The University of Arkansas has awarded four $2,500 travel
grants to faculty who plan to conduct research at other institutions in the
Southeastern Conference.
The SEC Visiting Faculty Travel Grant Program is intended to
enhance faculty collaboration that stimulates scholarly initiatives among the
conference’s 14 member universities. It gives faculty from one SEC university
the opportunity to travel to another SEC campus to exchange ideas, develop
grant proposals, and conduct research.
A maximum of four travel grants — funded by the SECU
academic initiative — are available to each university for visiting faculty to
use during an appropriate period, such as a sabbatical leave, the summer or a
designated university break. The visiting faculty member may consult with
faculty and/or students, offer lectures or symposia, or engage in whatever
activities are productive for the visitor and host campus.
All areas of research and scholarly activity were eligible
for support. The U of A faculty selected for travel grants are: Dennis Beck,
curriculum and instruction; Andrew Braham, civil engineering; Nathan Parks,
psychology; and the team of Patricia Amason and Lynne Webb, communications.
Beck, an assistant professor of educational technology, has researched and written
about K-12 virtual schooling for special education students and virtual school
leaders. He aims to develop a collaborative research partnership between
the U of A’s educational technology program and the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education at
the University of Kentucky.
Braham, an
assistant professor, studies transportation materials and a major
component of his laboratory deals with pavement maintenance and rehabilitation products.
He plans to travel to the University of Florida to discuss research
collaboration with Reynaldo Roque, professor of civil engineering and one of
the premier pavement researchers in the United States.
Parks, an assistant professor of psychological
science, is interested in the balance between the speed and accuracy of
dexterous behavior, such as reaching, grasping and eye fixations. This
phenomenon is known as the speed-accuracy-trade-off. He will use his grant to learn
how to collect and process brain recordings from monkeys at the primate
neurophysiology laboratory at the Center for Integrative and Cognitive
Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Amason, an associate professor, and Webb, a professor, both
teach and write about family communication. They will travel to the University
of Missouri in Columbia to meet with two professors there to develop a joint
line of research examining online communication surrounding child adoption.
Each of these projects has the potential to become a fully
supported research collaboration.
The SEC Visiting Faculty Travel Grant is one of several
programs of the SECU academic initiative. SECU, headquartered in Birmingham,
Ala., sponsors, supports and promotes collaborative higher education programs
and activities involving administrators, faculty and students at its member
universities.