BMCC Faculty Selected for William P. Kelly Fellowship

Fellowship

May 1, 2019

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY) faculty members—Maureen Matarese (Academic Literacy and Linguistics), Katherine Conway (Business Management), Jun Liang (Science), Man Wai Alice Lun (Social Science, Human Services and Criminal Justice) and Sarah Haviland (Music and Art)—were selected from a pool of 52 applicants for the William P. Kelly Research Fellowship for the 2019-20 academic year. The five BMCC faculty are among 20 CUNY community college faculty who were selected for the award.

Launched in 2013 by former Interim CUNY Chancellor William P. Kelly, the fellowship is now a permanent feature of CUNY’s strategy to support and grow faculty research and scholarly activity at CUNY’s community colleges.

As part of the award, faculty are granted two courses, six hours of release time, which they can take over one or two semesters with the emphasis on their scholarship and intellectual community.

“The overall quality of the applications was outstanding and highlights the excellence of the scholarship and creative work being pursued at our community colleges,” said former Interim CUNY Chancellor Vita C. Rabinowitz.

The following is a description of BMCC faculty projects.

Man Wai Alice Lun:The Impact of Educational Training for Supporting Family Caregiving in the Chinese American Community

Lun will examine the feasibility of the self-care training for supporting family caregiving through quantitative and qualitative research method. The results of Lun’s study further development of educational training opportunities in the Chinese American community as well as other communities that place emphasis on family-centered values in caregiving.

Sarah Haviland: Becoming a Bird, Cross-Cultural Sculpture with Environmental Potential

Haviland’s project builds on the creative research she undertook as a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan. Following that phase of visual image research, she will synthesize the information in sketches and studies, and develop new sculptures in her studio throughout 2019-2020. She intends to prepare a mixed-media sculpture installation for exhibition in late 2020.

Katherine Conway: Does Unmet Financial Need Result in Time Poverty and Lower Academic Outcomes? 

Financial aid is intended to bridge gaps among college students but has not kept pace with rising tuition costs nor does it fully meet student need. Existing research shows a negative relationship between unmet financial need and college persistence, but no research explores how unmet financial need contributes to time poverty, which is defined as insufficient time to maintain physical and mental wellbeing. This study seeks to explore whether time poverty explains some of the relationship between unmet financial need and college outcomes.

Jun Liang: Finding Therapeutic Targets of Human Aging Diseases

Liang is using the nematode C. elegans (a type of round worm living in soil and water) as a powerful model system to identify universal mechanisms of how animals age, as well as how they handle stress.  Liang’s research team takes genetic and molecular biology approaches to investigate various genes’ role in healthy aging.  She evaluates animal mobility, short-term and long-term memories, cell structures, lifespan, and other aspects of the aging process. The nematode C. elegans has a short life cycle and a relatively small genome, which make it one of the most attractive models for aging studies.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Five BMCC faculty among 20 selected CUNY-wide
  • Fellows are granted six hours release time for research
  • Projects include caregiving for family members, environmental research, and poverty

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