Eleven faculty members recently received awards from the Maxwell School to support emerging research projects this summer.

The awards, granted in two separate programs by the Dean’s Office and by the Center for Policy Research (CPR), each fund a graduate assistant to work on preliminary research that will enable the faculty member to submit a related proposal for external funding.

These five faculty members received awards from the Dean’s Office:  

• Kristy Buzard (Economics), for a project related to lobbying and legislative uncertainty;
• Peng Gao (Geography), for a study of morphological changes of braided rivers in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau using UAV, multispectral, and SAR remote sensing;
• Yingyi Ma (Sociology), for a project titled “Chinese Students Amidst COVID-19: Double Binds and Difficult Choices”;
• Gretchen Purser (Sociology), for a “Freedom Commons: Entanglements of Social and Penal Policy in Housing Provision for the Poor”; and
• Emily Wiemers (PAIA), for “The Strength of the Family Safety Net during the Coronavirus Pandemic”

The Center for Policy Research also supported assistantships for five projects, involving these six faculty members:  

• Madonna Harrington Meyer (Sociology), for “Policy-Making with Carrots and Sticks: Social Security Early Retirement Deduction vs. Delayed Retirement Credit”;
• Colleen Heflin and Micah Rothbart (both PAIA), for “Statewide, Longitudinal Analysis of Malleable Factors Related to High School Completion Outcomes for Students with High Incidence Disabilities”;
• Jan Ondrich (Economics), for “Equivalence Scaling for Disability in the United States and Germany”;
• Alex Rothenberg (Economics), for “The Consequences of Urban Sprawl in Developing Countries: Economic, Environmental, and Social Outcomes”; and
• Johnny Yinger (Economics/PAIA), for “The Cause of Household Sorting Across Communities: Zoning or Competition?” 

For information about research support available to faculty members, email Jill Ferguson, Maxwell’s director of research development, at jsfergus@.syr.edu.

06/24/20