Four Professors Receive SEC-Supported Faculty Travel Grants

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — For the second consecutive year, 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: Thad Scott, crop, soil and environmental science; Shannon Servoss, chemical engineering; Jennifer Veilleux, psychology; Wen Zhang, civil engineering.

Scott, an assistant professor of environmental water science, will visit the laboratory of Alan Wilson in the School of Fisheries at Auburn University. Scott and Wilson share a converging interest in harmful algal blooms and their effect on water quality. According to Scott, the project would benefit the U of A because it will allow him to learn the techniques necessary to quantify algal toxins in freshwater environments.

Servoss, who holds the Ralph E. Martin Professorship in Chemical Engineering, will visit Melissa Moss at the University of South Carolina. Moss, a renowned Alzheimer’s disease researcher, is an associate professor in the department of chemical engineering and undergraduate director for biomedical engineering at the University of South Carolina. Research in Servoss’ lab at the U of A intersects with Moss’ in the area of Alzheimer’s disease therapeutics.

Veilleux, an assistant professor of psychological science, will visit the the Personality and Emotion Laboratory at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where she will learn how to set up and run data collection using ambulatory assessment. Trull, curator’s professor of psychological sciences and Byler Distinguished Professor, is an expert on use of ambulatory assessment techniques in clinical psychology.

Zhang, an assistant professor of civil engineering, will visit the lab of Eric McLamore at the University of Florida. McLamore’s research group focuses on development and application of sensor/biosensor technology for solving hypothesis-driven research questions in the life sciences. It builds optical and electrochemical tools from the nanometer to the millimeter spatial scale, often incorporating biological molecules as an active element.

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.

The U of A is also hosting nine visiting faculty members through the grant program this year. They are:

• Kwame Agyemang, assistant professor of kinesiology, Louisiana State University
• R. Kirby Barrick, professor of agricultural communication and education, University of Florida
• Lindy Brady, assistant professor of English, University of Mississippi
• Douglas Hayes, professor, Institute of Agriculture at the University of Tennessee
• Bryan Myers, associate professor of agricultural communication and education, University of Florida
• Christopher Newman, assistant professor of marketing, University of Mississippi
• Brian Platt, assistant professor of geology, University of Mississippi
• Chad Seifried, associate professor of kinesiology, Louisiana State University
• Brian Soebbing, assistant professor of kinesiology, Louisiana State University