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Katsura Aoyama, Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology

For this micro-mentoring grant, I plan to visit Dr. Patricia Goodson at Texas A&M University. Dr. Goodson is the author of a book entitled “Becoming an academic writer: 50 Exercises for paced, productive, and powerful writing.” Her book was suggested as recommended reading at the UNT Faculty Writing Group. Her book offers concise and practical suggestions for academic writers, and I have implemented several of her tips. I am going to visit TAMU and join Dr. Goodson's writing workshop sometime during the 2017-2018 academic year. I am excited to learn more from Dr. Goodson, and I look forward to sharing what I learn with fellow academic writers at UNT.

 Charles Blankson, Marketing & Logistics

This project addresses two key areas, namely, “supporting teaching and research efforts” and “developing professional networks.” Specifically, this grant will help defray the cost (i.e., flight or road travel, hotel accommodation, reception and meal, and a small honorarium) that will be incurred in our invitation of Professor Manjit Yadav (or other prolific researcher in the field of marketing) of Texas A&M University. The Department of Marketing & Logistics has for many years organized research and mentoring presentations for faculty and doctoral students. The objective of the presentations is to mentor faculty colleagues and doctoral students and thereby inculcate active research activities in the Department. A new emphasis is now placed on research efforts that will end up in our top journals (i.e., A journals) such as the UTD-list of journals (i.e., Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Marketing Science) and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Operations Management, and Journal of Business Logistics. Also, in view of the challenges facing our Department in the course of placing our doctoral students in aspirant and peer schools, the micro grant is going to ensure the continued success of the research and mentoring presentations and to pave the way for doctoral students to pursue not only well thought-out programmatic dissertations but engage in research activities with faculty mentors that are capable of being published in our top journals. Faculty will be encouraged to engage with guests for directions and mentoring on novel, creative or on-going research ideas/proposals or projects for our top journals.  

Amarie Carnett, Educational Psychology

Video modeling refers to a method of promoting observational learning (Corbett, 2003) involving the demonstration of desired target behaviors through a video representation by same age peers, siblings or oneself. In the research literature, video modeling has been used as an intervention method for teaching a wide variety of skills and behaviors for both individuals with and without disabilities (Shukla-Mehta, Miller, & Callahan, 2010). There are numerous studies on video modeling that have indicated effectiveness for teaching a variety of skills to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), such as play skills (Boudreau & D'Entremont, 2010), social interaction skills (Charlop, Dennis, Carpenter, & Greenberg, 2010), imitation (Kleeberger & Mirenda, 2010) and communication (Plavnick & Ferreri, 2011). The Autism Research Lab in the Department of Educational Psychology, UNT is conducting research on the use of video modeling for skills-instruction for children with ASD. To extend our research outcomes, we are utilizing this grant support towards sustaining and generalizing intervention outcomes to other settings (e.g., home). This grant helps to fund a project that aims to teach parents how to implement video modeling procedures to teach functional skills (e.g., self-care, social communication, or leisure skills) to their child with autism within the home environment.

Jessica Craig, Criminal Justice

One of my mentors, Dr. Michael Baglivio, has allowed me to work with him and his colleagues at the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and elsewhere to further the study of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and its impact on juvenile justice-involved youth. Through our collaborations, we have worked on several projects and we are interested in attending a national conference to communicate our findings to our peers. Coming from the public health literature, ACEs represent a set of ten negative experiences ranging from physical abuse/neglect to parental incarceration that, if experienced prior to an individual's 18th birthday, have been found to increase the risk of these individuals experiencing harmful outcomes later in life, including being more likely to commit crimes. My recent collaboration with Dr. Baglivio and our colleagues has focused on potential protective factors that may buffer the deleterious impact of ACEs on later offending. This year, the American Society of Criminology will be hosting their annual conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, starting November 15th and concluding on the 18th. Due in large part to the UNT Micro Grant Mentoring Program, we will be traveling to this conference to present our findings on our current project. It will enable us to continue the conversations we have had at prior conferences, set our research agenda moving forward, and maintain the communication of our findings to a wider audience. 

Molly Fillmore, Vocal Studies

The musicologist Susan Youens, the J. W. Van Gorkom Professor of Music, Professor of Musicology at the University of Notre Dame, will be in residence at the UNT College of Music from March 19 to 21, 2017. Dr. Youens is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on German song, and the music of Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf. She is one of very few people in the United States who have won four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. She is the author of eight books and over fifty articles in scholarly journals. She also regularly writes program-booklet essays for song recitals at Carnegie Hall, as well as numerous liner notes for CDs.  Dr. Youens was born in Houston, Texas and studied piano and musicology before going to Harvard University for her graduate degrees. She taught at Washington University in St. Louis and Ithaca College before going to the University of Notre Dame, where she has received the Joyce Award for Outstanding Teaching.

During her time at UNT, she will meet with students and faculty to provide her insights during group and individual coaching sessions as well as give a public master class during the Voice Departmental Recital on Tuesday, March 20, at 4:00 p.m.

Michael Leggiere, History

The newest faculty member in both the Department of History and the Military History Center, Dr. Kate Imy, started her tenure track in Fall 2016. With this Micro Mentoring Grant, I would like to provide this pre-tenure faculty member with an external mentoring partner—Professor Frederick C. Schneid—by bringing him to UNT. During his visit, he will meet with Dr. Imy and give her a presentation on career development and publishing advice, meet with junior and senior faculty, and hold a talk and Q&A session with graduate students within the department. Schneid is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at North Carolina's High Point University. He is an authority on 19th-century European military history. He has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Military History since 2013. Along with Kelly DeVries (Loyola University), John France (University of Wales), and Michael S. Neiberg (United States Army War College), Schneid is a General Editor of the History of Warfare series published by Brill. The series presents the latest research on all aspects of military history. Publications in the series examine technology, strategy, logistics, and social development related to warfare in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East from ancient times until the mid-twentieth century. The series accepts high-quality monographs, collections of essays, conference proceedings, and translations of military texts. Some 115 books have been published in the series. As Schneid is one of General Editors of the History of Warfare series, I believe this will be a fantastic opportunity for Dr. Imy. 

Natalie Mannix, Instrumental Studies

I will exchange artist residencies with Ava Ordman, Professor of Trombone at Michigan State University. Both residencies will consist of masterclasses for students and a joint recital featuring solo works for trombone written by women composers. The recital series will consist of performances at other area universities and highlight music from both performers new solo CDs. The mentoring will also facilitate an exchange of research in diversifying trombone repertoire through the discovery of new works by women composers

John Edward Martin, UNT Libraries

This micro mentoring grant will be used to develop a workshop on “Emotional Labor in the Digital Humanities”, in collaboration with Dr. Laura Braunstein,  Digital Humanities Librarian at Dartmouth College Library. The workshop will focus on the specific challenges of the often unrecognized and uncompensated labor inherent in collaborative, interdisciplinary digital scholarship projects—particularly the labor associated with disruptive emotions, conflicts, anxieties, power relationships, biases, and institutional pressures that can impact the success of the project. Drawing on research in the areas of organizational psychology, education, and digital humanities, we will offer an overview of the challenges, strategies for addressing them, and case studies to examine during the workshop.  The workshop will be presented at the 2017 Digital Frontiers Conference, hosted at the University of North Texas.. 

Tao Zhang, Kinesiology, Health Promotion and Recreation

My micro grant will be able to invite and bring Dr. Russell Pate in house for a two-day workshop related to physical activity and health promotion in children and adolescents. Dr. Pate is a Professor in the Department of Exercise Science in the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. His primary research interests are promoting physical activity and understanding policy and environmental influences on physical activity, nutrition, and obesity. He has published more than 300 scholarly papers and has authored or edited three books. He has made significant contributions in the areas of measurement, correlates of physical activity, intervention, and advocacy. Dr. Pate has received awards for his science from the American College of Sports Medicine, Society of Behavioral Medicine, and American Psychological Association Division of Health Psychology. He is one of the world's most cited authors in the social sciences, and is an elected fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, American Psychological Association, and Society of Behavioral Medicine. His research has been supported by the NIH, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Heart Association, and several private foundations and corporations. He heads a research team that currently is supported by three grants from the NIH. Working with Dr. Pate is designed to develop my research competencies related to physical activity and public health, which will support me develop competitive research grant applications and make a significant contribution to the physical activity and health field. Additionally, I may bring back to my colleagues and doctoral students at UNT some grant writing ideas, strategies, and feedback.