IRWG announces graduate student research awards for 2023
The Institute for Research on Women and Gender has awarded 10 doctoral students summer funding to support wide-ranging projects related to women, gender and sexuality. Boyd/Williams Dissertation Grants were awarded to Cassandra Euphrat Weston and Jun Zhou for projects related to women and work. Through this award, IRWG supports projects that promote knowledge about and enhance understanding of the complexities of women’s roles in relation to their paid and unpaid labor. Eight IRWG/Rackham Community of Scholars summer fellowships were granted to Ph.D. candidates from disciplines in the humanities and social sciences whose dissertations incorporate interdisciplinary feminist perspectives, or focus on women, gender or sexuality. Those recipients are Brittany Joyce, Jessica Kiebler, Sunhong Kim, Raya Naamneh, Sydney Tunstall, Raquel Vieira Parrine Sant’Ana, Elizabeth Walz and Kerry White. All awardees participate in a weekly interdisciplinary seminar during May and June, with time for individual research in July and August. For more about the recipients and their projects.
Advising Council of U-M honors outstanding academic advisers
The Advising Council of U-M has recognized Jordan Long of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Leonora Lucaj in the College of Engineering for outstanding academic advising. The ACUM Outstanding Advising Award, established in 2022, recognizes staff and faculty advisers from any school or college on the Ann Arbor campus. Long is an academic adviser for the Ford School’s Master of Public Policy program. Lucaj is the undergraduate adviser in CoE’s Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering. Student nominators stressed that she recognized them as whole persons. Valeria Bertacco, vice provost for engaged learning, offered her congratulations to the ACUM award winners and nominees. “Your work is critical in supporting the success of our students. The students’ testimonies that we read in the hundreds of nominations for these awards speaks to the enormous impact that staff and faculty advisers have on the lives of our students, impacting not only their educational outcomes, but also their well-being and engagement,” she wrote.
U-M wins award for student leadership development initiative
The Association of College Unions International has recognized U-M with its Excellence in Student Training Programs award. The award spotlights creative educational programs to prepare students as leaders or employees. U-M received the distinction for the success of the M-LEAD’s innovative Impact Initiative, which has provided training and support for supervisors of student employees while engaging those students in reflective practice to enhance their leadership development and career readiness. Through the program, students chose leadership competencies to focus on; received one-on-one support from their direct supervisor; and completed entry and exit surveys. Student employees engaged in the initiative demonstrated significant growth in key competencies and reported improvements in their ability to apply their new skills to other contexts and communicate about them in a future interview. The collaborative initiative spanned multiple departments, growing from 10 supervisors and 25 students to over 40 supervisors and more than 100 student employees, aligning many existing and emerging leadership education efforts across Student Life. Supervisors interested in joining the Impact Initiative should email mleadinfo@umich.edu.
New sustainability catalyst grants support novel methods, materials
Five newly awarded sustainability catalyst grants will support a variety of projects designed to advance technical and behavioral interventions toward greater sustainability. The projects are funded by the Graham Sustainability Institute. Engaging researchers from nine units across U-M and several other academic institutions, along with multisector partners, the projects will explore community solar, agrivoltaics, carbon-neutral building materials, aviation fuel waste reduction and sustainable archeology. Since 2017, more than 30 projects have received sustainability catalyst grant support from Graham for small-scale, collaborative, interdisciplinary sustainability research. Sustainability catalyst grants are open to all faculty and researchers across U-M’s three campuses. Each of the five featured research teams will receive $10,000. Read more about the projects, including team members.
Community engagement period for Vision 2034 closing soon
Community engagement for U-M’s strategic visioning process will close soon as the project team focus on developing a draft 10-year strategic vision for the university based on the community’s input. Vision 2034 will host two remaining town halls this month for staff and faculty to share ideas. An in-person session is 9-10:15 a.m. May 25 at the Michigan Union Anderson Rooms, and a virtual session is 3:30-4:45 p.m. May 30. Registration information is available online. Ideas may be submitted through June 12 at vision2034.umich.edu/get-involved/. More than 2,500 faculty, staff and students have engaged in the Vision 2034 process so far. During the summer, the project team will review community input to develop a draft strategic vision that will be shared with the community for feedback in the fall. A survey is being developed that launch in the fall to refine the vision and to prioritize the ideas and opportunities that have emerged from the community.
— Compiled by James Iseler, The University Record
