2024 Summer Grant Recipients
Dr. John Brooks (Department of Government & Justice Studies)
Dr. John Brooks, assistant professor of public administration in the Department of Government & Justice Studies, received summer funding to support his project "Presidential Communications and Agency Rule-Making."
Dr. Ruth Carmi (Department of Sociology)
Dr. Ruth Carmi, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, received summer funding to support her project "Intersectionality, the Israeli-Palestinian Prolonged Conflict, and the Israeli Welfare State."
Dr. Mac-Jane Crayton (Department of Government & Justice Studies)
Dr. Mac-Jane Crayton, assistant professor of public administration in the Department of Government & Justice Studies, received summer funding to support her project "Research Manuscript Writing on Voluntarism & Development of Proposals for Russell Sage Foundation/Carnegie Corporation Initiative."
Dr. Vanessa Evans (Department of English)
Dr. Vanessa Evans, assistant professor in the Department of English, received summer funding to support her project "Other Languages, Other Landscapes, Other Stories: Reading Resurgence in the Contemporary Indigenous Novel."
Dr. Mark Hills (Department of Computer Science)
Dr. Mark Hills, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, received summer funding to support his project "A Formal Approach to Safer, More Understandable Programs."
Dr. Hills earned his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his bachelor's degree in computer science from Western Illinois University. Prior to joining Appalachian State, he was a faculty member at East Carolina University and, before this, a postdoc in the software analysis and transformation group at CWI, is the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands.
Hills' research and teaching focus on topics related to programming languages, program analysis, and software development, including the formal semantics of programming languages, program analysis, program verification, program transformation, and empirical software engineering. His work has been actualized in a number of tools, including the C policy framework for C program analysis, PHP AiR for PHP program analysis, and Go Air for Go program analysis and verification.
Dr. Christopher Marier (Department of Government & Justice Studies)
Dr. Christopher Marier, assistant professor of criminal justice in the Department of Government & Justice Studies, received summer funding to support his project "ADPD Evaluation."
Dr. Marier earned his doctorate in criminology from the University of South Florida. His teaching and research focus on policing, race, and cross-national examinations of criminal justice. Prior to earning his doctorate, he worked in law enforcement, including assignments as a patrol officer and a school resource officer.
Marier is a recipient of the University of South Florida Graduate Fellowship Award and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences International Section Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award. His research has been published in top journals in his field, including Criminology & Public Policy, Justice Quarterly, and the Journal of Criminal Justice.
Dr. Matthew Meier (Department of Psychology)
Dr. Matthew Meier, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, received summer funding to support his project "Cognitive and Personality Correlates of Mind Wandering."
Dr. Savannah Paige Murray (Department of English)
Dr. Savannah Paige Murray, assistant professor in the Department of English, received summer funding to support her project "The Dam Fighters: Commons Environmental Rhetoric and Activism."
Dr. Stephanie Tsakeu Mazan (Department of Languages, Literatures, & Cultures)
Dr. Stephanie Tsakeu Mazan, assistant professor of French in the Department of Languages, Literatures, & Cultures, received summer funding to support her project "Saartjie Baartman, Pocahontas, Anne Frank. Mémoires racisées? Une lecture de 53 cm de 53 cm de Bessora."
Dr. Mazan earned her doctorate in Francophone studies from the University of Virginia. Prior to being hired at App State, she taught French language and French and Francophone literatures in high schools in her home country Cameroon (2009-2015), at the University of New Mexico (2015-2017) and at the University of Virginia (2017-2023). She is very passionate about doing research, the main reason which led her to leave her country after receiving admissions to multiple American graduate programs. As a graduate student, Mazan participated and organized conferences, panels, film festivals and workshops. She has also given interviews about African cultures in connection with other global south cultures. Mazan is frequently invited as a guest lecturer to universities in the United States and abroad and has published several articles, book chapters and book reviews. Her teaching and research put an emphasis on the commonalities that exist across Black and Francophone cultures.
Since joining App State, Mazan organized and chaired a panel for the NeMLA 2024 Convention titled “Invisible but too Visible: Race, Gender and the Struggle for Justice and Equity.” She also presented a paper titled “L’Afrique et son impact culturel dans le monde: entre invisibilisation, stigmatisation et plagiat.” Recently, Mazan added a new chapter of a book in her scholarship titled “Du héros au zéro: intellectuel engagé et désillusion dans l’œuvre romanesque d’Henri Lopes,” Cahiers numériques n°1 de la SIELEC, Décolonisations et indépendances vues par les écrivain (e)s africain(e)s de 1950 à 2022, pp. 227-256, February 22, 2024.
Dr. Chris Quattro (Department of Geography & Planning)
Dr. Chris Quattro, assistant professor of community and regional planning in the Department of Geography & Planning, received summer funding to support their project "In Harm's Way: Residential Zoning Classifications and Environmental Injustice."
Dr. Quattro specializes in regulatory laws, particularly the justice and environmental implications for communities. They have a doctorate in city and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania and formerly served as the Director of City Planning and Development for the City Council of San Antonio District 1. They also consult with a land-use law firm based in San Antonio, Texas.
With the support of the summer funding, Quattro will research the spatial treatment of residential zoning classifications and their relationship to environmental and demographic conditions in major United States cities.
Dr. Juhee Woo (Department of Sociology)
Dr. Juhee Woo, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, received summer funding to support her project "Understanding Black Women's Smoking Behaviors through Local Contexts in the U.S."