Perimeter Faculty Awarded RISE Seed Grants from Georgia State

ATLANTA—Seven Perimeter College faculty members are among the recipients of two separate $50,000 seed grants for research as part of Georgia State University’s first-ever Research Innovation and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) challenge.

The awards were announced Thursday by Georgia State President M. Brian Blake.

“These awards mark an important distinction for our college, especially since the grants help to leverage the unique strengths of our faculty members to address complex problems through interdisciplinary collaboration,” said Perimeter College Interim Dean Cynthia Y. Lester. "As announced by President Blake, Project RISE award recipients will share $2.5 million in one-time seed funding to develop their research."

The first grant, led by John King as principal investigator, will create the Perimeter College Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Research Collaborative to help faculty across disciplines share and engage in research.

King, Perimeter’s Math, Engineering and Computer Science Department chair, is joined by co-principal investigators Janna Blum, associate professor of chemistry; Jay Dunn, associate professor and interim associate chair of Astronomy and Physics; Vivian Mativo, professor of chemistry; and Sahithya Reddivari, assistant professor and assistant chair of Computer Science and Engineering.

The group looks forward to helping faculty share their best teaching practices in a more systematic way, King said.

“With the SoTL Research Collaborative, we want to establish a culture of research here at Perimeter with the long-term goal of establishing Perimeter as a national model for the scholarship of teaching and learning at the community college level,” King said.

“While much work has been done around student success programming, little research has been conducted on the role that innovation in the classroom and faculty-led, co-curriculum programming has played in that success, especially at the two-year college level. We hope we can build on what we currently do to create this model.”

With a separate grant, Kathy Dolan, associate professor of sociology, and Nicole Lynch, associate professor of kinesiology and health, are part of a team of 13 Georgia State faculty who received a $50,000 seed grant to establish the Southern Urban Research for Growth and Equity (SURGE) cohort. The SURGE cohort is a group of Atlanta adults who will participate in ongoing health-related research.

Led by Lucy Popova of the School of Public Health, the team includes faculty from the SPH, the Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions, Perimeter College and the Urban Studies Institute.

“This cross-disciplinary collaboration will create the infrastructure to study social determinants of health and equity over time with the goal of informing policies and interventions to reduce disparities in urban health in the Southeastern United States,” Dolan said.

Pictured from left are: Janna Blum, Kathy Dolan, Sahithya Reddivari and Vivian Mativo; standing are Jay Dunn and John King. Not pictured is Nicole Lynch. 

Photo by Bill Roa