Seven additional West Virginia University faculty members have been awarded research grants in the University’s third year of participation in the Big 12 Faculty Fellowship Program.

The program, which offers faculty members at institutions in the Big 12 Conference the opportunity to propose research and scholarly projects that necessitate visits to member institutions, has received tremendous response from WVU faculty. The Provost’s Office, which sponsors the program, made nine awards earlier this year, but the applications kept coming in, according to Associate Provost C.B. Wilson, who oversee the awards process.

“The provost has set aside generous funding for these fellowships and so as long as the interest was there, we continued to review applications,” Wilson said. “We were impressed with the caliber of the research and scholarship proposed in the applications we received in this second round and so we are very pleased to be able to fund more Big 12 fellows than we anticipated in 2015-2016.”

The newly announced WVU Big 12 Faculty Fellows for 2015-16 are:

• Eloise Elliott, Department of Coaching and Teaching Studies, College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences.
• Xiaoli Etienne, Division of Resource Management, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design.
• Emily Jones, Department of Coaching and Teaching Studies
• Jason Gross, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Mark Koepke, Department of Physics, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.
• Yumi Soeshima, Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, Eberly.
• Gay Stewart, Department of Physics director, WVU Center for STEM Education, Eberly.

Nine other faculty members have already received fellowships in this award cycle. Their awards were announced in July. According to the program guidelines, faculty may use the fellowship funds and their time at their host institution to “work on collaborative research, consult with faculty and students, offer a series of lectures or symposia, acquire new skills, or take advantage of a unique archive or laboratory facility.”

-WVU-

ac/10/01/15

CONTACT: Ann Claycomb; Office of the Provost
304.293.9919; Ann.Claycomb@mail.wvu.edu

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