Celebrating Scholarship

April M. Beisaw, Professor and Chair of Anthropology, received an award from the Putnam County Historian for her new book Taking Our Water for the City: The Archaeology of New York City’s Watershed Communities.

Mark Emerick, Assistant Professor of Education, is the recipient of a National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, which supports early career scholars working in critical areas of education research.

Principal Investigator Hadley Bergstrom, Associate Professor of Psychological Science, and co-PIs Bojana Zupan, Associate Professor of Psychological Science, and Jennifer Kennell, Associate Professor of Biology, received a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant from the National Science Foundation to purchase a new state-of-the-art confocal microscope platform for basic research and teaching at Vassar, which will fundamentally transform faculty research, faculty-mentored undergraduate research, and advanced-level teaching.

Nancy Bisaha, Professor of History, is author of the newly-published From Christians to Europeans: Pope Pius II and the Concept of the Modern Western Identity, (Routledge), an in-depth examination of Pope Pius II’s development of European identity as conceived by this influential early thinker.

Shirley Johnson-Lans, Professor Emerita of Economics, is the editor and a contributing author of The Coronavirus Pandemic and Inequality: A Global Perspective, which was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Colette Salyk, Associate Professor of Astronomy, has secured a grant award from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in support of her program titled “A DSHARP-MIRI Treasury survey of Chemistry in Planet-forming Regions.” Utilizing the James Webb Space Telescope, Salyk will observe 17 actively forming planetary systems.

Amitava Kumar, Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair, is a Fellow of The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Professor Kumar will complete work on a new novel entitled My Beloved Life at the Cullman Center.

Ashanti Shih, Assistant Professor of History, is a 2023 Sinnott Award recipient. Ashanti’s scholarly work, which brings issues of race and indigeneity into dialogue with histories of science and environment, will focus on the colonial histories and legacies of the Arboretum’s vast collections of temperate woody plants from North America and East Asia.

Ed Buie II, Assistant Professor of Astronomy, received a grant award from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in support of the program titled "A Systematic Search for Wind-CGM Interactions in Star-forming Galaxies.”