John C. Baker Fund awards more than $46K to four faculty proposals
D. Thomas Hayes (far left), BGS ’77, a lecturer in the College of Fine Arts’ School of Film, is pictured while filming in Nablus, a city in the northern West Bank. Hayes was awarded $12,000 from the John C. Baker Fund to continue his work on a documentary that explores the lives of generations displaced by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Photo courtesy of D. Thomas Hayes
Four Ohio University faculty members were awarded a total of $46,177 from the John C. Baker Fund during fall semester 2019 for their research and scholarly work.
The John C. Baker Fund, which provides up to $12,000 for each proposal, supports faculty projects that are near completion. The fund was endowed in 1961 by a gift from Edwin L. Kennedy, AB ’26, HON ’65, and Ruth Kennedy, BSED ’30, and is named in honor of Ohio University’s 14th president.
Baker Funds are awarded each fall and spring semester. For the fall 2019 funding cycle, the Baker Fund Awards Committee received a total of nine proposals, requesting a total of $103,677.
Here are the fall 2019 Baker Fund awardees:
“Return to Rashidieh: Chronicle of an Inconvenient People” Documentary Project
Thomas Hayes, BGS ’77, a lecturer in the College of Fine Arts’ School of Film, was awarded $12,000 to continue working on a documentary that explores the lives of generations displaced by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Return to Rashidieh” builds upon Hayes’ “Native Sons: Palestinians in Exile,” a documentary filmed in 1983 and focused on three families living in the Rashidieh Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon. Hayes reconnected with one of the families, the Al-Hussein family whose children are third-generation refugees, in 2017. He returned to the refugee camp in 2018 and 2019 to film the family’s day-to-day life, shining a spotlight on their humanity amid social and political unrest.
Hayes will use the funds for film-to-video scanning of his 1983 and other footage and to commission translations of the Levantine Arabic language of material filmed over the past two years, with both tasks expected to move the documentary into the editing phase.
Leveraging the Motus Wildlife Tracking System to Track Imperiled Bats to Hibernation Sites
Dr. Joseph Johnson, an associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, was awarded $12,000 to continue researching the hibernation sites of North American bats in an effort to reverse the declining population of two endangered bat species.
Since 2006, white-nose syndrome, caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has killed millions of North American bats, infecting them during their winter hibernation when they are more vulnerable to disease. Johnson and his research team have been tracking two endangered bat species, the northern long-eared bat and the Indiana bat, to identify where bats who are surviving are hibernating and to determine if there is a link between survival and the characteristics of the hibernation habitat.
Johnson’s lab has tracked 10 Indiana bats and 24 northern long-eared bats. Support from the Baker Fund will allow the team to continue its tracking for another field season.
A Place Changed? An Investigation of the Current Ethnopolitical Climate and Personal Wellbeing Among Adults Unemployed in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland
Dr. Rosellen Roche, an associate professor at the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Cleveland Campus, was awarded $11,960 for her project that examines the unemployment problem among adults living in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Roche’s project revisits previous research conducted in Derry where she surveyed individuals ages 15-25 known as “school-leavers” — those who drop out of school by age 16. In Derry, school-leavers, who often struggle to secure long-term employment, make up nearly 45 percent of the population, likely contributing to the city having one of the highest rates of social and economic deprivation in the United Kingdom.
Roche will revisit Derry to survey unemployed adults ages 18-45 on their social, economic and personal wellness. Amid Brexit-related violence in Northern Ireland, she will reexamine attitudes and ideas of school-leavers and if and how these individuals have changed.
Roche hopes to bring attention to Derry’s unemployment problem by understanding this portion of its population and sharing her information with scholars and policymakers. Her research will build upon previous work with the hope that these insights will empower local community-based entities to secure more funding for future policy programming.
The Meaning of the Pussyhat: Voices of People from Marginalized Populations
Dr. V. Ann Paulins, BSHED ’86, MSHEC ’87, who serves as senior associate dean for research and graduate studies in the Gladys W. and David H. Patton College of Education, was awarded $10,217 from the Baker Fund.
Paulins’ project continues her and her team’s research into the meaning of the pussyhat, the pink, crafted hats that emerged in the weeks leading up to the Women’s March that occurred in Washington, D.C., and cities across the nation in January 2017. Paulins’ research seeks to explore and document the meaning of this cultural symbol by surveying women who participated in the marches.
Support from the Baker Fund will allow Paulins to broaden this research by incorporating the voices of both women of color and transgender women, building on the surveys conducted after the march in 2017 and the anniversary march in 2018.
For more information about the John C. Baker Fund, click here.