Grants in Action

Celebrating Scholarship

Vassar Grants in Action highlights and celebrates the grant funding, principal investigators, and project leadership that enrich faculty research and scholarship, institutional programs and priorities, and the student experience at Vassar.

Diptych headshots of Erendira Rueda and Candice Lowe.

Erendira Rueda and Candice Lowe Swift publish Academic Belonging in Higher Education

Candice Lowe Swift, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Erendira Rueda, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Latin American and Latinx Studies, published Academic Belonging in Higher Education.

Leah Bendavid Receives NSF-funded ACCESS Accelerate Supercomputing Time

Leah Isseroff Bendavid and her collaborators are investigating the potential application of boronic acids as anchoring groups in dye-sensitized solar cells with a computational study the scope of which is only possible through ACCESS—an advanced computing and data resource supported by the National Science Foundation. The results of this study will inform ways in which dye-sensitized solar cells can be optimized to improve their stability and efficiency.

Amitava Kumar publishes, The Yellow Book: A Traveller’s Diary, a follow-up to The Blue Book.

Amitava Kumar, Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair, is author of The Yellow Book: A Traveller’s Diary, “an arresting document of our times, an irresistible peek into a writer and artist’s heart, and a clarion call for hope.”—Udayan Mitra, Executive Publisher, HarperCollins India.

Visiting Scholar Elizabeth Thiele receives funding from The Carter Center

Elizabeth Thiele, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Biology, has been a Technical Consultant for The Carter Center since 2015, and recently received the Center’s renewed support toward her ongoing research into the population genetics of Dracunculus medinensis (Guinea worm).

Harry Roseman, Isabelle Hyman Emeritus Professor of Art, has had his work accepted into the Video Art & Experimental Film Festival (VAEFF)

Harry Roseman’s video Temple of the Six Banyan Trees, Guangzhou, China, was accepted into the Video Art & Experimental Film Festival (VAEFF), and is a semi-finalist for numerous other festivals. His work is based on approximately 3,500 photographs of his travel in China as well as about 30 hours of sound.

Professor of Art Lisa Collins publishes Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee’s Bend Quilt

Lisa Gail Collins, Professor of Art on the Sarah Gibson Blanding Chair and Director of Vassar’s American Studies Program, is author of Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee’s Bend Quilt, a thickly layered story of a work-clothes quilt made in mourning and the memory of its making.

Kimberly Williams Brown is co-author of a new book Say, Listen: Writing as Care

Kimberly Williams Brown, Assistant Professor of Education, is co-author of Say, Listen: Writing as Care, a new book by The Black | Indigenous 100s Collective. A project of seven scholars working within Blackness and Indigeneity, the Black | Indigenous 100s Collective takes a new approach to thinking, writing, and practicing care.

Táhirih Motazedian, Assistant Professor of Music Theory, Publishes Key Constellations: Interpreting Tonality in Film

Published by the University of California Press, this important work “is the first book to investigate film soundtracks—including original scoring, preexisting music, and sound effects—through the lens of large-scale tonality.”

Charles Steinhorn awarded a six-figure grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York

Charles Steinhorn, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, was awarded a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York to undergird the ongoing STEM Teaching Experiences for Undergraduates (TEU) program in New York City, in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History and Barnard College.