Geographers,
Following up on my last message, I will append below the list of the 19 students in our department who have received doctoral dissertation research improvement (DDRI) awards from the NSF to support their dissertation research.
With today's good news, we have two PhD students currently funded by NSF, Matt Kerr and Matt Boehm. At least two students recently put in applications for the February 2017 round, and we will hopefully soon have more active awards in the department and
more than 20 overall!
NSF DDRI awards are made across the spectrum of geography, in physical, human, and technical areas. The geography program also occasionally funds proposals from students in other disciplines. Daniel Lewis in the UT Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences,
whose research was co-directed by Henri Grissino-Mayer, received an NSF DDRI award to support his research.
NSF accepts DDRI applications in February and August. I encourage PhD students who will apply for the February 2018 competition to sign up for Geography 581: Grant Proposal Writing in Geography in Fall semester. We will spend several weeks in the course focused on DDRI awards and course participants and I will help you work on your proposal. I also encourage PhD students to take advantage of grant-related sessions at the upcoming AAG meeting. There are formal sessions arranged by current program officers for the Geography and Spatial Sciences program at NSF (source of all funding below), and there are many informal sessions on NSF and other grants.
In the list below, the year is the start year for each grant, and the name in parentheses is the advisor.
2015–present
Matthew Kerr (Horn) - 2017
Mathew Boehm (Horn) - 2015
2005–2014
Nancy Li (Li) - 2013
Grant Harley (Grissino-Mayer) - 2010
Matt Valente (Horn) - 2010
Chris Underwood (Horn) - 2009
Mark Spond (Grissino-Mayer) - 2009
Maria Caffrey (Horn) - 2009
John Sakulich (Grissino-Mayer) - 2009
Zachary Taylor (Horn) - 2008
Justin Hart (Grissino-Mayer) - 2006
David Mann (Grissino-Mayer) - 2006
Saskia van de Gevel (Grissino-Mayer) - 2005
Georgia DeWeese (Grissino-Mayer) - 2005
1995-2004
Lisa Davis (Harden) - 2004
Jim Speer (Orvis) - 2000
Lisa Kennedy (Horn) - 1999
Roger Brown (Horn) - 1998
Dan Royall (Harden) - 1995
Best wishes,
Sally
Geographers,
Please join me in congratulating
Ph.D. student Matt Kerr, who received the excellent news today that he has been awarded
an NSF doctoral dissertation grant of $15,819 for his project, "Doctoral
Dissertation Research: Holocene Precipitation Variability and its Relationship to Prehistoric Agriculture and Fires."
Matt's award is the
nineteenth doctoral dissertation research grant received by a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee. The award also involves Adjunct Professor Chad Lane (one of Matt's committee members), and me (Matt's advisor).
Philip Li and David Anderson (Anthropology) also serve on Matt's committee.
Congratulations and best wishes to Matt Kerr!
Sincerely,
Sally Horn