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Faculty revving up research activity

September 2009

Since establishing its Office of Research and Innovation in July 2008, the College of Education and its faculty have become far more active in the pursuit of extramural funding opportunities for research efforts.

The 36 grant proposals submitted between July 2008 and May 2009 represented an 80-percent increase over submissions for the same period from 2007-08. It more than doubled the college's seven-year average of 15.5 submitted grant proposals per year. Faculty sought more than $5.6 million in first-year funding from various sources during the last reporting period, well above the college's seven-year average of $3.04 million requested in first-year funding.

rodney greer

Rodney Greer

Developed through a $1 million gift from 1968 Education graduates Wayne T. and Cheryl Glass Smith and directed by Rodney Greer, the college's Office of Research and Innovation works to identify, cultivate and pursue government and private research funding opportunities. The college's departments of Curriculum and Teaching; Kinesiology; and Special Education, Rehabilitation, Counseling/School Psychology have all enjoyed success on those fronts in recent months.

Other significant grant opportunities have come to fruition since the close of the college's 2008-09 survey period. TEAM-Math (Transforming East Alabama Mathematics), a partnership comprised of Auburn's Colleges of Education and Sciences and Mathematics, Tuskegee University and 14 regional school districts, recently received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Scholarship Program to fund the Teacher Leader Academy for Elementary Mathematics Specialists. TEAM-Math also received $200,000 in supplemental funding funding from the NSF, adding to the initial $9 million grant received in 2003 which enabled the creation of TEAM-Math's Math and Science Partnership.

Thanks to a $1 million grant from the Rehabilitation Services Administration, the college's Rehabilitation Counseling master's program will be able to provide scholarships for 14 working rehabilitation counselors and leverage new technological devices as teaching tools.

Dr. John Saye, professor of social science education and co-director of the Persistent Issues in History Network, submitted a grant proposal on behalf of five regional school systems that brought $999,957 from the U.S. Department of Education for the "Teaching American History'' initiative.

Three Department of Kinesiology faculty members - Drs. Mary Rudisill, Leah Robinson and Danielle Wadsworth - received more than $73,000 in funding from the National Institutes of Health to advance their work examining the influence physical education instructional approaches have on the activity levels of African-American children from rural backgrounds.

Dr. Joseph Buckhalt, a Wayne T. Smith distinguished professor and director of the school psychology program, shared in a five-year, $3.8 million National Institutes of Health grant that will fund research on the cause and effect relationship between sleep deprivation and learning and behavioral problems in children.

Last Updated: May 16, 2011