinary project with faculty and graduate students from the University of Georgia; and Sid Brown to develop and implement an ACS faculty development workshop along with a professor at Southwestern University. Details of each project are below.
The next round of pre-proposals will be due Sept. 19, with full proposals due Nov. 30. For more information, please visit the ACS website.
Woody Register (history) received $4,000 from ACS to support a pilot undergraduate “research apprenticeship” project, designed to train students in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) in archival research strategies and methods. The project, which will be an important aspect of Register’s upcoming year-long sabbatical (for which he also received grants from the Appalachian College Association Faculty Fellowship Program and the 2012-2013 Central New York Humanities Corridor Visiting Scholars Grant), incorporates two related elements of scholarship and teaching. The first is research into the history of American social reform in the early 20th century. The second, which works in combination with the first, contributes to Sewanee’s undergraduate research initiative by enlisting Lacy Broemel, C’13, to work as his “apprentice” this summer at Syracuse University Special Collections, one of the nation’s major repositories of 19th- and early 20th-century American history. Broemel will assist Register before gradually shifting full-time to her own independent research. This project will provide a prototype for faculty-student collaboration that is suited to the particular needs of students and faculty at liberal arts colleges and can be deployed across all HSS disciplines at Sewanee and other ACS institutions.
A team of faculty in history, German, and art history, along with staff from University Archives, has been awarded $7,100 to develop an exhibition focusing on the impact of World War I on the University of the South. Faculty members Reinhart Zachau (German), Woody Register (history), and Mishoe Brennecke (art and art history); Kevin Reynolds, Assistant University Librarian; John Tilford, Curator of Special Collections in Archives; and Rachel Hildebrandt, C’98, special consultant, collaborated on this proposal, which will provide opportunities for student engagement through a variety of internship, research, and docent activities.
The exhibit concept centers on two perspectives/stories that are linked by both geography and time period. First, the exhibit will examine the experiences of various university and Sewanee Military Academy students and alumni during World War I. The second part of the exhibit will explore how the war affected the home front, specifically this region. As local men were being sent to the European front, a number of Europeans, mainly Germans, were arrested and detained at a large camp in Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia. This topic will be especially timely because of the approaching centennial of the war's outbreak. The exhibit will shed light on the local dimensions of the war by explaining how the international arena affected this region in both expected and unexpected ways.
A team from forestry, geology, biology, chemistry, and environmental policy received a $7,000 grant to work with engineering, ecology and policy faculty and graduate students from the University of Georgia on an interdisciplinary project to plan and build a constructed wetland as an alternative wastewater treatment and recycling method. After the wetland is constructed at the Sewanee Utility District, it will serve as a core activity for a variety of courses at Sewanee. The project directors, Deborah McGrath (biology) and Scott Torreano (forestry) will work with Laurie Fowler, C’80, associate dean and a member of the conservation faculty at the Odum School of Ecology at UGA, and others to incorporate the operation, environmental permitting, and scaling of the system into coursework that is central to the new Watershed Sciences Certificate Program, an interdisciplinary effort. The affected courses will provide a range of community engagement and practical field opportunities for students and faculty at both institutions.
Sid Brown, (religion) and Laura Hobgood-Oster (religion, philosophy) from Southwestern University were awarded $10,000 to develop and implement an ACS faculty development workshop on “Teaching the Animal,” to be held at Sewanee in the spring of 2013. Animal studies is developing both independently as a field and in relationship to environmental studies through its critical approach to the anthropocentric focus of academia, an approach environmental studies also questions and reconsiders. Because most animal studies courses are currently located in Psychology and Biology programs, this workshop will provide opportunities for faculty in the humanities to explore the possibility of new courses and course modules. In short, this interdisciplinary workshop will draw speakers and leaders from experts in many fields at ACS institutions as well as others in the region. The workshop will provide guidance to humanities faculty as they develop their teaching in this area by incorporating units on animal-human relationships into courses they already teach or by developing whole courses on animal studies.