Office of the Vice President for Research | January 30, 2020
The Office of the Vice President for Research is pleased to announce the 2019-2020 round of SPARC grants to a new class of graduate students. Through SPARC, or Support to Promote Advancement of Research and Creativity, graduate students compete for internal funding of up to $5,000 to fund their research, creative and scholarly projects.
By applying for SPARC, graduate students have a unique opportunity to both gain financial support for their scholarly projects and grow their experience in developing competitive grant proposals. Students who apply for SPARC prepare detailed budgets, write a narrative description detailing their plans and research methodology, compile supporting documentation and seek the support of their faculty advisors. By design, this process is very similar to many of the steps current graduate students will take later in their careers, when applying for funding, giving them an edge on the competition.
This year, we are excited to congratulate 57 students from 10 different academic units who have been awarded SPARC grants for 2019-2020. These SPARC recipients, listed below, will use their SPARC funds to engage in research and scholarly projects over a 15-month period beginning this May.
2019-2020 SPARC Graduate Research Grant Recipients
| Recipient Name | Department or Program | Proposal Title |
| Kathleen Arrasmith | Music | An Investigation of Portuguese Children’s Music Experiences and Music Responses during Music Learning Theory-based, Early Childhood Music Development Sessions |
| Louis Berrios | Biological Sciences | Investigating the genetic factors required for Caulobacter-mediated plant growth enhancement |
| Conner Black | School Psychology | Biological Mechanisms Related to Social Anxiety in Young Children with Fragile X Syndrome |
| Mia Brantley | Sociology | "Before the world gets them": The impact of children's experiences of racism on black maternal health |
| Joshua Bratsch-Prince | Biomedical Sciences | Cholinergic gating of theta oscillations and plasticity in the prelimbic cortex-basolateral amygdala fear circuit |
| Emily Brennan | Anthropology | Histories of Stress: A Life Course Approach to Population Health in Medieval Germany |
| Archie Crowley | Linguistics Program | Language Ideologies and Linguistic Activism in the Transgender Community |
| Allison Culver | Biological Sciences | Elucidating the role Fgf8 and Fgf10 in the development of human pituitary progenitors |
| Brittany Davis | Social Work | Community Land Trusts: Inclusion and Maintaining a Sense of Community |
| Eleanor Davis | Geography | Small Businesses and Community Resilience: Adaptation, Mitigation, and Planning in the Face of Flooding |
| Jennifer Erichsen | Biomedical Sciences | Intranasal Insulin as a Treatment Strategy for Age-Related Cognitive Decline |
| Kayla Everhart | Nursing | A national survey to examine blood transfusion practices in early preterm infants |
| Roberto Flores de Apodacao | History | Praying Soldiers: How Continental Soldiers Experienced Religion during the Revolutionary War 1775-1783 |
| Calvin Green | Music | 2020 University of South Carolina SPARC Viola Commissions Commemorating the 1919 Berkshire Music Festival Pieces for Viola |
| Wenyu Guo | Teaching and Learning | Asian American Children (Re)negotiate Bicultural Identities through the Analytic Window of Children’s Literature |
| Allison Ham | Anthropology | Sex Differentials in Frailty in Medieval Ireland |
| Reed Handlery | Exercise Science | Increasing Cardiovascular Fitness and Physical Activity in Survivors of Stroke and Their Care Partners: Cycling for Stroke |
| Xiaofei He | Pharmaceutical Sciences | The Effect of GPR68 on Leukemia Initiation |
| Julia Hodge | Educational Psychology and Research | First-Generation Students and the Imposter Phenomenon |
| Michael Huggins | Mathematics | Groups of Essential Dimension 2 Over Arithmetic Fields |
| Ruthanne Hughes | Linguistics Program | Eye hear you: Race, gender, and class ideologies in EFL pronunciation perception |
| Ishwor Karki | Chemistry | Smart Solid Phase Extraction Materials based on programmable molecularly imprinted polymers |
| Lynsey Keator | Communication Sciences and Disorders | Effects of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) on language and cortical network coherence in post-stroke aphasia |
| Colby Kipp | Clinical-Community Psychology | A Parent-Focused, Stress Reduction Intervention to Decrease Adolescent BMI, Reduce Parent Stress, and Increase Well-Being among African American Families |
| Jing Li | Pharmaceutical Sciences | Dissecting CDK8/19-dependent Tumoral and Stromal Signaling Pathways in Castration-Refractory Prostate Cancer |
| Yizeng Li | Statistics | Regression-Supervised Multiple-Infection Group Testing |
| Kai Luo | Mechanical Engineering | Development of Phase-Change Thermal-Switches Based on Electro-Wetting Droplet Actuation |
| Olivia Manley | Chemistry | Identification of oxygenated intermediate species in dinuclear iron enzymes |
| Nicholas Maxwell | Biomedical Sciences | Leptin and serotonin’s interactions to control appetite |
| Paul McElhinny | Comparative Literature | French Intellectuals’ Imaginings of and Experiences in Modern and Contemporary China |
| Amir Mehrabi | Health Services Policy and Management | Perceived Disease Risk, Vaccine Confidence, and Parent Decision-Making Regarding Influenza Immunization: Examining Changes in Vaccination Rates Following the H1N1 Pandemic and the Withdrawal of LAIV. |
| Mariah Moran | Social Work | Where the Home Fires Burn: The Heart of Geographic Mobility in Rural Southern America |
| Alicia Oostdyk | Health Services Policy and Management | Using Pictures to Provide Patients Power Over Pain: A Novel Application of Photovoice |
| Krystal Rampalli | Health Promotion, Education and Behavior | Adolescent food choices amidst the nutrition transition in Ghana: the role of cultural values, Westernized food marketing, and body image perceptions |
| Lauren Reid | Epidemiology | Household Food Security, Lifestyle Factors, and Glycemic control among Youth and Young Adults with Diabetes |
| Chelsea Richard | Epidemiology | Effect of Maternal Disability Status and Prescription Opioid Use Before and During Pregnancy on Small-for-Gestational Age Infants |
| Stephanie Riley | History | “Literature is Artillery”: Ben Hanford’s and Carl Sandburg’s Rhetorical Contributions to 20th Century American Socialism |
| Aimee Rovane | School Psychology | An Ecologically Valid Assessment of Family Patterns in Autism Spectrum Disorders |
| Mohsin Sajjad | Electrical Engineering | Wearable High-Resolution Positron Emission Tomography (PET) for Brain Imaging Using Multi-Pixel CZT Detector Arrays |
| Stacey Sangtian | Communication Sciences and Disorders | Speech Error Detection and Sensorimotor Processing of Auditory Feedback in Aphasia |
| Percy Schuck | Biological Sciences | Elucidating the Binding Affinities Between CST and RPA on G-quadruplexes |
| Yi-Wen Shih | Health Services Policy and Management | Acupuncturist visits and changes in opioid use among adults with chronic non-cancer pain |
| Chad Simmons | Biological Sciences | Developmental Adipokines and their Role in Adipocyte Morphology and Stem Cell Signaling Pathways in Adult Drosophila melanogaster |
| Steven Sloope | Chemistry | A New Approach to Synthesize Fully Conjugated Single-Crystal Covalent Organic Frameworks with Semiconductor Potential |
| Allison Smith | Exercise Science | Examination of Low Energy Availability and Bone Health in Physically Active Adolescent Females |
| Charles Smith | Exercise Science | Effect of Attentional Focus Instructions on Learning a Whole-Arm Three-Dimensional Motor Sequence Task |
| Matthew Spencer | Criminology and Criminal Justice | Public Transportation and Crime |
| Yuhsien Sung | Political Science | How Do Voters Evaluate Elected Prosecutors? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment |
| Malik Tahiyat | Mechanical Engineering | A novel approach to Non-Catalytic Reforming of Siloxane in landfill gas with Dielectric Barrier Discharge |
| Asia Thomas | School Psychology | Screening Utility of Classroom Performance Survey |
| Brittany Watson | Biomedical Engineering | Characterizing an Endothelial Cellular Response to Amyloid Proteins |
| Valerie Yelverton | Health Services Policy and Management | Understanding Perspectives on Characteristics of Shared Decision-Making of People Living with HIV in South Carolina |
| Hyo Jin Yoon | Business Administration | Policy-Induced Economic Uncertainty, Corporate Governance and Corporate Outcomes |
| Li Zhang | Pharmaceutical Sciences | Development of CDK8/19 Inhibitor Based PROTAC for Leukemia Treatment |
| Youwen Zhang | Pharmaceutical Sciences | Analyses of Transcriptomes Associated with Protein Quality Control in Endoplasmic Reticulum |
| Liang Zhao | Computer Science | Scene Text Detection in Historical Marine Corp Videos |
| Xiangcheng Zheng | Mathematics | Analysis and applications of variable distributed-order fractional differential equations |