2019 End-of-Year Research Report
Earlier this fall, REDE released its 2019 End-of-Year Research Report highlighting the accomplishments of its students, faculty and research staff during the 2018-19 academic year. The university set new benchmarks in sponsored awards, research awards, interdisciplinary awards, research proposals, and F&A awarded. Read the report online or download a copy.
Foreign Influence and Involvement with ECU Research
In June, Vice Chancellor Golden released a memo informing the campus community of a growing concern that has recently emerged among federal agencies regarding security threats and undue foreign influence on university campuses throughout the United States. To ensure research compliance, research administration is taking measures in the following categories to protect the university from foreign influence and involvement:
- Full disclosure of relationships;
- Export controls compliance;
- Responsible data sharing and security;
- Vetting of visiting scientists;
- Protection of intellectual property; and
- Confidentiality of peer review.
A full version of the Foreign Influence and Involvement with ECU Research memo is available online.
Welcome, Office of Innovation and New Ventures
In 2018, ECU brought together a group of entrepreneurial-minded programs and offices to create the Office of Innovation and New Ventures. Formerly known as the Office of Tech Transfer, Innovation and New Ventures supports the university’s research and scholarly activities on campus and beyond, assisting researchers in commercializing their innovations, inventions and new discoveries. The office provides resources to identify, assess, protect and translate viable inventions into products, services and enterprises.
Small Businesses Flock to ECU for 2019 Disaster Recovery Contracting Summit
Contractors from across North Carolina filled the Willis Building Auditorium to learn how to better connect with local, state and federal agencies after a natural disaster. The 2019 Disaster Recovery Contracting Summit – the first of its kind hosted by the Small Business and Technology Disaster Center at ECU – sought to demystify some of the obstacles standing in the way of small businesses trying to access post-disaster recovery opportunities. The event brought in contract officers, emergency leaders and subject matter experts to share their tools to prepare contractors for what happens during the recovery process. Read more about the event and how the SBTDC at ECU is preparing the region for the next natural disaster that comes its way.
REDE Quick Hits
- Relentlessly Rural Podcast: REDE produced a podcast! Hosted by ECU undergraduate film student Lamar Gilchrist, the Relentlessly Rural podcast tells the stories of the rural eastern North Carolina communities that ECU serves and the challenges they face to stay relevant in a quickly changing world. Through university-community partnerships with ECU, these communities are creating new opportunities for success for those living in the region. Check it out online or download on Apple Podcasts, Google Music Store, or Spotify by searching "Relentlessly Rural."
- ConnectEast Platform Launching: This fall, ECU will launch a new platform designed to connect students, staff, faculty, businesses, mentors, and local communities with one another to create and grow new ventures and jobs in eastern North Carolina. The platform, called ConnectEast, accomplishes this by using artificial intelligence to match a user’s need with an expert in the field to provide solutions or mentoring. ConnectEast is scheduled to go live in Fall 2019 and will be the first of many digital applications available to the ECU community to help drive innovation and impact across campus.
- New ORA Website Launched: The Office of Research Administration has a new website! ORA’s new site combines elements from the former Office of Grants and Contracts and Office of Sponsored Awards. The site’s navigation follows the life cycle of a grant, providing easy access to tools and resources along each stage of a research project’s journey.
- eTRACS is Coming: On Nov. 1, ECU will move to a new tool for sponsored program proposal development, routing and submission – eTRACS! Follow along with the changes coming with eTRACS and the entire eTRACS implementation process.
- Updated Regulations, Policies and Documents: The university has made recent announcements about updated regulations, policies and documents regarding human subject research, conflicts of interest, and export controls and customs.
ECU Gets $4M Grant to Support Engineering Students
ECU's College of Engineering and Technology has received a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Program (S-STEM) in an effort to support low-income students pursuing undergraduate engineering degrees.
The grant will provide scholarships to 80 students total — a cohort of 40 students beginning in the fall semester of 2020 and a cohort of 40 more in the fall of 2021. Half of each cohort will begin as freshmen at ECU, while the other half will be distributed among three community college partners — Pitt Community College in Winterville, Lenoir Community College in Kinston and Wayne Community College in Goldsboro. Those students will complete their first two years of study at their respective community colleges with the intention to transfer to ECU to complete their degrees.
ECU Educators Return to Saipan to Explore Historical Landmarks
More than 24 hours of air travel, the International Date Line and thousands of miles of open ocean separate Greenville from Saipan, but next summer a pair of ECU researchers will call the island home thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. “Saipan’s Land and Sea: Battle Scars and Sites of Resilience” is directed by College of Education Associate Professor Anne Ticknor, with Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Associate Professor Jennifer McKinnon serving as co-primary investigator.
The $169,997 award allows Ticknor and McKinnon to host two one-week workshops for 72 K-12 educators on the history of military conflicts in Saipan. The program will host teachers from the island, as well as the surrounding region and the U.S. West Coast. The project is part of the NEH’s Landmarks of American History and Culture program and will focus on historical relics of war and conflict.
High School Students Spend Summer at ECU Learning, Discovering
County Home Road. The name is sort of self-explanatory. Somewhere along this stretch of highway south of Greenville was a building or buildings where some people lived. But who were they? Why were they there? What was their life like? And when did they leave?
Those are questions a group of high school students from across the state were working to answer – or at least discover some clues to – as part of the Summer Ventures program. In addition to archaeology, 58 rising high school juniors and seniors studied biomedical research, biomedical engineering, neuroscience, DNA fingerprinting, and the physics of sources, signals and sensors.
Dental Medicine Celebrates Research, Scholarship
“Genomics, Epigenomics and Oral Health” was the theme of ECU's School of Dental Medicine’s fifth annual Celebration of Research and Scholarship on Aug. 21. Faculty, students and residents presented 50 posters spanning the categories of biomedical and translational research, clinical and population research, case reports and series, biomaterials and bioengineering, and the scholarship of teaching, learning, service and engagement. In addition to participants from the School of Dental Medicine, other campus groups were represented, including the Biomaterials Research Cluster, which maintains laboratory space in Ross Hall, the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering and Technology, the College of Allied Health Sciences, and the Brody School of Medicine.
ECU Team Gets Grant to Help Communities Adjust to Sea Level Rise
A nearly $300,000 grant will allow a team of researchers from ECU to look at sea level rise and its impact on coastal communities. The $299,454, two-year grant comes from the National Science Foundation. It includes an interdisciplinary approach involving ECU’s Department of Engineering and Department of Anthropology as well as the Coastal Studies Institute, a multi-institutional research and education partnership of the University of North Carolina System led by ECU.
ECU Professor’s Newest Novel Makes Oprah's ‘Best of’ List
What happened to the 20th century poet Elizabeth Bishop during three life-changing weeks she spent in Paris amid the imminent threat of World War II? The answer to this question is what Dr. Liza Wieland, distinguished professor of English at ECU, visualizes in her newest novel “Paris, 7 A.M,” which was named to Oprah’s reading list as One of the Best Books by Women of Summer 2019. Published on June 11 by Simon & Schuster, Wieland’s book has enjoyed wide acclaim and gained recognition from Publishers Weekly, LitHub, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, the News & Observer and internationally by the BBC.
Highlighted Faculty Grants
Highlighted Faculty Publications
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