The Office of Sponsored Programs is dedicated to working with Emmanuel College faculty in all aspects of sponsored programs administration to support your creative, scholarly and research activities. OSP provides high quality professional services in pre- and post-award grant and contract administration and research compliance. OSP reports to the Vice President of Academic Affairs.
OSP is pleased to announce faculty grant recipients and their projects:
Professor of Sociology Dr. Catherine Simpson Bueker, Ph.D. received a grant of $68,720 from the Russell Sage Foundation for her project “Beyond White Picket Fences: How Established Residents Experience Increasing Diversity.” The overarching objective of “Beyond White Picket Fences,” is to better understand how established Americans—those who are born in the United States to US-born parents—are impacted by increasing diversity. The project is situated in Wellesley, Massachusetts, a town twelve miles west of Boston with a population of approximately 30,000.
Emmanuel College received a $294,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation’s Clare Boothe Luce (CBL) Program for Women in STEM in support of 24 CBL undergraduate research awards in chemistry, biophysics, bioinformatics, and mathematics. Led by Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Program Director Dr. Michelle Watt, and in conjunction with the Women in Science at Emmanuel (WISE) initiative, this generous grant will enable the College and its faculty to build upon its commitment to advancing women in STEM fields by significantly expanding upon hands-on research opportunities.
Emmanuel College received a six-year, $529,500 award from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to fund transformative efforts to address the historic lack of diversity in the sciences. Through the Inclusive Excellence 3 (IE3) grant, Emmanuel and HHMI will collaborate to reflect on inclusive excellence and to foster an educational environment that seeks to dismantle the effects of systemic racism. Led by Dr. Anupama Seshan, associate professor of biology and HHMI Inclusive Excellence 3 program director, the College seeks to shift the institution from deficit- to achievement-oriented thinking and practices through five overlapping areas of activity: continuing education; inclusive curricula; student empowerment; inclusive collaboration; and broader approaches to institutional transformation. Leadership for the initiative represents areas across the Emmanuel community, including biology faculty and staff/administration from the offices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Academic Affairs, Academic Advising, the Academic Resource Center (ARC) and Institutional Research.
Emmanuel College received a grant of $500,000 over 10 years from Cummings Foundation’s $25 Million Grant Program in support of the Emmanuel Business Collaborative (EBC). The EBC plans to use the funding support from Cummings Foundation to remove barriers related to program participation for local organizations that lack financial resources. While EBC-partner organizations gain useful input from student “consultants,” participation in a live-case project can represent an “opportunity cost” for new entrepreneurs who are often juggling multiple responsibilities associated with funding, business operations, marketing, etc.
Associate Professor of Biology Dr. Jason Kuehner was awarded a three-year, $372,026 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) to examine control of DNA traffic and regulation of gene expression.
Emmanuel College formally launched the PEER->CELL program, funded by a $50,000 grant from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. The Persons Excluded for Ethnicity or Race (PEER) Center of Excellence in Leadership and Life Sciences (CELL) program has been designed not only to prepare these students for successful careers in the field, but to cultivate a diverse talent pipeline for the ever-growing number of life sciences companies in Massachusetts. Led by Associate Professor of Biology and incoming Associate Dean of the School of Science & Health Padraig Deighan, the PEER->CELL program will serve 32 traditionally underrepresented students across the Colleges of the Fenway (COF).
Associate Professor of Physics Allen Price was awarded a three-year, $378,754 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to investigate how proteins find specific locations in DNA. The grant, and the research, marks the continuation of a decade-long project that began with an initial NSF grant in 2012 and another in 2017, for a total of nearly $1 million. Through their research, Dr. Price and a team of undergraduates have worked to understand how cells access genetic information and how they use it.
Associate Professor of Mathematics Benjamin Allen was awarded $240,000 from the John Templeton Foundation for his project "Natural Selection for Collective Purpose." The project seeks to mathematically model collective, cooperative purpose as is widely exhibited in living systems from microbes to metazoans. A key output of this work will be a new modeling framework that is generally applicable to diverse biological scenarios and helps to unify existing theoretical resources for the evolution of agential features in living systems. The project was part of a larger, $15 million grant by the Templeton Foundation's “Science of Purpose” initiative.
Aren Gerdon, Associate Professor of Chemistry was awarded $350,316 over three years from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for RUI: DNA and nanoparticle assemblies as biomimetic templates for calcium phosphate mineralization. The award will support and mentor undergraduate students pursuing research in biomaterials, mineralization, and biomimetics with an emphasis on analysis at the interface between inorganic materials chemistry and biochemistry. This award will primarily support student researchers in their first or second year, and ensure these students contribute to the larger scientific community.
The College received a $100,000 grant through Cummings Foundation's "$100K for 100" program. The grant will help support service initiatives through Emmanuel's Cardinal Seán O'Malley Center for Mission & Ministry.
The College received a $33,000 grant from the George B. Henderson Foundation to explore the exterior restoration and revitalization of the William Lloyd Garrison House, a National Historic Landmark that was once home to the great abolitionist, and part of the College's Notre Dame Campus, which was established in 2012.
Helen MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Psychology, received a $15,000 grant from The Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism to support further research and development of her Program for Mindfulness and Contemplative Learning at Emmanuel College. This award will enable the Program to build on MacDonald's existing research, and initiate the development and implementation of a mindfulness mediation group, a speaker series, a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) group program, and the creation of a Mindfulness Library, all open to the Emmanuel community. Together, these programs strive to foster mindfulness, psychological health, compassion, self-awareness, and emotion regulation throughout the College.
Violetta Ravagnoli, Assistant Professor of History, received a 2018 Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship in the amount of $6,500 to support her project, "Immigrant Kitchen and Identity in Glocal Perspective." Ravagnoli traveled to Italy to visit Gustolab International-Institute of Food Studies in Rome, meeting with the center's director to discuss developing experiences abroad for students that take her newly-approved course, "Immigrant Kitchens: A Glocal Perspective on Identity, Ethnicity and Foodways." She also visited Sciacca on the west coast of Sicily, which represents one of the key sending communities of late nineteenth-century Italian immigration to Boston, to meet with local families, work with the city's Pro Loco office, and participate in the Madonna del Soccorso Feast, which is reenacted every summer within the Italian-American community of Boston's North End.
Nick grew up in a family of medical professionals—his mother and grandmother are both nurses and his father is a paramedic. “I’ve always been surrounded with medical jargon and stories of health incidents, crises, and the rewarding benefits of providing care,” he said.
Emmanuel College is one of 140 local nonprofits to receive grants of $100,000 to $500,000 each through the Cummings Foundation’s $25 Million Grant Program.
When asking secondary education and biology double major Angela Girodier '22 if she’s more passionate about research or teaching, she quickly and emphatically says “both.”
One way that people’s body dissatisfaction is socially expressed is through engaging in negative conversations with friends regarding how unhappy they are with their bodies.
The role of the youth violence prevention streetworker is a critical and an often-overlooked component of juvenile violence intervention strategies in major cities across the U.S.
Within the School of Business & Management, a student-faculty research team is studying the effects of linking executive pay to DEI initiatives to answer the question: when it comes to diversity initiatives in corporations, does money talk?
Join us on a video tour of the Maureen Murphy Wilkens School of Nursing & Clinical Sciences’ new nursing laboratory. The space includes the Joanne DiGeronimo and Anthony Migliario Nursing Skills Laboratory, a high-fidelity simulation lab, de-briefing room, new office space and more.
Within the Maureen Murphy Wilkens School of Nursing & Clinical Sciences, students gain the type of hands-on, practical experience that helps them emerge as well-rounded, in-demand nursing professionals.
For Nadel, the stage is her “second home,” and the community she’s found within Emmanuel’s Theater program, a second family. While she originally thought she would pursue college theater as a hobby, she soon realized the work would define her student experience and provide a foundation for life beyond Emmanuel.
Prior to coming to Emmanuel, Gianna had never heard of the field of sociology, but was very familiar and passionate about issues of crime and justice. Her time at Emmanuel helped her to not only put a name—but also, a purpose—to that passion.
Propelled by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, students and faculty in the Mathematics Department are studying the rate of evolution in spatially structured populations using evolutionary graph theory, which may inform the estimation of important events in our evolutionary past, such as when humans split from our closest primate relatives.
Assistant Professor of Communications and Media Studies Mark Flynn and Tristyn Surprenant ’20 take a look at food advertisements and the effects of mindfulness on television binge watching.
Emmanuel is a place where students broaden their sense of what’s possible and prepare for inspiring careers in an ever-changing world. Be here.
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