2020-21 Impact Research Grant Awards

The Ohio State University

Office of Academic Affairs, Outreach and Engagement

$120,000 Awarded

NOTE: All grant recipients have made, or will make, modifications to research and programs in response to the university's current operations as we prioritize the health and safety of our faculty, staff, students and community.

Ernest Boyer coined the term Engaged Scholarship to describe teaching and research that connect the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems (Boyer, 1996; p.13). It is not about a single discipline or focus area, though Boyer argued for more engagement focused on youth development, education, health and nutrition, for example. He went on to argue that the scholarship of engagement also means creating a special climate in which the academic and civic cultures communicate more continuously and more creatively with each other (p. 20).

The 2020-21 Outreach and Engagement impact grants sought to identify faculty or faculty-led teams that turn their attention outward, with the community, addressing a pressing public issue or shared problem. From 56 applications requesting nearly $560,000, the following faculty have been awarded $10,000 grants to continue their work focusing on education, health, food security, learning outcomes, and/or models for university-community partnerships.

Amanda Berrian
College of Veterinary Medicine

Project will support a comprehensive evaluation of the 2020 One Health Conference, entitled Strengthening Global Resilience through One Health: A 2020 Vision for a Sustainable Future. Guiding the conference evaluation will be the New Learning Theory that has been used in learning settings that provide new insight or point out the cumulative learning within a topic or research thread. The New Learning Theory employs a framework of active learning through submission of attendees' evaluations during each portion of the conference. The evaluation will be divided into preconference, intra-conference, and post-conference tasks.

David Delaine
College of Engineering

This funding will accomplish two tasks: 1) to complete a manuscript in development that leverages a collaborative inquiry research process toward documenting and enhancing a national model for a cross-disciplinary university community partnership at the intersection of engineering, education and food security and 2) to support the writing of an NSF proposal (EAGER or BPE within the NSF DUE program) to fortify and advance the collaboration moving forward.

Lisa Durham
College of Social Work

Funding will be used to complete an evaluation and impact report of an innovative program at Central Community House, Seniors Stay Central. Seniors Stay Central is a pilot project, seeking to address and affect, within the Central/Near East Columbus community, issues of wealth inequality, affordable housing and the vulnerability of seniors who own homes.

Jennifer Garner
College of Medicine

The primary objective of this study is to understand the relationship between current food sourcing behaviors including utilization of local and federal food assistance programming and individual- and household-level food security, dietary and health outcomes among consumers in Southeastern Ohio. This effort is embedded in a larger project seeking to understand and compare the sustainability and potential individual-, household-, and community-level outcomes associated with two local healthy food access programs: Country Fresh Stops and The Donation Station. Collectively, these programs reach consumers across the entire Appalachian region of Ohio and have potential to positively impact dietary patterns and health outcomes. This analysis will attempt to estimate such impacts while also answering broader questions regarding patterns of food sourcing and food insecurity in the context of Covid-19. This project is also funded by InFACT and faculty member start-up funds.

Michelle Kaiser
College of Social Work

Completion of a needs assessment and pilot an asset mapping process related to mental health, emotional well-being, stress, and resources of farmers by an MSW/PhD student with the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) under the shared supervision of the College of Social Work. This needs assessment and asset mapping project will initially focus on beginner farmers in Ohio, defined by the USDA as having 10 or less years of experience.

Nicole Kwiek
College of Pharmacy

Generation Rx will develop an impact summary that showcases both the outcomes of the resources and the community-focused delivery and partnerships that have been most effective and sustainable across the country. The team will develop a traditional printable resource that captures this information and create a complimentary digital version which is interactive with our website and other validated data sources.

Bryan Mark
College of Arts and Sciences

Funding will facilitate timely completion of data processing in support of publishing interactive maps, scholarly articles and data-driven policy guidance reports in collaboration with our Peruvian partner agencies. The deliverables include an interactive GIS, at least two scholarly articles, and written products detailing both observed and predicted changes in glaciers and water resources for decision-makers. Ultimately, these research activities will improve our capacity to observe hazard and ice dynamics at finer scales, better understand the processes that drive them, and predict the future evolution of glaciers as both water resources and hazards.

Glenn Martinez
College of Arts and Sciences

In 2016, the team received a grant from the Office of Outreach and Engagement at Ohio State for The Heritage Language Health Professions Corps. This project is a collaboration with South Western City School District, the Wexner Medical Center, LASER, and Ohio Health to develop and implement an innovative medical interpreter training complement for bilingual students in the South Western Career Academy. This project will collect and analyze pilot data related to the implemented university/community project in preparation for re-submission of a grant proposal to the Institute for Education Sciences under the Career and Technical Education topic. Our proposed pilot data will consist of comparison of educational and career outcomes among bilingual students who have participated in our program and bilingual students in the district who did not participate in our program.

Michael Murphy and Jennifer Rodis
College of Pharmacy

The funding will be utilized to grow, enhance and further evaluate a community outreach program that was piloted this year and has been approved to continue on and expand this coming year. During their final year in the Doctor of Pharmacy program, student pharmacists complete nine one-month rotations, also known as Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs) in a variety of pharmacy practice settings (i.e., community, health-system, physician office, etc.).

Keeley Pratt
College of Education and Human Ecology

The main objective of this project is to pilot and evaluate the utilization of community-based supports and resources for postoperative bariatric surgery patients, in communities with a high prevalence of patients of color, in effort to prevent weight recidivism. The long-term goal of this project is to decrease patient weight recidivism through increased community supports and resources.

Mattijs van Maasakkers
College of Engineering

A detailed, yearlong, in-depth assessment of the capacities and activities associated with the South Jackson Community Garden (Lima), will be completed, given the sharply reduced role Ohio State faculty and students will play in 2020-2021. The assessment would result in a series of recommendations to local stakeholders on continued and enhanced actions to undertake to ensure stability and potential growth of programming and maintenance of the South Jackson Community Garden. The assessment would also inform future peer-reviewed publications about the long-term effects of the OH/LEX model for collaborative site planning in a context of urban decline.

Lingying Zhao and Qian Chen
College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

The Engagement Impact Fund grant will be utilized to assess and extend the Green Home Technology Center (GHTC) project impacts. Specifically, to support the following objectives and tasks: (1) Develop impact assessment tools for the GHTC program; (2) Reach out to green home designers, builders and manufacturers toward creating a cohort program to support homeowners' needs in planning and building a green home; and (3) Collaborate with the community partners to develop grant proposals to expand our outreach efforts into research for development of innovative green home technologies.