The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Professor of Sociology, Gerardo Martí on a Thriving Congregations Initiative 2020 grant (2020 0696) from the Lilly Endowment Inc.

The $999,968 grant supports the proposal “Churches that THRIVE for Racial Justice: The Alliance of Baptists in Partnership with Sociologists of Race and Religion.” Professor Martí will collaborate with Paula Clayton Dempsey, Director of Partnership Relations with the Alliance of Baptists, Professor Mark Mulder of Calvin University and Professor Kevin Dougherty of Baylor University. The partnership joins in a mission to focus on racial justice and grow faith communities of inclusion. The five-year program will build  learning community models in nearly twenty Alliance churches across the U.S. and Canada to collaborate and share experiences. Read more in an interview with Professor Martí here.

The Lilly Endowment Inc. funded 92 out of 800 proposal received for this highly competitive grant, and we commend Professor Martí and collaborators on this achievement. Professor Martí’s accomplishment is especially notable since it is his second Lilly Endowment Inc. grant (2013 0553-000) awarded within the last seven years.  

Registration is required for each session. If a session has reached capacity for the Zoom webinar, you may stream the presentation on YouTube Live. Please visit the registration webpage on the session date for the YouTube Live link. All webinars will be recorded and made available on the NSF Resource Center webpage following the event.

Contact the Office of Grants and Contracts to discuss proposal planning and research funding opportunities.

The Office of Grants and Contracts congratulates Malcolm O. Partin Assistant Professor of Sociology, Joseph Ewoodzie Jr., on a National Science Foundation CAREER award (1944961). 

The $400,000 grant will support the project titled, “Transnational Lives in the U.S.” This 5-year project aims to use the experiences of Ghanaian migrants to the U.S. to investigate gaps in current transnational literature along three main lines of inquiry: motivations, processes and consequences. Along with undergraduate student researchers, Professor Ewoodzie will use a mixed methods approach that will include: collecting data from a historical letter archive of over 2,000 letters; oral histories of families who began traveling to the U.S. in the early 1980s; and ethnographic studies in Atlanta, GA, Bronx, NY and Accra, Ghana. During two years of the project, Professor Ewoodzie also plans to teach a seminar on Globalization and Social Change titled “The African Migration Experience” which will culminate in a two-week trip to Ghana for up to twelve students.

The CAREER is NSF’s most prestigious research award, with the vast majority of awardees hailing from large research-intensive universities.  Professor Ewoodzie’s accomplishment is especially notable since it follows his successful 2018 NSF REU grant (1757506) “Collaborative REU Site: Examining the Intersection of Food, Housing and Healthcare,” in the Beatties Ford Road Corridor, Charlotte, NC, which will host its final season summer 2020.