Guidelines for Ford/Knight Proposals: Academic Year 2013-2014

Collaboration is the key to much of the research and scholarly activity at Earlham. Each year members of the Earlham teaching faculty apply for Ford/Knight (F/K) grants to support student/faculty collaborative research teams.

For 2010-12, the F/K Committee approved twenty-seven projects involving twenty-eight faculty from Humanities, Social Science, Natural Science and Fine Arts divisions plus five librarians. These projects are:

• Michael Birkel (Religion), Rufus Jones, and Quaker Worship: Alone and Together;
• Marya Bower (Philosophy), Identity and China;
• Amy Bryant and Anne Thomason (Library/Archives), Digitizing History: Expanding Earlham Digital Archives;
• Len Clark (Philosophy) retired, Consensus-seeking as a Decision-making Method;
• Bill Culverhouse (Music), Musics of the Arab World;
• Mary Garman (Religion), Quaker Almanac;
• Dan Graves (Music), Music and Neuroscience: Are There Any Universal Emotional Responses to Music?
• Ferit Guven (Philosophy), The Paradoxes of Democracy;
• Maria-Teresa Herd (Physics), Research in Medical Physics;
• Nathan Jones (Art), The Ceremonial Mace: Symbolism and Significance;
• Welling Hall (Politics), Prohibition's Bookshelf and its Social and Familial Context;
• Tom Hamm (History/Archives) and Alice Shrock (History), Quaker Women's History in the Long Nineteenth-Century, 1790-1920;
• Judi Hetrick (Journalism), Peace Journalism;
• Deb Jackson (SoAn), The Tar Sands Region of Northern Alberta, Canada;
• Jennie Kiffmeyer (Library), Picturing Peace: An Examination of Picture Books and Other Types of Children's Literature that Promote Peace;
• Tom Kirk (Library) retired, History of Earlham College Library Service;
• Howard Lamson (Spanish) retired, The Representation of "Home" and "Community" Away from Home in the Mexican Immigrant Community in Richmond, Indiana;
• Julia May (Art), Quakerism and Classicism in the Works of Marcus Mote;
• Anand Pardhanani (Mathematics), Mathematical Projects and Strategies in Service of Social Justice and Public Policy;
• Jennifer Seely (Politics), African Citizenship: Legal and Conceptual Dimensions;
• Andrew Sloin (History), The Soviet Avant-Garde (deferred);
• Chris Smith (Biology), The Nutritional Basis of Division of Labor in Ants;
• Sejal Sutaria (English), Nation-states, Nationalism, and Global Literature;
• Forrest Tobey (Music), Researching and Writing a Liberal Arts Music Theory Website and Textbook; and
• Wendy Tori (Biology), Reproductive Behavior of Eastern Blue Birds in Richmond, Indiana.

Examples of other recent F/K projects span the disciplines: Classical Music and Ethnic Identity in Detroit; Foundation and Narration: A Comparative Study of Texts Representing Cities and Early Urban Experiences in the Americas; Negotiating Identities: Latino and Latin American Performance; Extraction, Separation and Characterization of Bioactive Compounds in Natural Products; Othello: From Page to Stage; Young Adults in Richmond: Perspectives and Experiences; Evaluating 'No Child Left Behind': Measuring Achievement and Measures of Assessment; A Comparative Study of Creole Linguistics; Divided Memory and the Shoah; Writing Physlets for the Web; Fen-phen-omenal: Heart Disease Research; "Greening" Earlham; The Loss of Hegemony: The NAACP in the 1950s and 1960s; Determination of Pesticide Contamination in Local Ground and Surface Water; Architecture and Literature; Community Economic Development Studies; Islam in Germany; Sophocles' Philoctetes and Its Reception (Unpacking the Baggage); Japanese Food and Its Dietary Education, shokuiku; Post-1989 German Literature and Film; Chemistry of Food Preparation and Preservation: Use of Powder XRD, ATR-FTIR, NMR, CD, and Calorimetry in Food Science; Quakers and the Anti-Slavery Movement.

If you are interested in applying for a F/K project, there are two deadlines to observe (both are on the first Wednesday of the month).

• Wednesday, November 7, 2012: for submitting a preliminary statement. The committee needs approximately two paragraphs describing your project (topic, projected research and outcomes, plans for sharing your research with the Earlham community) AND a close estimate of dollar costs.
• Wednesday, December 5, 2012: for submitting the final proposal.

The final statement for a Ford/Knight project should include the following components, in this order:

1. Name and title of faculty director
2. Title of project
3. What is the research to be conducted? What are the anticipated learning goals and outcomesfor yourself, the students, and the community? How does the project relate to the mission of the college? Please be specific. Note that items #1, 2 and 3 could be included in reports describing F/K projects, and posted on the F/K web page.
4. Exactly how will the work be collaborative? Specifically, what research and analytical work will thestudentsdo? How will the students' work be evaluated? Please be specific, especially in relating assessment to student learning.
5. What academic preparation should students have?
6. How many students will be involved? Four students is the norm, but past projects have had as few as three and as many as eight students.
7. What is the schedule for the project? Please indicate
   • semester and year during which the project will occur
   • how the work will be accomplished during a semester, and perhaps
   • how time before and/or after the research term is to be used.
   • Note: FK projects earn 3 credits.
8. How will your released time be provided? If you are to be replaced, how will this be arranged?
9. What is the budget for the entire project? Please include the costs of ANY faculty released time during a regular semester as $8,000 (even if your replacement may earn less). Most project totals fall within the $9,000 to $10,000 range, INCLUDING the cost of faculty replacement. Note: the F/K Fund can no longer cover the costs of students' books and of extensive group travel. However, we can support individual faculty travel to conduct researchessentialto the F/K project. Proposals should clearly indicate why the travel is essential, and what specific costs would be.
   Each project is allowed a $500 allotment for Earlham library purchases. Project directors can also request funds to purchase personal books and educational materialsnecessaryfor project preparation; requests should include an itemized list of materials to be purchased.
10. How will the project impact your teaching generally?
11. What are your plans for sharing your research results with the Earlham community? Publications, exhibits, departmental colloquia, presentations at the Earlham Annual Research Conference, and readers' theater performances are just a few of the vehicles used in the past.

You are encouraged to discuss your plans with a member of the F/K Committee before you apply. Committee members are Chris Smith, ext. 1377; Lyn Miller, ext. 1214; Neal Baker, ext. 1355; Patty Lamson, ext. 1424; Alice Shrock, 966-5855 (convener). The Administrative Associate for the Ford/Knight Program is Cheri Gaddis ext. 1525, 1526.

Note: Final reports on F/K projects are due by June 30 of the academic year in which the project occurred. You must submit a final report in order to be considered for future grants.

A complete account of expenses, with receipts, should accompany your final report. It is expected that any unused portion of an expense award will be returned to the College when you submit your final report.