All members of the College of Arts and Sciences are invited to attend the inaugural Dean’s Research Challenge Symposium on Friday, October 11, in 401 Stevenson Hall. The keynote address, “Advancing Environmental Justice Research through Community Partners,” will be delivered at 11:30 a.m. by Dr. Mariela Fernandez, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The Dean’s Research Challenge Grants were announced in 2023 as a new internal research grant opportunity with the goal of stimulating varied areas of research excellence across the College. Please join Dean Dillaway as this year’s winners share their research!

 8 a.m.: Coffee/pastries

8:15 a.m.: Opening remarks, Dean Heather Dillaway

8:30 a.m.: Michael Hendricks, Joan Brehm, Eric Peterson, and Noha Shawki, “Cleaning up the River without Clearing Out the Neighborhood: Examining the Communal Impacts of Floating Gardens in the Chicago River.”

9:15 a.m.: Susan Chen, “Gender and Race Inequalities during COVID-19: Evidence from the Labor Market Outcomes for New Ph.D. Economists.”

10 a.m.: Dan Ispas, Alexandra Ilie, and Dragos Iliescu (University of Bucharest, Romania), “Exploring Equity in Personnel Selection: Differential Prediction of Personality in High-Stakes Contexts.”

10:45 a.m.: Maura Toro-Morn and Jim Pancrazio

11:30 a.m.: Keynote Address, Mariela Fernandez, University of Illinois, “Advancing Environmental Justice Research through Community Partners.”

12:30-1:30 p.m.: Lunch beak

1:45 p.m.: Christopher Mulligan, “Mass Spectrometric Methods for On-Site and On-Demand Environmental Pollutant Monitoring.”

2:30 p.m.: Sudipa Topdar, “Lifeless Feathers, Masculinity, and Ecological Imperialism in the Late Colonial Himalayas (1800-1947).”

3:15 p.m.: Ben Wodika, Vickie Borowicz, Matt Dugas, and Sydney Metternich, “Do species matter? A test of the Functional Equivalence Hypothesis using Ants as Indicators.”

4 p.m.: Maochao Xu, “Cyber Misconduct: A Predictive Modeling Exploration in Educational Communities.”

4:45 p.m.: Poster viewing open to all faculty/students.

5:15 p.m.: Closing remarks