In 2017, two Missouri Western professors were awarded large grants from the National Science Foundation. The grants are very prestigious and truly reflect the excellence of our faculty members.
Dr. Corey White
Dr. Corey White, assistant professor of psychology, received a $566,000 CAREER grant and Dr. Julie Jedlicka, assistant professor of biology, and faculty colleagues at Humboldt State University in California were awarded a $249,424 grant.
Dr. White’s project, “Validating and Applying a New Class of Drift-diffusion Models for Investigating Individual Differences in Executive Control,” develops and tests new mathematical models of executive function (thoughts, impulses, etc.) to provide new analytical tools for investigating individual differences in cognitive function.
The five-year grant will fund four $3,200 scholarships for undergraduate students each year and also provide funding for travel to professional conferences to report on their research.
Dr. Julie Jedlicka
Dr. Jedlicka and her colleagues will study the roles of birds, insects and climate change in the ecology of coffee production in Kenya. The grant, “Birds, Beans and Bugs: Modeling a Warming Climate’s Effect on the Natural Enemies Hypothesis,” will allow the researchers and students from each university to travel to Kenya for five weeks each year for the next three years.
Justin Ross, a Bachelor of General Studies student from St. Joseph, traveled to Kenya in December as part of the research project.
