Hackworth Research Grant Winners, Spring 2011

The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics in early June made the following awards of Hackworth Grants for Faculty and Student Research in Applied Ethics.

Hackworth Grants are awarded twice annually. The next round of grant funding will be in the Fall Quarter 2011.

Faculty Grants

Laura Ellingson, SCU Communication and Women's and Gender Studies, $4,432 for a project called "Voices of Survivorship: Using Photovoice to Explore the Experiences of Long-Term Survivors of Cancer." Professor Ellingson will be using the technique of "photovoice" -- in which cancer survivors will photograph aspects of their daily lives and discuss the photos with focus groups, researchers, and policy makers -- to explore the ethical challenges of life long after a bout with cancer.

Kristin Kusanovich, SCU Theatre and Dance and Liberal Studies, $4,220 for a project called "Engaging Case Studies as Theatre: An Alternative Analytical Process for Developing Ethical Decision-Making in Educational Leaders." Professor Kusanovich, working with Jerome Cranston of the University of Manitoba, is drawing on techniques from theatre as a way to make more effective use of case studies about ethics in educational administration.

Jean Molesky-Poz SCU Religious Studies, $2,210 for a project entitled, "May This Be a Praiseworthy Exchange: Clare of Assisi and Building Partnership Where We Dwell in Common." Professor Molesky-Poz, who has led an effort at Santa Clara University to examine the life of St. Clare, will be using the grant funds to deliver an invited paper on the ethical dimensions of interreligious dialogue at a conference next year in Assisi, Italy, celebrating the 800th anniversary of the life of St. Clare.

Gordon YoungSCU Communication, $3,000 for a project called, "Teardown: Memoir of a Shrinking City." Professor Young is examining the global phenomenon of the "shrinking city" -- an urban area facing significant and lasting population loss -- as it plays out in his hometown: Flint, Mich. Under contract for a book on the topic at the University of California Press, he will explore how the phenomenon upends longstanding American assumptions about ethical categories like the ownership of property and the common good.

Student Grants

Nathan Rogers, SCU '12, Civil Engineering, and Jan (Matt) Jansen, SCU '12, Civil Engineering, $1,000 for a project called "Sustainable Design in Ghana." Rogers and Jansen will be doing their Senior Design Project at the School of Engineering on the construction of an inexpensive and sustainable house in the village of Gambibgo in northern Ghana. They received the Hackworth Grant to support their work on the Senior Design Project's required ethics section in which students must provide an ethical explanation and justification for the project.