Grant Recipients & Outcomes

Positive Image Transfer from a Sponsor to a Sponsee: The Case of Popular Brands and Small Properties
Dr. Gashaw's research centers on sport sponsorship as a strategic investment for brands seeking to achieve diverse objectives by engaging a passionate, committed audience.  This study investigates how sponsorship agreements can elevate the credibility, visibility, and overall reputation of smaller sport properties through these image associations. Uncovering these dynamics may highlight new, non-financial advantages in sponsorships, offering significant value to smaller sport organizations.

Digital Guardians: Using Technology to Combat Sexual Violence in Nigeria: A Fellowship Proposal
Dr. Adebayo's project examines the barriers to reporting sexual violence among females in Nigeria, where such incidents remain significantly underreported due to structural and cultural factors. Her work highlights the prevalence of sexual violence among young and adolescent girls, particularly in homes and schools. By addressing these challenges, the study seeks to amplify the voices of survivors and inform strategies for better support and intervention.

Brain-behavior Correlations in Auditory Processing
Dr. Ananthakrishnan'swork explores the relationship between neural activity and speech perception in older adults experiencing auditory processing deficits due to aging. Using Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials (CAEPs), a non-invasive EEG-based technique, the study examines brain responses to ecologically valid speech stimuli and their correlation with speech understanding. Findings aim to inform the design of effective auditory rehabilitation programs to improve communication and quality of life for older adults.

Parvazha – A Graphic Memoir
Parvazha is a full-length graphic novel written by Dr. Burham in collaboration with author Adam Hossein Fuller. It follows the life of Adam, born on a Gulf Coast Air Force base to an Iranian father who boarded a flight back to Iran just before diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran were severed. Raised by a dismissive stepfather and grappling with racism and Islamophobia in the Deep South, Adam grows up constructing his identity around others' assumptions, but later discovers his latent talents and buried Iranian heritage.

Unlocking Student Creativity through an Immersive Robotics-based Storytelling Approach
The focus of Dr. Cai's research was to conduct a pilot study exploring how second and third-grade students express and develop creativity during a one-week summer camp at TU, where they engaged in robotics-infused storytelling activities. This study investigated the impact on students' expressive language development, aiming to provide empirical evidence and develop training resources to support educators.

Manly Monks: Sex, Family, Community in Qing China
Dr. Chen's study offers an in-depth exploration of how Buddhist monks in Qing China navigated complex gender norms within the context of their daily lives. By focusing on the lived experiences of lower-level clergy in late imperial China, the project seeks to dismantle entrenched stereotypes of the “debauched monk” and provide a more nuanced understanding of monastic identities in historical context.

Leveraging Social Justice-Centered Making to Support STEM Teaching and Learning
Dr. Corum's research explores how K-12 teachers can effectively use makerspace technology to support equitable STEM learning. Makerspaces provide access to costly tools and resources that can empower diverse students to engage in creative problem-solving and design thinking. By supporting teachers in leveraging makerspaces, this work aims to advance equity in STEM learning and address a critical gap in mathematics education research.

Black Women Teachers of Secondary Literacy: Identity, Beliefs, and Agency
Dr. Francois' research project addresses the understudied perspectives of Black women educators in secondary literacy, focusing on their beliefs about teaching diverse youth in U.S. public schools. Through interviews with seven educators, the study highlights their strategies for navigating professional challenges and fostering inclusive literacy instruction. The findings aim to inform efforts to improve teacher retention and equity in education.

Medicaid Work Requirements, Labor Market Effects and Welfare
Dr. Jung's project examines how Medicaid work requirements could shape healthcare and economic outcomes in the U.S., particularly in Southern states. Advocates argue that work requirements encourage self-sufficiency, while opponents warn of harm to vulnerable populations. Using advanced simulations, the study analyzes the effects on health costs, insurance coverage, jobs, and overall welfare—offering valuable insights for policymakers.

From Marginalization to Mobilization: The Role of Discrimination and Resources in Explaining the Political Participation of Transgender Americans
Dr. Oliver's research explores the underrepresented area of transgender political participation and partisanship in political science. While much of the existing literature focuses on the health and well-being of the transgender community, this study shifts the focus to their political experiences by investigating how marginalization and available resources influence political engagement. The findings will contribute to raising awareness and inclusion of transgender people in policies that affect them.

Using Host Model Organisms to Characterize a Bacterial Virulence Protein
Dr. Snyder's research investigates the role of bacterial Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain-containing proteins in evading immune responses, focusing on their enzymatic activity that cleaves NAD. Using preliminary findings, the study will explore how this enzymatic activity impacts bacterial survival, engaging undergraduate and master’s students in research. The results aim to inform novel therapeutic strategies against antimicrobial resistance.

What Goes Right and Wrong at School: Perspectives of Young Autistic Adults, Their Parents, and Educators
For years, less than 4%* of U.S. autism research funding has been focused on autism in adulthood. Dr. Anderson has dedicated herself to this under-researched area, conducting in-depth interviews with young adults on the autism spectrum and their parents. The emphasis for her work has been on what occurs after high school in terms of adult services, employment, and postsecondary education. The goal is to reveal challenges that need to be addressed in order to improve outcomes for autistic individuals across the lifespan.

Work on Novel Methods of Urban Reforestation
Dr. Beauchamp is a plant community ecologist with research interests that include urban forest succession, the effects of invasive plant species on community diversity, the effects of deer browse on ecosystem processes, and the ecology of riparian plant communities. This work looks at the success of different planting methods for urban reforestation projects used to capture nutrients and reduce pollution discharges into the Chesapeake Bay.

Caringscapes of End-of-Life Care in Northern Ghana
Dr. Hanrahan is a feminist geographer interested in how everyday spaces are constructed as people engage in caring relationships that aim to support the needs of others experiencing dependencies and vulnerabilities, as well as how caring relations can be fraught and harmful. Her current a project considers the ways in which end of life care is woven together from formal health services and extensive informal care strategies. In this context, end of life care is aimed at addressing physical and emotional needs within intergenerational relationships that are traced along material and psychical connections across the past, present, and future.

Small Proteins in Bacteria
Little is known about the abundance of small proteins in any organism. These proteins are difficult to isolate and identify using standard biochemical techniques. Since 2012, we have offered a Course-based Research Experience (CURE) Molecular Biology Laboratory class where students test for protein expression in the bacterium Escherichia coli, potentially discovering new small proteins. Once identified, students then characterize small protein expression and function in the lab as independent researchers. Dr. Hemm's current work in the lab focuses on characterizing the prevalence of this type of small protein and investigating their role in E. coli cell biology.

Investor Sentiment and Holiday Effect on the Cryptocurrency Market
Dr. Huang's research explores underlying mechanisms of the cryptocurrency holiday effect, including the influence of epidemic transmission risk and heterogeneity characteristics. Overall, this work advances our understanding of the holiday effect phenomenon, providing valuable insights for investors, financial researchers, and institutions in the dynamic cryptocurrency market.

Waves of Pipe Organ Jazz Across the Ocean
Dr. Luchese has been researching the use of pipe organs in jazz and rock musical styles. Being the first of its kind, her book, Piping Hot: Blasting the Pipe Organ Outside the Classical Music Canon, will provide the historical, social and musical contexts enveloping these examples, as well as serve as a reference that lists every recording of the pipe organ in rock or jazz to date, thereby filling a void in the scholarship of pipe organ practices as well as contributing to rock/jazz scholarship.

Preparing Effective Writing Teachers
Dr. McQuitty’s research focuses on preparing teachers to implement high-quality writing instruction in K-12 schools. This project, done in close collaboration Dr. Pamela Hickey, seeks to determine how teachers learn to teach writing and how teacher education programs can best support their learning. Through this work, they were able to determine how teacher education programs can best support writing teachers and improve their writing instruction in their future classrooms.

Work on Organizational Behavior with a Focus on Worker Owned Cooperatives in Baltimore
Dr. Mello’s present research is focused on the specific organizational context of worker cooperatives. Worker cooperatives are defined as businesses that are cooperatively owned and democratically controlled by their worker-owners. This project takes a mixed-method approach with surveys of individual differences in addition to in-depth interviews with worker-owners. The long-term goals are to better understand the unique organizational dynamics of worker coops for the purpose of better supporting existing and new coops in the Baltimore regional area.

Using Immersive Virtual Reality to Enhance Intercultural Sensitivity: An Empirical Study
Dr. Moallem's study aims to develop and pilot test implementing an immersive VR intervention to enhance teacher education students' cultural sensitivity. It further assesses the efficacy of I-VR as a medium to develop empathy, emotion, motivation, and desire to understand, appreciate and accept differences among cultures.

Risk Management in Election Security
Dr. Scala co-directs the Empowering Secure Elections research lab at Towson University, which is committed to non-partisan academic research that increases the security of U.S. elections and ensures the integrity of votes from the moment they are cast to the moment they are counted. This project examines potential threats to in-person voting, especially precinct count optical scan machines, which are used in Maryland and will be used by almost 70% of the country in 2024.

Work on British Satire in the Age of the Revolution
Visual metaphors, linking political figures and events to food and commodities, formed the basis for a distinct genre of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century satirical prints made by British artists sympathetic to the plight of the American colonists surrounding the years of the Revolution. This project combines Dr. Siegel’s academic expertise in both art and culinary histories. She posits that the culinary iconography found within these prints is more than merely humor-driven with popular appeal.

Measuring Listening Effort in Complex Environments Using Eye Tracking
Dr. Srinivasan is the director of the Spatial Hearing and Auditory PErception (SHAPE) lab. The ultimate goal is to develop statistical models that reveal how the variability on a given behavioral test is related to multiple predictors of speech perception and to better understand the difficulties in perceiving speech in complex listening environments by individuals with varying hearing abilities.