1977 — 1979 |
Rankin, Mary Ann |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Adult Development and Behavior in Migrant Insects @ University of Texas At Austin |
1.009 |
1979 — 1981 |
Rankin, Mary Ann |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Circadian Regulation of Foraging Behavior in the Honeybee @ University of Texas At Austin |
1.009 |
1981 — 1985 |
Rankin, Mary Ann |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Hormonal Control of Insect Migratory Behavior @ University of Texas At Austin |
1.009 |
1983 — 1987 |
Rankin, Mary Ann |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Physiological Basis of Wing Polymorphism in Waterstriders @ University of Texas At Austin |
1.009 |
1992 — 1994 |
Rankin, Mary A |
R25Activity Code Description: For support to develop and/or implement a program as it relates to a category in one or more of the areas of education, information, training, technical assistance, coordination, or evaluation. |
Building Articulation Through Undergraduate Research @ University of Texas Austin
The College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin seeks support for the planning and implementation of a new model of university/community college cooperation aimed at increasing the participation of African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics in the critical area of biomedical research. The proposed project, Building Articulation Through Undergraduate Research, will: 1) engage community college and university faculty members in the early identification (approximately one year before transfer) of community college minority students who show potential for advanced work in the biological sciences; 2) provide these students with a rich, immersive summer seminar/lab course developed and taught jointly by community college and university faculty on the University of Texas at Austin campus; 3) involve the summer seminar students in an academic year follow-up readings course on a topic related to biological research and co-supervised by a community college faculty member and a University of Texas at Austin faculty member; 4) upon the students' enrollment at LJT Austin, provide academic and social support that is connected directly to their biology course work; 5) lay the groundwork for on-going dialogues between biological science faculty and advisors at the community colleges and those at LJT that are structured around and sustained by student success.
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0.936 |
1993 — 1997 |
Rankin, Mary Ann |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
The Nutritional Ecology of the Web of Nephila Clavipes @ University of Texas At Austin
Just as humans generally have to live within a monetary budget, it is reasonable to assume that other organisms must live within an energy budget. Particularly when resources are limiting, it must be important to utilize resources as efficiently as possible. Those organisms that do so will presumably be at a competitive and evolutionary advantage compared to others who may be less efficient. These ideas seem sensible, but have been difficult to test. It is often not possible to classify behavioral activities. For example, an animal may be simultaneously involved in several activities including thermoregulating, guarding territory boundaries, and seeking a mate as well as food. In addition, it has been difficult to identify the appropriate resources to measure. It is also not clear how investing energy in searching for food affects growth rate, and size and age at maturity. Variation in development rates and pathways can have tremendous impact on the evolution of a species, but few studies have addressed the nutritional causes that contribute to this variation. Orb-weaving spiders provide an excellent model system for the study of resource partitioning and the developmental consequences of shifts in partitioning. Spiders synthesize their web from physiologically important compounds such as proteins. The activity of spinning the orb web and the nutritional investment into the orb can serve no other purpose than prey capture, the resources allocated to the orb web are unavailable for growth or reproduction during that foraging bout, and all prey capture occurs on the orb web; thus, the web must be maintained through periods of reduced prey capture. We will examine the nutritional ecology of foraging in the large, widely distributed, orb-weaving spider Nephila clavipes. Our experiments will involve NMR and gas chromatographic analysis of orb chemistry using spiders from 3 separate populations. The biology of this orb-weaving spider will allow us to clearly distinguish foraging from other activities and to track how different types or resources partitioned between foraging and other activities. We will also be able to identify resources that, when limiting, necessitate trade-offs between foraging and other activities. In addition, we can quantify how the investment of resources into foraging affects growth and development under a variety of environmental conditions, and we can distinguish patterns that are due to genetic differences from those due to environmental differences. This study will address the long-held assumptions of most classical foraging models (that shifts in foraging investment reflect shifts in resource partitioning and that increased foraging efficiency increases relative fitness) and it will finally allow quantification of resource partitioning between foraging and growth, permitting investigation of the precise relationships between variation in foraging investment and variation in developmental programs.
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1.009 |
1997 — 2003 |
Rankin, Mary Ann Forgione, Pascal Treisman, Philip Uri (co-PI) [⬀] Fox, James Psencik, Kay Hill, David Gonzalez, A.c. Gustafson, Paula Jost, Norma Barrera, Carmen |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
The Austin Collaborative For Mathematics Education @ Austin Independent School District
9619033 Fox The Austin Collaborative for Mathematics Education is a 54-month NSF Local Systemic Change project at $5,059,324. Austin Independent School District collaborates with the College of Education and the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin and with the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas. Estimated cost-sharing from partners is $ 2,906,011. The project targets all approximately 2400 K-8 teachers of mathematics. Each teacher will participate in at least 126 hours of formal professional development in summer workshops, institutes with students, and academic year sessions along with at least 120 hours of campus level support and classroom coaching, linked with the implementation of comprehensive, standards-based instructional materials in mathematics - Investigations in Number, Data, and Space in grades K-5 and the Connected Mathematics Project in grades 6-8. The Austin Collaborative seeks to 1) build on sound and proven practice in mathematics education, 2) implement consistent and proven mathematics curricula by providing a common learning experience for every teacher in every school, and 3) create a professional development strategy that is intensive, on-going and a part of every teacher's day, every day. Intensive staff development will be conducted by grade level, beginning with grades 5 and 6 in the first year and moving outward each year so that once a student starts, there will be no gaps in the delivery of the new standards-based mathematics program. In year 2, grades 4 and 7 are targeted. The summer institute will coincide with a lab school experience in which teachers and principals try out some of the new materials and strategies with summer school students. Release days during the following school year will give teachers the opportunity to share experiences, reflect and ask questions. Cohort teachers will come together in the second summer and the following school year. The third component will be campus based and will include work of designated campus mathematics specialists who conduct training and coach or team teach with teachers in the building. District level mathematics specialists are attached to implementing schools for regular classroom visits and coaching. Campus mathematics specialists and principals will have a minimum of 102 hours of leadership training above the content and pedagogy and materials training that all teachers will have. Evaluation of the Austin Collaborative for Mathematics Education will focus on student achievement of all student groups, including scores on the state mandated assessment, TAAS; percentage of students passing pre-algebra and algebra; end-of-course exam results for Algebra 1; and enrollment in advanced AISD mathematics courses. Other indicators of the Collaborative impact will be the administrative support on each campus for teacher collaboration time, community support, coordinated districtwide professional development, the retention of new teachers, and electronic communication among teachers and their presentations at professional meetings.
|
0.92 |
1998 — 2000 |
Rankin, Mary Ann Higgins, Linden |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Sger: Resource Allocation in Spiders: Possible Gene X Environment Effects? @ University of Texas At Austin
Rankin 9800767 Previous research into how environment influences resource allocation to foraging rely on the ability of the researcher to correctly classify an organism's behavior. These studies also rely on the assumption that rough measures of resources provided by caloric output and time allocation are accurate measures of allocation of limiting nutrients. By utilizing a trap-synthesizing organism, the PI can unambiguously classify the investment into foraging. Furthermore, based upon recent advances in my understanding of the nutritional ecology of the web, the PI now knows that some components of the web are limiting essential nutrients requiring budgeting by the individual organism in response to its environment. It is tantilizing that preliminary results indicate that such a vital function as allocation of a limiting resource might vary among the offpring of different individual females from a single population. Only by a more extensive test, using the offspring of many more females, can the possibility of a family x treatment interaction be proven or disproven.
|
1.009 |
2003 — 2007 |
Rankin, Mary Ann |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Understanding the Basis of Flight-Enhanced Reproduction in Melanoplus Sanguinipes @ University of Texas At Austin
This study will examine the relationship between migration and reproduction in an economically significant migratory grasshopper, Melanoplus sanguinipes. Previous work has shown that migratory behavior has a genetic basis in this species and that the performance of migratory flight significantly accelerates onset of reproduction and enhances fecundity over the entire life of the insect. This observation challenges the conventional assumption that migration necessarily involves a reproductive cost.
The proposal addresses two general objectives: to determine the endocrine mechanisms involved in flight-enhanced reproduction, and the possible effect of long-duration flight on nutrient acquisition or utilization. To accomplish the first objective, the effects of long-duration flight on the release or synthesis of neurohormones, that might in turn cause changes in the pattern and/or level of hormones involved in reproduction, will be determined. In pursuit of the second objective, the effect of flight performance on two avenues of nutrient acquisition, mating and feeding, will be determined. In the model species, males contribute nutrient to females at mating via spermatophore transfer with sperm. Thus, this study will establish whether the performance of long flight changes the frequency or duration of mating behavior after flight and if it does, whether this change is hormonally regulated. It has been shown that feeding activity does not increase after long flight, but this study now intends to establish whether performance of long-duration flight improves food utilization, and whether this occurs via endocrine stimulation.
A long-term goal of this project is to analyze the consequences and limits of these physiological relationships through genetic analysis. The results of this work will be of interest to population biologists studying life history theory and evolution, physiologists interested in understanding endocrine relationships in insects, physiological ecologists interested in resource allocation and coordination of life history characters, and entomologists interested in controlling M. sanguinipes and other serious agricultural pests. This project will involve minority and women undergraduates (usually 4 students/semester). It will also involve pre-service math and science high school and middle school teachers as research interns (2/semester) as a part of an innovative new teacher-training program (UTeach) at The University of Texas.
|
1.009 |
2006 — 2011 |
Rankin, Mary Ann Laude, David Simmons, Sarah (co-PI) [⬀] Stevens, Scott (co-PI) [⬀] Shear, Ruth |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
The Ut-Urc: a New Model For Teaching Through Research @ University of Texas At Austin
The Division of Chemistry, the Biological Sciences Directorate and the Office of Multidisciplinary Affairs jointly fund this award to the University of Texas at Austin to establish an Undergraduate Research Collaborative within the University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences. The PI for this project is Mary Ann Rankin, who will be assisted by Co-PIs Ruth Shear, Sarah Simmons and Scott Stevens. One hundred twenty students from the CNS entering freshman class will be recruited to participate in an Undergraduate Research Collaborative experience that will introduce the student to critical thinking, data interpretation, hands-on experimentation, and also increase interaction with research faculty and includes peer mentoring. After their training, students will be experienced in a broad range of techniques in the areas of chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, or nanotechnology and will be either matched with individual faculty laboratories or placed in research internships in industry to further their research training. The UT-URC model incorporates research as a means of teaching large numbers of students with the goals of (1) recruiting and retaining students in chemistry and allied sciences, (2) engaging large numbers of students in publishable research, (3) improving the success of undergraduates in their education goals and engendering lasting interest in science and research, (4) training students in research early in their undergraduate experience by incorporating authentic research experiences into a teaching setting, (5) cultivating an expanded research culture on the UT campus, (6) driving curriculum reform at the College and University levels and (7) enhancing collaboration to promote education through undergraduate research. Assessment and evaluation of the UT-URC will provide quantitative and qualitative data from both students and faculty, using control groups from within CNS. Longitudinal success of student performance will be followed using student centered survey tools and assessment rubrics that have already been developed. Special efforts will be made to reach student populations that are currently underrepresented in science and mathematics through close cooperation with the UTeach and TIP programs. When fully implemented in five years, the UT-URC will impact 2,000 students annually.
|
1.009 |
2007 — 2011 |
Nichols, Steven Rankin, Mary Ann Streetman, Ben (co-PI) [⬀] Iscoe, Neil |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Pfi: Integrated Technology Innovation and Commercialization From Universities: a Sustainable University Approach @ University of Texas At Austin
This Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) project proposes to develop an Integrated Technology Innovation and Commercialization (InTICo) program. The proposed work involves two basic areas of concentration. The Idea to Product (I2P) pilot program introduced entrepreneurial ideas into the technological curriculum; and the Technology Innovation Mapping (TIM) tool will explore potential markets and commercialization opportunities through reverse function mapping of new technologies and intellectual properties to find these potential markets. Function maps have been used with product design methodologies to create solutions for known problems. The TIM tool, which will be further developed and refined, inverts this process to explore functional capabilities and potential applications for technologies. The program features collaboration among faculty and students within the University of Texas at Austin in the College of Natural Science, College of Engineering, McCombs School of Business, UT Center for Nano & Molecular Science & Technology, and Department of Computer Sciences. University Commercialization Program Partners include the UT Austin Office of Technology Commercialization, Austin Technology Incubator, IC2 Institute, and MootCorp Competition.
The proposed program should be readily transferable to other universities. The creation of the InTICo program will leverage the I2P program and the TIM tool and will integrate several academic programs. Moreover, the proposed work also supports global outreach and the participation of underrepresented groups. The University of Texas (UT) awards the largest number of Ph.D. degrees to Hispanic students in the United States and the University of Texas is sixteenth in the number of Ph.D. degrees awarded to African-American students. The university has been pro-active in the past in recruiting underrepresented groups and women.
PARTNERS: The partners include the University of Texas (lead institution) and the following corporate partners: Fish & Richardson, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, Austin Ventures, and Sematech.
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1.009 |
2010 — 2016 |
Beise, Elizabeth (co-PI) [⬀] Wylie, Ann Pines, Darryll (co-PI) [⬀] Farvardin, Nariman (co-PI) [⬀] Cohen, Avis (co-PI) [⬀] Rankin, Mary Ann O'meara, Kerry Ann |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
University of Maryland: Towards An Institution For Inclusive Excellence (Um=Ti^2e) @ University of Maryland College Park
The UMCP ADVANCE IT project has four primary goals that are aimed at creating an academic environment that supports professional growth and values the contributions of women STEM faculty. These goals include: enhancing faculty development opportunities that provide opportunities for national visibility and recognition; creating a sense of agency for women STEM faculty; promoting faculty relationships and networks; and encouragement of achievement of professional goals and contributions of women STEM faculty. To this end, the UMCP ADVANCE project proposes several activities that are expected to transform the academic environment at the institution. The project also proposes an emphasis on the underrepresentation of women of color at the institution.
Intellectual Merit. The UMCP ADVANCE IT project is unique in that it uses a basis of professional growth for women faculty to promote institutional change, particularly in the STEM disciplines. Specifically, this project not only advances STEM women faculty, but also works toward changing cultures, addresses work life balance and utilizes evaluation and social science to transform the institution.
Broader Impact. The UMCP ADVANCE IT project addresses the professional growth concerns of STEM women faculty with particular attention to women of color. To that end, this project has the potential to serve as a model for other institutions that endeavor to address similar challenges. Dissemination of research findings and project activity accomplishments are expected to occur through the traditional means of peer reviewed journal articles, a project website and national presentations and outreach efforts.
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0.952 |
2013 — 2017 |
Franke, Jeffrey Caramello, Charles (co-PI) [⬀] Rankin, Mary Ann |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Agep-T: Promise Agep Maryland Transformation @ University of Maryland College Park
The University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) is the lead institution for PROMISE AGEP, a university system-wide effort for the state of Maryland to facilitate underrepresented STEM graduate student and postdoctoral professional development and pathways to careers. UMBC leads the alliance that consists of all 14 colleges, universities, and regional education centers in the University System of Maryland, four community colleges, and a former NSF Model Institution of Excellence Hispanic Serving Institution in Puerto Rico. PROMISE has been a critical catalyst for increasing enrollment, retention, and graduation rates of underrepresented minorities. The program also will contribute to the higher education literature on retention and professional development for graduate students and postdocs. The Rotating Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Professors-in-Training program for Maryland's institutions (including Master's serving institutions, HBCUs, community colleges, and an HSI) are among the innovations that respond to AGEP?s call to support the national goal of increasing the number of underrepresented minorities who will enter academic STEM careers.
PROMISE AGEP: Maryland Transformation will focus on four sets of alliance activities: 1) Graduate student recruitment, retention, and success; to cultivate new students by creating a pipeline (pathway) for students to be prepared for and admitted to graduate school, participate in workshops that promote retention, and develop community to facilitate persistence; 2) Ph.D. completion and career preparation; to develop activities that will focus on both degree completion and transition to careers; 3) Programs for postdoctoral scholars; to facilitate coordinated policies and programs for mentoring underrepresented minority postdocs across the university system; and 4) Programs to enhance faculty understanding of diversity issues in graduate and postdoctoral education; to open dialog among the faculty to develop promising practices for underrepresented minority recruitment, retention, mentoring, and transitions to careers.
The new project will engage the University System of Maryland in a system-wide focus on diversity in STEM graduate education, and will share resources and facilities to provide professional development for participants that might otherwise be limited or non-existent at some of the institutions without the alliance. This state-wide alliance eliminates the "silo-effect" or independent STEM diversity efforts, and it promotes as a core mission the collaboration to expand and connect a community of scholars through the state. The state-wide alliance allows the institutions to provide pipelines and pathways between institutions for doctoral study, postdoctoral placements, and faculty appointments.
The project includes a research component to explore three research questions: Does experience of micro-affirmations/micro-aggressions, a sense of belonging, professional networks, and mentoring experiences influence graduate student outcomes such as time to degree, persistence, job placement, and a sense of agency in career advancement? How do these outcomes and experiences differ by student demographics, discipline, or institutional type? What role does participation in the PROMISE AGEP play in these experiences and outcomes? The goals of the proposed research are first to determine whether students in the second group are more likely to experience a sense of agency in career advancement, persist in their degree programs and STEM, have shorter time to degree, and find academic appointments post-graduation. Second, the research will explore how the PROMISE program facilitates access to these experiences, promoting educational outcomes for underrepresented minority students in STEM.
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0.952 |
2018 — 2023 |
Ball, Gregory (co-PI) [⬀] Bertot, John Smela, Elisabeth (co-PI) [⬀] Smela, Elisabeth (co-PI) [⬀] Wilkinson, Gerald (co-PI) [⬀] Rankin, Mary Ann [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
The Agep Alliance State System Model to Transform the Hiring Practices and Career Success of Tenure Track Historically Underrepresented Minority Faculty in Biomedical Sciences @ University of Maryland College Park
This collaborative research brings together five public universities with the goal of developing, implementing, studying, evaluating and disseminating a state level AGEP Alliance model to increase the number of historically underrepresented minority (URM) tenure-track faculty in the biomedical sciences. This AGEP Alliance model represents a state system approach to recruiting and training URM postdoctoral fellows and transitioning them into tenure-track faculty positions. In addition to providing professional development and mentoring for a group of 16 URM postdoctoral fellows and early career faculty, this AGEP Alliance also addresses institutional URM faculty hiring and advancement policies and practices. This AGEP Alliance model work is through partnerships between the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Salisbury University, Towson University, the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP), and the University of Maryland at Baltimore.
This alliance was created in response to the NSF's Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program solicitation (NSF 16-552). The AGEP program seeks to advance knowledge about models to improve pathways to the professoriate and success of URM graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty in specific STEM disciplines and/or STEM education research fields. AGEP Transformation Alliances develop, replicate or reproduce; implement and study, via integrated educational and social science research, models to transform the dissertator phase of doctoral education, postdoctoral training and/or faculty advancement, and the transitions within and across the pathway levels, of URMs in STEM and/or STEM education research careers. While this Alliance is primarily funded by the AGEP program, additional support has been provided by the NSF INCLUDES program, which focuses on catalyzing the STEM enterprise to collaboratively work for inclusive change. The ADVANCE program also provided support for this AGEP Alliance model work, and the ADVANCE program embraces three goals that are relevant to this Alliance model's development, implementation and testing: To develop systemic approaches to increase the participation and advancement of women in academic STEM careers; to develop innovative and sustainable ways to promote gender equity that involve both men and women in the STEM academic workforce; and to contribute to the research knowledge base on gender equity and the intersection of gender and other social identities in STEM academic careers.
As the nation addresses a STEM achievement gap between URM and non-URM undergraduate and graduate students, our universities and colleges struggle to recruit, retain and promote URM STEM faculty who serve as role models and academic leaders for URM students to learn from, work with and emulate. Recent NSF reports indicate that URM STEM associate and full professors occupy 8% of these senior faculty positions at all 4-year colleges and universities, and about 6% of these positions at the nation's most research-intensive institutions. This AGEP Alliance's state system approach is advancing a model to improve the success of URM early career biomedical sciences faculty, which ultimately leads to improved academic mentorship for URM undergraduate students in STEM and innovative biological science research to benefit our nation's security, economic progress and prosperity.
The integrated research component, led by UMCP's KerryAnn O'Meara examines how the intersectionality of race, ethnicity and gender shape the experiences of candidates for assistant professorships, and the evaluation of those candidates by reviewers. Institutional faculty hiring practices, processes and procedures are also being studied to better understand how they advantage or disadvantage some candidates over others.
This AGEP Alliance state system model is engaging institutional leadership and external advisory boards, which will provide feedback to the team and suggest adjustments to model development, implementation and testing, as well as efforts for institutional transformation and sustainability. Staff at Westat will provide formative and summative evaluations. The dissemination plan includes article submissions to peer-reviewed social science, academic career diversity, and disciplinary education and research journals.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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0.952 |