Featured Awards – June 2016

Yasemin Besen-Cassino (Sociology, CHSS) received $15,000 from Sociologists for Women in Society to support the operation of the Book Review Office of Gender & Society at Montclair State University. Gender & Society is ranked #1 journal in the area of gender studies. This grant will provide yearly funding, extendable up to three years, for operational costs of the office. As a part of this grant, Dr. Besen-Cassino will be serving as the book review editor of Gender & Society for the third year of a three-year term, selecting books for review, selecting reviewers, editing book reviews, and preparing book reviews for publication. This grant also provides funding for an MSU graduate student to serve as an office assistant.

Paul Bologna and John Gaynor (Biology, CSAM) received a $36,042 contract from the NJ Department of Environmental Protection for “Assessment of clinging jellyfish Gonionemus vertens populations in the Shrewsbury River Estuary and the Manasquan River Estuary.” This project will provide data to identify and quantify the distribution and abundance of G. vertens–invasive clinging jellyfish–from the Shrewsbury Estuary and the Manasquan River Estuary.

Gerard Costa (Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health, CEHS) received an $850,000 contract from the NJ Department of Human Services for “The MSU-Socio-Emotional Formation Initiative,” which will serve as the statewide hub, in partnership with the Department of Human Services and the array of government and community partners, to coordinate and integrate the professional formation and support initiatives promoting 0-8 mental health/social and emotional development and full inclusion.

Janet Koehnke and Maris Appelbaum (Communication Sciences and Disorders, CHSS) were awarded $56,224 by the NJ Department of Human Services for the first year of the “New Jersey Hearing Aid Project,” which is an effort to provide low income individuals access to needed hearing aid devices and related audiological services that otherwise are not available due to cost.

Meiyin Wu (Passaic River Institute, CSAM) and Michael Weinstein (CSAM) received a $63,479 subaward from the NJ Department of Environmental Protection for the first year of the US Environmental Protection Agency-funded project, “Developing a Wetland Baseline at the Watershed Scale.” It will address New Jersey’s desire to strengthen core elements of its EPA-approved Wetland Program Plan, including long-term state wetland program planning (i.e. Wetland Program Plans, or WPPs), and carrying out shorter-term projects that are consistent with the WPP.

Danlin Yu (Earth and Environmental Studies, CSAM) was awarded $7,200 by the Morris Park Alliance for the first year of “GIS and mapping service for the Morris County Park Commission project ‘Connect to Walk.'” The project will provide data collection, organization, mapping, and reporting tasks for the Morris Park Alliance’s plan to map locations of walking and biking facilities within Morris County, identify gaps to connect to county parks, and make recommendations to communities to close those gaps.