Grant Announcements

The American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA) Furniture Foundation has awarded $12,000 in grant funding to App State’s furniture design program to support student scholarship opportunities. This is the 17th AHFA grant awarded to the university since 2002.

With grant support from the U.S. Geological Survey, Appalachian biology professor Dr. Jon Davenport is undertaking a four-year project that will provide a clear understanding of how potential climate changes — including increased temperatures and changing precipitation — could affect salamander populations of Missouri’s Ozark Mountains.

Thanks to a second awarded grant, Appalachian’s New River Light and Power has received more than $1.1 million to complete an environmental restoration project at the site of the Payne Branch dam on New River. The work will begin the week of July 20.

The “Supporting the STEM Pathway” project is designed to boost student success in calculus courses at Appalachian. Such courses span majors other than math, including biology, chemistry, geology, computer science, geography and physics.

Dr. Johnathan Sugg, assistant professor in Appalachian’s Department of Geography and Planning, along with geography students Tatiana Magee and Will Hutchinson ’16 ’19, has completed a GIS analysis that supports the climate advocacy efforts of nonprofit Protect Our Winters.

Dr. Kurt Michael, Appalachian’s Stanley R. Aeschleman Distinguished Professor of Psychology, is the university’s principal investigator for the federal grant that, over the next five years, will support the provision of mental health services and training in Western North Carolina’s rural K–12 schools.

Appalachian GEAR UP, a federally funded college access program, serves approximately 15,000 high school students from 11 Western North Carolina school districts by helping them prepare to enter and succeed in postsecondary education.

Appalachian professor and 2019–20 Fulbright awardee Dr. Paul Wallace is spending the 2019–20 academic year teaching at NovSU in Russia and refining the curriculum for a new App State Online graduate certificate in international leadership.

Powell, professor of creative writing at Appalachian, will teach a course on contemporary U.S. literature at Ovidius University of Constanta, in Romania, during spring 2020, as well as conduct research for his seventh novel.