Smith has received a $19,380 grant from the Gray Family Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation to train teachers in the West Linn School District on environmental issues. The Environmental Education Program seeks to encourage a strong local land ethic, sustainable communities, and stewardship of the natural environment by citizens throughout Oregon. The Fund is committed long term to institutionalizing a series of age-appropriate experiences that build a sense of place and responsibility towards Oregon and the region.

The Sustainability Education Initiative is a program of professional development coursework and activities for K-12 teachers in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District. During three courses offered in 2009, Smith will prepare 50-60 teachers to incorporate sustainability issues into their classrooms and help them implement school or community projects that will enhance local natural and social environments. Participants will be eligible for small seed grants to fund start-up projects. The grant aims to increase the number of teachers implementing sustainability projects in schools, and increase student and educator awareness of local natural systems, ecologies, and social needs.

“A grant like this is a boost of adrenaline to the writing process,” said Szybist. “As I’ve worked on my current manuscript for the last few years, I have cycled through periods of faith and doubt, both about the poems and the project as a whole. To have the NEA select my work for this distinction is a great gift of validation, and I am eager to return to my manuscript with a renewed sense of vigor and excitement.”

Szybist’s poetry has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, and Best American Poetry 2008. Her first book, Granted, was named one of the top ten books of poetry in 2003 by Library Journal. Also that year, Szybist was a finalist for the National Book Circle Critic’s Award in Poetry.

Listen to Szybist read her work at the Poetry website.

In June, Bentley received a $100,000 Faculty Development Award in Chemistry from the National Science Foundation to support her work on nanoscience and nanotechnology. Using a technique called electrochemical deposition, Bentley plans to enclose nanoparticles onto thin films so she can study their growth and eventually create a new method of nanoparticle organization.

Learn more about Bentley’s work in our online newsroom.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Niko Loening, assistant professor of chemistry, a $191,764 grant. This AREA (Academic Research Enhancement Award) program grant will support a research project aimed at discovering interesting peptides and proteins from the venom of the brown recluse spider and its relatives. The project will also characterize the structure and function of these peptides and venoms. Spider venom peptides and proteins are of interest for their potential use as therapeutic drugs and as tools for neurophysiology research.

This June, Jerusha and Brian received a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) Program for their work titled “Using Laddered Teams to Promote a Research Supportive Curriculum.” Their project, a training-model to organize collaborative research among faculty and students into three-student teams, not only works to enhance these faculty-student relations, but also engages undergraduates in innovative research.

Dahl and Vogel received a grant of $19,000 for their project “accessCeramics at Liberal Arts Colleges” from the non-profit organization NITLE. accessCeramics is an online collection of images of contemporary ceramics.

Portland Business Journal (Portland, Ore.) Clinical trials

During the fall semester, Aguilera received a $1,500 grant from the Oregon Department of Education. Her project was titled “ODE TRENS Research Project.”

This fall, Mache received a $85,355 grant from the National Science Foundation. His project is titled “Collaborative Project: CSR-CSI Making Sensor Networks Accessible to Undergraduates Through Activity-Based Laboratory Materials.” Mache will undertake the two-year project with a colleague at Portland State University.

During the fall semester, Hermann received a fourth $7,200 supplement from the National Science Foundation on his existing grant, “Genetic and Molecular Analysis of Lysosome Assembly and Stability in C. Elegans.”