Faculty Innovation Seed Grants

Following a competitive, College-wide application process, the following two Faculty Innovation Seed Grants have been selected to support the early-stage development of cross-college (i.e., inter-school) interdisciplinary research proposals. Both funded projects are focused on developing research that crosses traditional school and disciplinary boundaries, and have the potential for garnering additional external funding. Each team will receive up to $12,000 in support for Calendar Year 2022, with the expectation that external funding proposals will be submitted no later than May 2023.

“Black Life Futures: African Social Research and Diasporic Black Ecologies” is a project curated by Erica Richardson (Weissman) with contributors from across both Weissman and Marxe schools: Angie Beeman (Marxe), Anna D’Souza (Marxe), Shelly Eversley (Weissman), Zachariah Mampilly (Marxe), and Rojo Robles (Weissman). They describe their project’s key questions:

“Black Life Futures: African Social Research, and Diasporic Black Ecologies” explores the following inquiry: In what ways do studies in Black Ecologies and social research in African studies speak to one another? What are the connections between ecological forms of oppression and socio-political legacies of colonialism within the Black Diaspora? And what kind of Black futures might we imagine through cultivating conversation and producing scholarship across these academic fields? Through our project, we will develop a critical body of scholarship and foundations for connections in fields of African studies and Black studies across the Marxe School and Weissman School at Baruch.

“Baruch Experiential Learning: Sharing Climate Change Information with NYC Council Districts to Prepare for Heat Resiliency” is led by Mindy Engle-Friedman (Weissman), PI, and Ivan Montiel (Zicklin), Co-PI. Other members of the research group are drawn from across the three schools: Deborah Balk (Marxe), Stephen Gosnell (Weissman), Christopher Hallowell (Weissman), Bryan Jones (Marxe), Junghoon Park (Zicklin), Cynthia Thompson (Zicklin), Steven Young (Weissman), and Chester Zarnoch (Weissman). The heat resiliency project will:

Educate student researchers enrolled in the Heat Resiliency Project in the interdisciplinary effects and implications of the heat stress in six NYC Council districts. Minority and historically disadvantaged students selected to participate in this grant will meet with experts in the field to examine current research and scientific papers focused on heat island effects in New York, in cities across the US and around the world. The students will gain an appreciation of the magnitude of the problem and the impacts on those who are most vulnerable to heat island effects. The students will examine strategies already in place designed to protect residents and methods by which those strategies are communicated in the six selected Council districts. 

Three projects have also been awarded Provost’s Innovation Fellows.