RESEARCH FOUNDATION FUNDS NINE MORE SUMMER FELLOWSHIPS

Thanks to the generosity of the Old Dominion University Research Foundation, an additional nine $6,000 Summer Faculty Research Fellowships will be funded for this year.

In a letter to faculty Jan. 16, President Roseann Runte lauded the Research Foundation for voluntarily cutting its operating budget to finance the awards.

"This generous gesture was made possible by the understanding and management skills of Ms. Ruth Smith who is the new executive director, the support and solidarity of her staff, and the vision of the board of the foundation," Runte said.

Robert A. Ash, interim associate vice president for research and graduate studies, echoed Runte's sentiments.

"This program is an important element in our overall commitment to develop and enhance the scholarly capabilities of our new faculty," Ash said. "The Research Foundation has responded to our commonwealth budget crisis in an extraordinary way by volunteering its own budget reduction, even though our research funds have already underwritten its current budget.

"This gesture, requiring similar levels of discomfort to the commonwealth budget directive, has enabled us to support the full slate of proposals submitted by nontenured faculty and recommended for funding by Faculty Senate Committee D (Scholarly Activity and Research) after a very thorough review.

"In addition, we are supporting an outstanding proposal from a tenured professor, Dana Heller, as a small gesture of appreciation for the scholarship of our established faculty. Together, we will continue to develop even during these challenging times."

The initial 10 fellowships were announced two weeks ago. The recipients of the latest fellowships and their research titles are:

-Vijayan Asari, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, "Development of an Adaptive Technique for the Extraction of Object Region and Boundary From Images With Complex Background Environment."

-James Bliss, associate professor of psychology, "Alarm Mistrust in Automobiles: Drive Reactions to an Active Collision Avoidance Warning System."

-Cynthia De Bisschop, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, "Similarity Behavior Near Rupture of a Thin
Film With Variable Surface Properties."

-Dennis Gregory, assistant professor of educational leadership and counseling, "A Study of the Effectiveness of the Clery Act as Perceived by Student Judicial Officers."

-Maura Hametz, assistant professor of history, "A Window by Any Other Name: Women Consent in Fascist Italy."

-Dana Heller, director of the Institute of Humanities, "Hearts and Minds: Russia in American Culture and American Culture in Russia."

-Ling Li, assistant professor of information systems and decision sciences, "Enhancing Integrated Business Decisions of a Supply Chain in Enterprise Resource Planning Environment."

-Anil Nair, assistant professor of business management, "A Long-run Analysis of Competitive Dynamics Among Firms in the Beverage Market."

-Regina Root, assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures, "Fashionable Fictions: Dress, Subjectivity and Collective Identity in Argentina and Chile."