Lipscomb University awards summer grants to support faculty innovation
Kasie Corley |
At Lipscomb University, as knowledge grows in use it also grows in value, even on summer break. Each year, the university awards five full grants to deserving faculty members to conduct research and scholarship during the summer.
“The summer grants provide an outstanding opportunity for our faculty to showcase their talents through expanded research and development within their respective fields,” said W. Craig Bledsoe, provost of Lipscomb University. “This program prioritizes the aspiration of our founders David Lipscomb and James A. Harding to stand in the front ranks of the great educational institutions of the world.”
In the past, grants have resulted in the development of new courses, writing of books and poetry, innovative research in chemistry and biology, and programs to enhance Lipscomb’s reputation and relationship globally.
The 2017 recipients maintained this level of excellence with innovative and groundbreaking research and development. “The work of our faculty awardees directly contributes to the enhancement of the exceptional higher education Lipscomb provides, within the scope of our mission to integrate Christian faith and practice with academic excellence,” said Bledsoe.
Read on for a sneak-peak of the awardees and their projects. For more details, checkout our feature pieces to be released over the coming months.
Jan Harris, associate professor of English and modern languages in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, continued her work on “The Lyric Pilgrim and the Relic in W.G. Sebald,” and her collection of poems, “The Grand Tour.” Harris first wrote a series of erasure poems based on 19th century travel guides. Erasure poems are a form of “found poetry,” in which the poet erases words from an existing text and frames the leftover content as a poem to re-frame the existing piece under a new lens.
The erasure poems are derived from travel guides and maps. Six of Harris’ poems were published in the fall of 2017 issue of “Waxing and Waning,” a literary journal. Additionally, one of her poems was selected and read on a Spokane, Washington National Public Radio series on female poets.
T. Brian Cavitt, associate professor from the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, focused his summer on methods to inhibit growth of microbes with his work, “Bacteria are tacky, but not for long…” Cavitt’s goal through his research is to develop a biofilm coating to prevent the adhesion of bad bacteria to surfaces while allowing good bacteria to remain, creating widespread benefits in its implementation to healthcare.
Holly Catterton Allen, professor of family science in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, compiled and edited a book of accepted presentations from 
InterGenerate, an international conference designed to enhance lifelong faith formation through intergenerational Christian experiences.
The conference was successful in its first iteration with 150 ministers, graduate students, Christian educators and church leaders in attendance from around the globe. Allen, the lead coordinator, aptly attracted attendees from 14 Christian denominations to the conference. She intends to use the book and conference contributions to enhance course content for Lipscomb students.
Mark Black, professor of Bible, continued work on his book, “Acts and the Rest of the Story: A Brief Account of the Church in the New Testament.” Black intends to publish the work as a textbook for use in the Story of the Church course at Lipscomb.
Richard Hughes, scholar-in-residence in the College of Bible & Ministry, refined his 2003 book, “Myths America Lives by,” with editing and content additions. Of note is the new chapter discussing the myth of white supremacy in addition to comprehensively showing the way in which the notion of white supremacy underpins all other American myths.
Tim Wallace, associate professor of computing and technology, worked to model the relational mathematical structures embodied in the set of deoxyribonucleic acid DNA sequence data due to somatic mutations from a common ancestor for his “Estimation of Eigenvalues of IID Mutation Sequences.”