Featured Awards – October 2016

Marie Cascarano (Health Promotion, Campus Recreation) was awarded $19,415 by the American Cancer Society for Tobacco-Free Red Hawks, which will engage and educate the campus community, with a special focus on students, in programs that promote the benefits of adopting a 100% tobacco-free campus and offer cessation support to those who are looking to make lifestyle changes.

Yang ‌‌Deng (Earth and Environmental Sciences, CSAM) was awarded $15,000 by the US Environmental Protection Agency for Low-Cost Active Coating Mulch for Urban Runoff Management, which will synthesize, characterize and test a novel filter media, i.e. low-cost active coating (LAC) mulch for retention of multiple contaminants from urban runoff.

Pankaj Lal (Earth and Environmental Studies, CSAM) received a $56,379 subaward from the US Department of Energy and the University of Florida for the third year of US-India Consortium for Sustainable Advanced Biofuels System. The aim of this project is to develop and optimize advanced non-food biomass (switchgrass in United States and biomass sorghum, pearl millet and bamboo in India) based biofuels and biobased products. Dr. Lal will develop certification standards and conduct economic and environmental analyses of advanced biofuels.

Christopher Matthews (Anthropology, CHSS) was awarded $16,968 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for From Creole Synthesis to Racial Modernity: An archaeology of culture change in the Native and African American Community in Setauket, New York. The project is a historical archaeological study of a mixed heritage Native and African American community on the north shore of Long Island in New York, and it will document the response of this community to an increasingly hostile racial environment over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Robert Reid and Pauline Garcia-Reid (Family and Child Studies, CEHS) received $125,000–the fourth year of a five-year $625,000 award–from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) for Paterson Coalition Against Substance Abuse (P-CASA). The proposed project seeks to develop the infrastructure of an anti-drug coalition targeting at-risk racial and ethnic minority adolescents in Paterson’s 1st Ward. As a collaborative effort between Montclair State University and a diverse group of community stakeholders, P-CASA will introduce evidence-based environmental prevention strategies to meet the goals of the Drug Free Communities Grant Program, which are to increase community collaboration and reduce substance use among youth aged 12–17.

Jennifer Robinson (Center of Pedagogy, CEHS) was awarded $199,999 from the NJ Department of Education for the second year of the three-year program Being United in Leadership Development (BUILD), through which experienced teachers participate in a research-based professional development program to improve district-wide mentoring and induction policies and practices.

Debra Zellner (Psychology, CHSS) received a $62,400 subaward from the Hilda and Preston Davis Foundation and the Monell Chemical Senses Center for Discovering the elements of school lunch programs that successfully increase healthy eating among low income children. The project will expand on previous findings to determine if the increase in vegetable consumption in a coursed dessert occurs in other meals with different vegetables and fruits.