Presidential Excellence Grants 2023
Sheila Alicea, School of Natural Sciences; Amir Amini Sedeh, The Bill Munday School of Business; Lisa Holleran, School of Behavioral and Social Sciences; Dustin Joubert, School of Natural Sciences; Jooyoun Lee, School of Behavioral and Social Sciences; Drew Loewe, School of Arts and Humanities; Nicholas Chad Long, School of Behavioral and Social Sciences; Michelle Robertson, School of Behavioral and Social Sciences; Alexandra Robinson, School of Arts and Humanities; Christina Thornell, School of Behavioral and Social Sciences; Joseph Vitone, School of Arts and Humanities; Jane Xie, The Bill Munday School of Business
Presidential Excellence Grants 2022
Kelly Coblentz Bautch, Professor of Religious and Theological Studies
Proposal: Angels and Demons: A Handbook and Presentation at the International Society of Biblical Literature Meeting
Hollis Hammonds, Professor of Art
Proposal: Not formally named - "Climate Crisis creative research collaboration with Sasha West"
Brian Sheerin, Associate Professor of English
Proposal: Counting People: Politicizing the 'Multitude' in Early Modern Drama
Joe Vitone, Professor of Photocommunications
Proposal: Cammino Materano and Family Records
Amy Concilio, Associate Professor of Environmental Science
Proposal: Carbon Storage Potential of Native Restored Grasslands of the Texas Hill Country
Lisa Holleran, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
Proposal: Mentoring Program: SEU Students and Youth on Probation
Angela Ju, Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Political Science
Proposal: Copyediting book manuscript - Immigrant Political Incorporation in Another America: Brazilians of Japanese and Jewish Heritage
Michelle Robertson, Professor of Sociology
Proposal: Intimate Inequalities in the Global World
Haydory Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Economics
Proposal: Does the Interest Rate Spread Predict Stock Market Volatility? Analyzing the Short-Run and Long-Run Dynamics Between Interest Rate Spread and Stock Market Volatility
Omid Jadidi, Assistant Professor of Operations Management
Proposal: Sustainability: How to Manage Deteriorating Inventory
Jane Xie, Associate Professor of Finance
Proposal: Does Finance Committee Create Value for Shareholders? An Analysis of Chief Financial Officer Compensation
Meredith Claire Edwards, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Proposal: NSF Building Capacity for New Faculty in Biology Grant: Directed Evolution and Evaluation of Pectinolytic Yeast for Bioethanol Production
Presidential Excellence Grants 2021
Emily Barton, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: The impact of Pandemic-Related Stress on Alcohol Use Among College Students
Jason Callahan, Professor of Mathematics
Proposal: Continuing Research Productivity in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Amy Concilio, Associate Professor of Environmental Science
Proposal: Climate Change Impacts on Native and Invasive Grasslands of the Texas Hill Country
Katherine Goldey, Associate Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: Intimacy in the Time of COVID: Pandemic-Related Stress and Sexual Desire
Sheila Gordon, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts
Proposal: Liz and LadyBird: Whistlestop 1964!
Hollis Hammonds, Professor of Art
Proposal: Awake in the Dark
Eamonn Healy, Professor of Chemistry
Proposal: A Biophysical Model for the Human Heat Shock Response to SARS-CoV2
Lisa Holleran, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice
Proposal: Anti-Sympathy Instruction in Death Penalty Cases
Angela Ju, Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Political Science
Proposal: Rethinking Political Incorporation Domestically and Transnationally in Brazil
Jooyoon Lee, Associate Professor of Global Studies
Proposal: Hiroshima and Military Nostalgia
Adam McCormick, Associate Professor of Social Work
Proposal: Examining the Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Experiences of LGBTQ+ Youth in the Foster Care System
Michelle Robertson, Professor of Sociology
Proposal: Intimate Inequalities in the Global World
Alex Robinson, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: not named (will complete artwork for a solo exhibition at Women and Their Work, group exhibition in New York and at the Contemporary Austin art museum)
Jamie Rose, Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric
Proposal: Document Design and Validity Theory: How a Unified Curriculum Actually Looks
Amr Swid, Assistant Professor of Management
Proposal: Helping Women Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Triumphs
David Thomason, Associate Professor of Political Science
Proposal: Civics Life in Rural Texas: Understanding the Rural/Urban Divide
Rebecca Thompson, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Proposal: Assessing the Impact of Structural Defects and Disorder on Biomolecular Sensing by Mixed Self-Assembled Monolayers
Emma Woelk, Associate Professor of German
Proposal: Yiddish, German and the Expressionist Theater: Jewish Identities in Interwar Europe
Jane Xie, Associate Professor of Finance
Proposal: Finance Committee and M&A Activities
Presidential Excellence Grants 2020
Peter Adhihetty, Associate Professor of Kinesiology
Proposal: The Effect of Short-Term Spaceflight on Apoptotic Markers in Mouse Cardiac and Skeletal Muscle
Sheila Alicea, Associate Professor of Kinesiology
Proposal: Hilltoppers on the Move: A Peer-Mentored Exercise Program for St. Edward's University Students
Jessica Boyette-Davis, Associate Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: Mitigation of Threat Detection in Pain Catastrophizers Using Guided Meditation
Amy Concilio, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy
Proposal: Impacts of Drought on Ecosystem Function and Services in the Texas Hill Country
Chris Flynn, Associate Professor of English
Proposal: Romanticism and Travel: Essays on the Travels of William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, 1793-1824
Katherine Goldey, Associate Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: The Effect of Financial Stress on Academic Performance and Physiology in First-Generation College Students
Selin Guner, Associate Professor of Global Studies and Political Science
Proposal: International Relations: Theory and Practice
Eamonn Healy, Professor of Chemistry
Proposal: A Unified Mechanistic Language for Organic Chemistry
Angela Ju, Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Political Science
Proposal: Language Politics in Brazil's Public Schools
Adam McCormick, Associate Professor of Social Work
Proposal: Social Work and Masculinity: A framework for intervention
Mitch Phillipson, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Proposal: Combinatorial Models on RNA-like Sequences
Michelle Robertson, Professor of Sociology
Proposal: Intimate Inequalities in the Global World
Alex Robinson, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: Place and Identity
Tammie Rubin, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: Expanded Experiences & Immersive Installations
Sung Won Suh, Assistant Professor of Finance
Proposal: The Impact of Home Purchases by Foreign Buyers on Austin Housing Market
Joe Vitone, Professor of Photocommunications
Proposal: Cultura dell'Agricoltura & Family Records
Jeanetta Williams, Professor of Psychology
Proposal: Changing One's Academic Major: Influences of Procrastination, Personality, and Perceived Challenge among Diverse Undergraduates
Jane (Qian) Xie, Associate Professor of Finance
Proposal: Corporate Social Responsibility on Financial Decisions and Performance
Presidential Excellence Grants 2019
Sheila Alicea, Associate Professor of Kinesiology
Proposal: Effects of a peer-supported physical activity program as an adjunct in the treatment of depression and anxiety in college students.
Jessica Boyette-Davis, Associate Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: Virtual Reality as a Means to Decrease Prostaglandin Release and Consequent Pain in Healthy Volunteers
Katy Goldey, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: Sculptorades, Cloodles, and Cameos, Oh My! Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Cranium Game for the General Psychology Classroom
Hollis Hammonds, Professor of Art
Proposal: A Senseless Culture of Violence
Eamonn Healy, Professor of Chemistry
Proposal: Is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) a prion disease?
Sarah Henseler, Professor of Psychology
Proposal: Emerging Adults Encounter Religious Differences: A Comparison of American and Moroccan Responses
Adam McCormick, Associate Professor of Social Work
Proposal: Quantitative Approach of Family Acceptance of LGBTQ Youth
Michelle Robertson, Professor of Sociology
Proposal: Intimate Inequalities in the Global World
Tammy Rubin, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: Continuation
Bilal Shebaro, Associate Professor of Computer Science
Proposal: The Effect of Acquisition Footprints in Computer Memory Forensics
Brian Sheerin, Associate Professor of English
Proposal: Practical Fictions: Tudor Mathematics and the Poetic Imagination
Sung Suh, Assistant Professor of Finance
Proposal: Institutional Investors and Real Estate Fund Returns
David Thomason, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Proposal: Tell me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies - The Normative Value of Political Myth in Liberal Democratic Thought
Jennifer Veninga, Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Proposal: A Theology of Witness: Vision and Memory in a Suffering World
Joe Vitone, Professor of Photocommunications
Proposal: Culura dell'Agricoltura & Family Records
Peter Wake, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Proposal: Literature and the Idea of Withdrawal in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Jane Xie, Associate Professor of Finance
Proposal: Corporate Governance, Firm Performance and Risk taking in Scapegoating Firms
Debra Zahay-Blatz, Professor of Marketing
Proposal: Crowdsourcing and Ideation in the New Product Development Process
Presidential Excellence Grants 2018
Stephen Dilley, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Proposal: A Philosophical Analysis of the Incursion of Metaphysics into Scientific Argumentation
Hollis Hammonds, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: The Space Between (new works on memory and the "collective consciousness")
Jack Musselman, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Proposal: Should the Fiddler on the Roof Sing Hip-Hop instead? Ethics in Arts Administration
Alexandra Robinson, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: New Drawings: "Dahs and Dits" and "Checks and Balances"
Tammy Rubin, Assistant Professor of Art
Proposal: Women & Their Solo Exhibition
Jessica Boyette-Davis, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: Determining the Effectiveness of Inquiry Based Learning in a STEM Field
Amy Concilio, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science
Proposal: Benefits of Prairie Restoration in Urban Green Spaces of Austin TX
Katherine Goldey, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: Does Communication Moderate Associations Between Love Attitudes & Relationship Satisfaction in Couples?
Selin Guner, Associate Professor of Global Studies
Proposal: Turkish-U.S. Relations
Adam McCormick, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Proposal: Quantitative Approach of Family Acceptance of LGBTQ Youth
Michelle Robertson, Associate Professor of Sociology
Proposal: Intimate Inequalities in the Global World
Tom Yufik, Associate Professor of Psychology
Proposal: Examination of Mental Illness in the Austin Start-Up Community
Steve Fletcher, Associate Professor of Secondary Education
Proposal: Left Brain Right Brain Institute – A novel faculty professional development model
Elisabeth Johnson, Associate Professor of Literacy
Proposal: Embodiment and literacies: Teaching, learning, and becoming in a post-world
Charles Hauser, Associate Professor of Bioinformatics
Proposal: A Multifactor Analysis of Impact of Fire on Soil Fungal Community Structure
Presidential Excellence Grants 2017
School of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Dr. Jessica Boyette-Davis, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: Pain Perception in Athletes vs. Non-athletes as a Result of Perceived Competition
Dr. Kathleen Brown, Associate Professor of History
Proposal: Bearing Witness to Christian Faith and Practice: California Ministers’ Opposition to Militarism in World War I
Dr. Laurie Heffron, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Proposal: Post-Detention Access to Services and Well-Being Among Immigrant Women and Children
Dr. Katherine Goldey, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience
Proposal: Physiological Pathways from Cognitive Appraisals to Social Behavior
Dr. Selin Guner, Associate Professor of Global Studies
Proposal: What are the causes and consequences of the recent military coup attempt on Turkish politics?
Dr. Sarah Henseler, Professor of Psychology
Proposal: Belief Challenge and Identity Among College Students: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study
Dr. Jooyoun Lee, Assistant Professor of Global Studies/Political Science
Proposal: War Memory and Foreign Policy in International Hierarchy and Korean Popular Culture in Asian and in North America
Dr. Adam McCormick, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Proposal: Research project for publication – addressing systemic barriers that LGBTQ youth encounter in the child welfare system
Dr. Rachael Neal, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Proposal: Constructing Whiteness: Sustaining Anti-Racist Ideologies
Dr. Delia Kothmann Paskos, Associate Professor of Psychology
Proposal: Preparing manuscript for publication on Art Therapy and Alzheimer’s Research Study and Planning for Implementation of Seminar on Sexual Assault and Self-Defense
Dr. Michelle Robertson, Associate Professor of Sociology
Proposal: NSF ADVANCE Program Adaptation Grant Application
School of Education
Dr. Elisabeth Johnson, Associate Professor of Literacy
Proposal: Research project: collaborative self-study of pre-service teachers and a teacher educator’s digital crossings
Dr. Katie Peterson, Assistant Professor of Reading
Proposal: Developing Socially Just Ideologies in a Teacher Education Program
Dr. Kris Sloan, Associate Professor of Education
Proposal: The Uberization of Teacher Credentialing: The “Revolution” will not be Theorized
School of Humanities
Dr. Alan Altimont, Associate Professor of English
Proposal: Marbod of Rennes: Selected Works
Dr. Emily Bernate, Assistant Professor of Spanish
Proposal: Evaluations of Morphological and Lexical Politeness Strategies in United States Spanish
Dr. Mary Brantl, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: Hagel & Mieth –through a Jack London Lens
Dr. Kelley Coblenz Bautch, Associate Professor of Religious and Theological Studies
Proposal: Context through Texts: Religious Practices and Communities Revealed by Pseudepipgraphal Literature & an Emerging Project: an Edited Volume on the Historical Jesus
Dr. Christopher Gerben, Assistant Professor of Writing & Rhetoric
Proposal: Social/Media/Writing: The Rhetorics of Online Interactions
Ms. Hollis Hammonds, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: “The Space Between Believing and Forgetting”
Ms. Jena Heath, Associate Professor of Journalism
Proposal: The China Stories: Exploring the Changing Narrative of Chinese Adoption
Mr. William Kennedy, Professor of Photocommunications
Proposal: Hybrid Digital Imaging Technology and production of new work
Ms. Alexandra Robinson, Associate Professor of Art
Proposal: Dahs and Dits and Commitment Issues
Ms. Tammie Rubin, Assistant Professor of Art
Proposal: Always & Forever, Visual Study of the Great Migration
Dr. Brian Sheerin, Associate Professor of English
Proposal: Something from Nothing: Literary Theory and Radical Imagination in Early Modern England
Ms. Mary Helen Specht, Assistant Professor of English
Proposal: Research for second novel loosely based on the end of Georgia O’Keefe’s life
Dr. Jennifer Veninga, Assistant Professor of Religious and Theological Studies
Proposal: A Comparative Theology of Witness: Trauma, Testimony and Solidarity in a Global Context
Dr. Joseph Vitone, Professor of Photocommunications
Proposal: Family Records Photography and Italian Language Study
Dr. Peter Wake, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Proposal: Hegel and Comedy – completion of scholarly article
Dr. Sasha West, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Proposal: Solastalgia: A Manuscript of Poems
Dr. Emma Woelk, Assistant Professor of German
Proposal: Well ich ajch derzejln a majsse: Fred Wander’s Yiddish storytelling between Revival, Redemption and Critique
School of Natural Sciences
Dr. Kaitlyn Phillipson, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Proposal: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Convex Codes
Dr. Bill Quinn, Professor of Biology and Computer Science
Proposal: Guiding Student Research in Plant Physiology
Dr. Bilal Shebaro, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Proposal: Crime Scene in a Digital World: An interdisciplinary course for the 21st century crime fighters
Dr. Casey Sherman, Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Proposal: Periodic Orbit Structures of Billiards on an Equilateral Triangle, Orbit Structures of Homeomorphisms on Cantor sets and Continua
Dr. Santiago Toledo, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Proposal: Research: Collaborative research involving undergraduates to synthesize and study a family of metal complexes that mimic the active site and reactivity of Ni-ARD
The Bill Munday School of Business
Dr. David Altounian, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship
Proposal: Summer Entrepreneurship Program
Dr. Katherine Lopez, Assistant Professor of Accounting
Proposal: An Exploration of Accounting Role Identities Expected by the Public
Ms. Catherine MacDermott, Professor of Management
Proposal: Framing employability deliverables in BCOMM around the personal brand: A pedagogical strategy for developing students’ unique value proposition in the marketplace
Dr. Wesley Pollitte, Assistant Professor of Marketing
Proposal: Evaluation of Experiential Learning: Does it Motivate Students to Take a Deep Learning Approach?
Dr. Debra Zahay Blatz, Professor of Marketing
Proposal: The Organizational Challenges in Teaching Digital Marketing