91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø Faculty Receive Mini-Grants for Research

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VANCOUVER, Wash. – Washington
State University Vancouver faculty members have been awarded
mini-grants to stimulate research productivity. On May 24 a total
allocation of $55,807 was awarded to 15 faculty members as seed funds
for projects that will lead to exceptional scholarly activity. The
grants have a $5,000 maximum limit and cover the costs of the research
in part or in full. The money for mini-grants is generated from academic
administration funds.

The following are representative examples of research funded by mini-grants.

Jerry
Goodstein, Ph.D., professor of management, will address an issue of
growing significance in the health care sector with his project, "A
Multidisciplinary Perspective on Responding to Disruptive Physician
Behavior in Health Care Organizations."

Disruptive
physician behavior is defined as any inappropriate behavior,
confrontation or conflict ranging from verbal abuse to sexual
harassment.

"The
toll on health care professionals due to disruptive behavior is high.
Studies suggest that disruptive behavior increases levels of stress and
frustration and hinders the effectiveness of team collaboration. In
addition, many health care professionals perceive disruptive behavior as
having adverse effects on patient care," said Goodstein.

Despite
the prevalence and significance of the issue, there is little research
on how health care organizations are responding to disruptive behavior
or the effectiveness of strategies aimed at altering behavior and
restoring damaged relationships between physicians, clinicians and
patients.

Goodstein
has noted that existing studies draw exclusively from health care and
do not incorporate other valuable perspectives, specifically from the
fields of management, criminal justice and philosophy. Through a series
of focus group discussions, he hopes to elicit the insights and
experiences of a diverse group of multidisciplinary scholars and
practitioners affiliated with the University of British Columbia. In
addition, Goodstein will conduct exploratory research within Canadian
health care institutions.

"My
intent is to build on this initial research, publish its findings and
extend this work to the United States health care sector," said
Goodstein.

Joan
Grenier-Winther, Ph.D., professor of French, will research the love
poetry of one particular medieval gentleman with her project,
"Translation of the Courtly Poetry of the 14th c. French
Knight-Poet, Oton de Granson." Grenier-Winther is co-translator with
Peter Nicholson, Ph.D., of the University Hawai'i, Manoa, a noted
specialist of late medieval English literature.

"Granson's
poetry speaks of love-sickness, adoration of the beloved, the ways in
which a gallant knight should court and honor his lady, and the pain of
unrequited love. With Chaucer, he is also believed to have established
the association of St. Valentine with the cult of love, giving us the
Valentine's Day we all, hopefully, enjoy today," said Grenier-Winther.

Granson
spent more than half of his military career in service to the English
and served as a conduit for the transmission of the conventions and
fixed forms of French poetry to England. In true medieval fashion he was
killed in a 1397 duel.

Grenier-Winther
will travel to the University of Pennsylvania to consult an original
14th century manuscript. She hopes to publish the translation along with
the French text, an introduction to the life of the poet and his
position among his French and English literary contemporaries. Her paper
will also discuss the formal and thematic conventions of Granson's
work.

Sue
Peabody, Ph.D., professor of history, is concentrating her research on
enslaved people in 18th and 19th century France who participated in
legislative reforms to advance the antislavery movement. Her project,
"Furcy: Biography of a Slave," takes a personal look at the life of a
slave in regards to the rapidly changing political climate of France
from the royal Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848.

While
Peabody was researching her 1996 book "There Are No Slaves in France:
The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century France,"
a study of slave's pre-revolutionary lawsuits for freedom, she
discovered a unique lawsuit by an Indian slave named Furcy. The case
culminated in the 1843 decision by France's Supreme Court of Appeal to
recognize the freedom of Furcy on the basis of the Free Soil principle,
that any slave setting foot on French soil was free. The decision also
rejected an argument based on race and found that slaves of Indian
descent were exempt from slavery.

"Scholarship
on French antislavery is robust for the eighteenth century when
enlightenment celebrations of freedom appealed to liberal philosophes
and revolutionary politicians. However, France’s second abolition
process, subsequent to the restoration of the Napoleonic and royalist
regimes, has received considerably less attention. The Furcy case has been completely ignored in French scholarship until my own recent articles," said Peabody.

Peabody
is currently using her mini-grant award in Paris, France where she is
continuing to research and draft a biography of Furcy. While in Paris,
she has access to rare census records for French settlements, ship
passenger lists and French law newspapers.

Peabody's
research will result in a book that follows, through Furcy's eyes, the
experience of legal institutions and jurisprudence on categories of
race, citizenship and freedom during successive political regimes.

Early
interest in the project is significant, as shown by her recent
invitations to lecture on her work-in-progress in Brazil, at Yale
University, Vanderbilt University, University of Pittsburgh, University
of Pennsylvania, at the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes (Paris) and at McGill
University in Montreal, and by the translation of her related articles
into French for publication in foreign journals.

Katie
Witkiewitz, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, is focusing her
research on the growing problem of substance use disorders in United
States prisons among women. Her project is titled, "Evaluation of
Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention for Women in Residential Treatment
for Substance Use Disorders Following a Criminal Offense."

"Re-incarceration,
re-offending and relapse to substance use rates are particularly high
among substance-involved offenders. Despite the grim statistics, it has
been shown that providing evidence-based substance abuse and mental
health treatment following incarceration leads to significant reductions
in criminal re-offending and substance use relapse," says Witkiewitz.

Witkiewitz's
study aims to compare the relative efficacy of two substance abuse
treatments, Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention and Relapse Prevention,
in the prevention of relapse and criminal re-offending, particularly
for women with co-occurring mental disorders.

The
study will take place at the Volunteers of America Oregon - Women's
Residential Center (WRC) in Portland, a 40-bed chemical dependency
program. WRC provides housing, addiction treatment services and other
life-skills programs to women who have been referred from the criminal
justice system for offenses that include possession of illicit drugs,
theft, prostitution and probation violations.

Witkiewitz is grateful for the 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø students who will be working with her on the study.

"Three
amazing undergraduate students, Connie Stauffer, Kelly Wade and Kaitlin
Warner, and a wonderful recent 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø graduate, Gillian
Steckler, will be assisting with all aspects of the research. This
research could not be conducted without their help."

2010/2011 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø mini-grant recipients:

  • Michael Dunn, "Helping Improve Story Writing: A Comparison of Strategy
    Methods"
  • Linda Frederiksen, "Emerging Technologies for Remote Instruction"
  • Jerry Goodstein, "A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Responding to
    Disruptive Physician Behavior in Health Care Organizations"
  • Joan Grenier-Winther, "Translation of the Courtly Poetry of the 14th c.
    French Knight Poet, Oton de Granson"
  • Dene Grigar, "Fort Vancouver Mobile: Phase 1"
  • John Harrison, "Agriculture's Role as a Source of Dissolved Organic
    Nitrogen to Surface Waters"
  • Daniel Jaffee, "Social Contestation Over Water Privatization in the U.S.
    and Mexico"
  • Sue Peabody, "Furcy: Biography of a Slave"
  • Stephen Solovitz, "Experimental Investigation of the Fluid Dynamics of
    Jellyfish Propulsion"
  • Mark Stephan, "Measuring Social Equity in SW Washington"
  • Onur Tigli, "Micro-Impedance Biosensor: For Early Detection of Cancer"
  • Brian Tissot, "Improving Management of Hawaii's Marine Aquarium Fishery
    through Evaluation of Ecological and Socioeconomic Indicators"
  • U.N. Umesh, "Decision Making in Valuing Entrepreneurial Ventures"
  • Steve Weber, "Experimental Archaeology and the Value of Starch Grain
    Perspective"
  • Katie Witkiewitz, "Evaluation of Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention for
    Women in Residential Treatment for Substance Use Disorders following a
    Criminal Offense"

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