Grant funding bolsters Wheaton programs, research and facilities
News @ Wheaton, November 2005
Four recent grants awarded to Wheaton professors and programs are providing support for science research, arts programming and instructional technology in Knapton Hall classrooms.
Ford Foundation grant supports Arts in the City program
The Ford Foundation has awarded a $50,000 grant to support the Arts in the City Program at Wheaton. Arts in the City connects Wheaton students to the wider world of culture in Boston, Providence and beyond. The program funds transportation and tickets to an array of world class venues such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Providence's Trinity Repertory Theatre and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name a few. And because New York City is just a short hop away, Wheaton's students and their professors can also experience a sampling of the abundant arts events in that city. Arts in the City enables all students, regardless of their financial means, to explore the rich cultural resources of our region and immerses them in off-campus cultural offerings, thus strengthening a two-way connection between Wheaton and the contemporary arts scene.
George I. Alden Trust funds new classroom technology
A grant in the amount of $150,000 from the George I. Alden Trust will underwrite the transformation of two rooms in Knapton Hall from traditional classrooms into flexible, technologically-enhanced learning spaces. Equipping a classroom and the main lecture hall with instructional technology and modular furniture to enable more flexible configurations will promote new levels of sophistication in using a range of complex information tools and resources. The new smart classrooms will empower faculty to access ever-evolving technology-based information resources and to create adaptable learning spaces that are conducive to a range of teaching scenarios.
Wheaton and Boston Applied Technologies win two DOE research grants
Wheaton College, in collaboration with Boston Applied Technologies, has been awarded two highly competitive Phase II grants from the Department of Energy in support of Professor Xuesheng Chen's optical laser ceramic materials research. The projects, entitled "An Efficient and Practical Method for New Bright Scintillator Searching" and "TM Doped Ceramic Laser for Laser Acceleration Applications," were two of only 180 Phase II projects that were funded by the government agency nationwide. This research aims to further improve the quality of new ceramic materials and will involve studying and understanding more of their optical properties and working on their crucial applications in new lasers and scintillators. Professor Chen has been awarded a total of $240,000 to support her work on this novel research.
Earlier this year, Professor Chen also received a $150,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation. "It has been an exciting year for me," she said. "These grants resulted from my research team's hard work and excellent results, in collaboration with industry, in the research and development of new ceramic materials."
Chemistry professor awarded MIT Sea Grant for mercury pollution research
The MIT Sea Grant program has awarded a $99,000 grant to Assistant Professor of Chemistry Jani Benoit in support of her investigation into mercury pollution in Boston Harbor. With Professor David Shull of Western Washington University and students from both schools, Benoit will study how organisms that live in the harbor sediments (mud) control the transfer of mercury into the marine food web. "Mercury enters the harbor through a variety of sources, but it is converted into a more toxic form, called methylmercury, in the sediment," Benoit said. "We're interested in how it moves out of the sediment and makes its way into organisms that live in the harbor. This is an important question, because methylmercury can eventually accumulate at high levels in fish, and fish consumption represents a major source of mercury exposure to humans." The two-year grant beginning in March 2006 will support equipment, supplies, field operations, and student salaries during the research project.