The Office of the Vice President for Research is pleased to award 2018-2019 SPARC, or Support to Promote Advancement of Research and Creativity, grants to a new class of graduate students. Through SPARC, graduate students compete for grants of up to $5,000 to fund their research, creative and scholarly projects. SPARC participants have a unique opportunity not only to gain funding for their scholarly projects, but also to grow their experience in developing competitive grant proposals. Students who apply for SPARC prepare detailed budgets, write a narrative description detailing their plans and research methodology, compile supporting documentation and seek the support of their faculty advisors. This process closely reflects many of the steps they will take when applying for funding in their academic careers, giving them an edge on the competition.
This year, we are excited to congratulate 57 students from eight different academic units who have been awarded SPARC grants for 2018-2019. These SPARC recipients, listed below, will use their SPARC funds to engage in research and scholarly projects over a 15-month period beginning this May.
Congratulations 2018-2019 SPARC Recipients
| Recipient Name | Department or Program |
Proposal Title |
| Trenton Agrelius | Biological Sciences | Message mystery: How Daphnia relay environmentally relevant information to future generations. |
| Saba Arash | Physics and Astronomy | Second Harmonic Generation Measurement on Multiferroic Janus Fibers |
| Sean Ardor | Theatre | The Embodied Imagination: Noh Drama and the Power of the Individual Performer |
| Madeline Atwell | Anthropology | Mental Institutionalization and Health: Biocultural perspectives of skeletal trauma and disease from state hospitals in the 20th-century United States |
| Alexandra Bethlenfalvy | History | "Operation Freedom Summer": Highlander Folk School and the Expansion of Voter Education Pedagogy, 1954-1964 |
| Genine Blue | Educational Psychology and Research |
Investigating Elements of Responsive Instruction in Pre-service Teachers’ Classrooms |
| Rachel Bridges | School Psychology | Validation of a Computerized Attention Screening Measure |
| Margaret Carson | Environmental Health Sciences |
The Effect of Temperature Variation on Lyngbya wollei Toxin in Adult Zebrafish in Lake Wateree, SC |
| Danda Chapagai | Pharmaceutical Sciences |
Selective Inhibition of the Polo-Like Kinase 1 for Prostate Cancer |
| Eric Chinaeke | Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmaceutical and Health Outcomes) |
Use of Highly-Active Antiretroviral Therapies (HAART) and Risk of Diabetes Among Elderly Medicare Beneficiaries With HIV |
| Anna Cofie | Health Services Policy and Management |
Trends in antenatal care use and reasons for non-compliance with WHO recommendations in Ghana |
| Kaitlyn Crosby | Health Services Policy and Management |
Clinically Integrated Networks: The 'Magic Pill' for Improving the Quality of Health Care? |
| Leily Daneshian | Chemistry and Biochemistry | Intradiol Ring Cleavage Dioxygenases in Tetranychus urticae Xenobiotic Metabolism |
| Melissa DeVelvis | History | Gendering Secession: Women and Politics in South Carolina, 1860-1861 |
| Shelby Dickerson | Chemistry and Biochemistry | Tuning the Redox Properties of Silicon Phthalocyanines by Peripheral-Substitution for Organic Photocatalysis |
| Kelli Dubois | Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior | Decision Making for Treatment and Management Methods Over the Illness Trajectory of Ulcerative Colitis |
| Calley Fisk | Sociology | Unequal States of America: How State-level Racial Policies Impact Individual Health Disparities |
| Marco Forgione | Philosophy | Path Integrals and Holism |
| Jill Found | History | Institutional Enslavement: Enslaved Lives at American Colleges and Universities |
| Paul Fram | Educational Psychology and Research | A Qualitative Analysis of the Intersections with Race in Middle School Children's Home/School Identities and Perceptions of School Discipline Experiences |
| Nazli Gharraee | Biomedical Engineering | Role of smooth muscle progenitor cells in the progression of thoracic aortic aneurysm in a mouse model of Marfan syndrome |
| Andrew Green | Creative Writing | When America Worked |
| Michael Gregory | Philosophy | The Sources of Juridical Normativity in Kant |
| Zac Hart | Environmental Health Sciences | Assessing Stakeholder Needs and Preferences for Coastal Swimming Advisories in Charleston, South Carolina |
| William Hayes | Experimental Psychology | Modeling the role of arousal in risky decision-making |
| Nicholas Heiserman | Sociology | Complex Stereotyping Stereotypes at the Intersections of Race Gender Age and Social Class |
| Xiao Huang | Geography | A Deep Learning Supported Flood Mapping Framework that Integrates Remote Sensing and Social Sensing |
| Yuqin Jiang | Geography | Analyzing Human Mobility Patterns during Hurricane Matthew Evacuation |
| Yanping Jiang | Health Promotion, Education and Behavior | Effects of a Resilience-Based Psychosocial Intervention on Cortisol Regulation for Children Affected by Parental HIV |
| Nare Karapetyan | Computer Science | Area Coverage of River Under Consideration of River Meanders |
| Joshua Kleppinger | Electrical Engineering | Novel 4H-SiC Radiation Detector for Remote Characterization of High Level Radioactive Waste Tank and Nuclear Safeguard |
| Allison Lewis | Exercise Science | Effects of Social Comparative Feedback on Motor Sequence Learning |
| Xing Liu | Management | The Effect of Team Faultlines on Team Adaptation to Member Change |
| Jennifer Mandelbaum | Health Promotion, Education and Behavior | Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Childhood Health: Obesity and Asthma in a Syndemics Perspective |
| Gwen Miller | Marine Science | Use of computed tomography to investigate the influence of elevation on below ground biomass within a salt marsh |
| Ryan Montalvo | Exercise Science | Effect of Increased Superoxide Dismutase-2 Expression on Chemotherapy-Induced Cardiac Dysfunction |
| Omonefe Omofuma | Epidemiology and Biostatistics | Dietary Advanced Glycation End-Products (dAGE) and Breast Cancer Risk |
| William Ovalle-Villamil | Civil Engineering | Piping Erosion in Earthen Structures Physical Modeling to Evaluate the Effects of Soil Gradation and Particle Shape |
| Chamberline Ozigbu | Health Services Policy and Management | Beyond Vaccination Coverage: A Critical Look at Never-Vaccinated Children in Ethiopia |
| Michelle Passerotti | Biological Sciences | Non-Lethal Age Estimation Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS): An Innovative Tool For Fisheries and Conservation Management |
| Kaitlyn Pilarzyk | Biomedical Sciences | The Role of PDE11A4 in Social Isolation |
| Elizabeth Regan | Exercise Science | Integrating Stroke Survivors into Cardiac Rehabilitation |
| Gustavo Schneider | Marketing | The Numeral Effect: Are 12 and Dozen the Same? |
| Khairul Siddiqi | Health Services Policy and Management | Trends of Age-specific Comorbidity Burden and Resource Use, and Factors Predicting Costs and Mortality of the People Living with HIV in the US Inpatient Department, 2002 to 2015. |
| Amanda Stafford McRell | Social Work | The Role of Local Nonprofits in the Promotion, Protection and Provision of Children’s Rights for Unaccompanied and Separated Minors |
| Madeline Steiner | History | The Robber Barons of Show Business: Traveling Amusements and the Development of the American Entertainment Industry, 1870-1910 |
| Michael Stutz | Statistics | Machine Learning Algorithms for Partially Supervised Data with Applications in Group Testing |
| Corinne Trott | Marine Science | Utilizing Salinity as a Predictor for the Indian Summer Monsoon Onset and Forecasting |
| Keller VandeBogert | Mathematics | A Classification of Compressed Artinian Algebras of Prescribed Socle Type |
| Robert Vandermolen | Mathematics | Kernels for Homological Duality |
| Carla Wall | School Psychology | Decoding the Heterogeneity of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Biobehavioral Study of Social Attention Across Intellectual Ability, Sex, and Syndrome |
| Fan Wang | Chemistry and Biochemistry | Polymerization in Place: Conversion of Mobile Contaminants to Fixed Polymers |
| Yingzheng Wang | Environmental Health Sciences | Late Effect of Doxorubicin-induced Ovarian Inflammation on Female Ovarian Function and Fertility |
| Ashley White | Health Promotion, Education and Behavior | Snip, Snip: Vasectomy in the American South |
| Jeffrey Williams | History | Social Engineers: The NAACP's Local Lawyers and the Fight for Human and Civil Rights |
| Amber Wilson | Criminology and Criminal Justice | Community Corrections Officer Orientation, Gender, and Decision-Making |
| Qi Zhang | Pharmaceutical Sciences | Maternal Stress and Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer |
16 January 2019