acCLAim Research and Scholarly Work Newsletter

Vol. 12, Issue 6


Award of the Month

Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek
Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience
Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Distinguished Faculty Fellow

Learning Through Play: Reimagining PreK to Grade 4 Education
LEGO Foundation

LEGO Foundation has awarded Dr. Hirsh-Pasek and her team a five-year, $20-million grant to partner with school districts in four different states(California, Illinois, Texas, and Virginia) following children from Pre-K through 4th grade. Prioritizing under-resourced communities, the project has convened top scientists in the United States to develop an infrastructure that will support long-term sustainability in these districts. The project –including teams from the University of New Hampshire, the University of Delaware, the University of Virginia, Southern Methodist University, The University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Chicago, and the University of California Irvine aims to work with communities, districts and teachers to support a way of teaching children that is culturally inclusive, builds on how human brains learn and that prepares students with the skills they need to thrive.

The new grant will allow Hirsh-Pasek and her team to do a deep dive into how playful learning can become a model for education that is active rather than passive and that propels students into the modern age. Just as she has done with the psychology honor’s program at Temple, Hirsh-Pasek hopes that this initiative will allow teachers to enjoy teaching again and will help students learn how to collaborate, to communicate and to learn content, while also becoming strong critical thinkers and creative innovators.

~On behalf of the CLA Dean’s Office, we would like to congratulate Kathy on this significant award that will allow her to continue exploring the meaningful impact of learning through play in childhood education~

Researcher of the Month

Leslie Reeder-Myers
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Director, Anthropology Laboratory and Museum

My roles at Temple weave together my interests in social and environmental justice. I became an archaeologist because it lets me use fun scientific approaches like geochemistry and historical ecology to answer humanist questions about the many different ways that we go about being human. My work in museums is an out growth of those same interests. I use the museum to teach about the role of museums in perpetuating and repairing the harm done by colonialism. My work here includes returning Indigenous ancestors and sacred objects to their home, and I look forward to broadening our community and Indigenous partners in the coming years.

In my archaeological research, I study the resilience of Indigenous fisheries to climate change. My recent paper in Nature Communications about Indigenous oyster fisheries argues that archaeologists should use our work to reconnect Indigenous people with ancestral ecosystems rather than extracting traditional knowledge for scholarly and conservation goals. I have worked on the coasts of California and Chesapeake Bay, but right now I am focused on the Pech, an Indigenous group from coastal Honduras. With the Pech and other Honduran collaborators, I explore why the nearshore fishery has changed drastically over the past 2000years and whether the Pech were intensively managing this ecosystem before European arrival. My research supports the Pech battle for land and fishing rights where their ancestors lived for thousands of years before being displaced during colonization.

Read more here.

Featured Publication

Micro-institutional Foundations of Capitalism: Sectoral Pathways to Globalization in China, India, and Russia

June 2022

Roselyn Hsueh- Associate Professor of Political Science and Coordinator for the Certificate in Political Economy

To demystify diverging globalization trajectories in the age of neoliberalism, my recent book uncovers a new model of economic globalization. Taking a historical and comparative approach, I advance a novel theoretical framework, which bridges materialist arguments with constructivism and historical institutionalism. Examining sectors from textiles to telecommunications in China, India, and Russia, the Strategic Value Framework identifies the values and identities of political economic elites during significant moments of internal and external pressures and shows the interactions between national politics and sectoral structural attributes and organization of institutions. I further contend that the emergent "national configurations of sectoral models" constitute the micro-institutional foundations of capitalism, which mediate the relationship between internationalization and actual development outcomes. The book expands the comparative scope of the national sector-specific global economic integration that I have identified in my previous work. It adjudicates debates on liberal versus developmental state models and subnational versus sectoral trajectories, in addition to assessing regime type and open economy politics arguments.

Accolade Highlights

  • Lisa Briand (Psychology and Neuroscience) has received funding from NIH for the project entitled, “The Building Research Independence by Developing Goals and Hands-on Experiences (BRIDGE) Program.”

  • For his future novel entitled, “Every Mean,” Don Lee (Creative Writing) has received a prestigious 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship. This neo-noir novel will have a global, international focus hopping between countries in Asia and Europe. “Every Mean” will be about a disgraced K-pop star named Kyung S.Y. who's hired by a Hong Kong billionaire to get Kyung's former lover to inscribe a photo to a Chinese dissident. Or so Kyung believes.

  • Ingrid Olson (Psychology and Neuroscience) has received continuation funding from NIH for her project entitled, “The Mid-Atlantic Neuroscience Diversity Scholars (MINDS) Program.”

  • For the project entitled, “PPL Emerging Leader Fellowship Program,” and in conjuction with the Public Policy Lab, Caterina Roman (Criminal Justice) has received funding from the Stoneleigh Foundation.

  • Tina Rosan (Geography and Urban Studies) has received funding from Texas A&M (NSF) for the project entitled, “PIRE: Building Decarbonization via AI-empowered District Heat Pump Systems.”

Sampling of External Funding Opportunities

Brain Research Foundation Scientific Innovation Award
Limited Submission and will be vetted initially internally through OVPR
Internal deadline: May 22nd, 2023
More information on InfoReady

Administration for Community Living (DHHS)
Improving Methods for Conducting Research with People with Cognitive Disabilities in Virtual Environments
Deadline: July 3, 2023

Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation (various opportunities)
The foundation welcomes proposals from any of the natural and social sciences and the humanities that promise to increase understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence and aggression in relation to social change, intergroup conflict, war, terrorism, crime, and family relationships, among other subjects.
Deadline: August 1, 2023

Research Events and News

NIH Data Management and Sharing in-person Training

OVPR, Temple Libraries and Temple ITS are hosting the LabArchives team for in-person training for all faculty, researchers, post docs and students on May 17th, 2023. LabArchives managers will demonstrate how easy it is to create a new ELECTRONIC LABORATORY NOTEBOOK and how to make it most efficient for your specific use while securely managing your research data online. Topics will include access management, adding and managing content, sharing data, and collaboration tools. Training held in two campuses:

  • May17th, 2023, 9 am – 11 am in SERC Room 110 B on Main Campus Register here
  • May17th, 2023, 12 pm – 2 pm in MERB Room 217 on Health Science Campus Register here

UPDATED ANIMAL PER DIEM RATES

Updated animal per diem rates (effective July 1, 2023) will be posted on the Temple University ULAR website (research.temple.edu/research-compliance/university-laboratory-animal-resources-ular) by the end of the month.  Please use these rates when preparing proposal submissions.

Should you have questions regarding the new rates or the invoicing process, please contact Joanne Drew (joanne.drew@temple.edu).  For any non-invoice related questions and clarifications, contact Dr. Dorian Culmer-Butler (dorian.culmer-butler@temple.edu).