CCI Invests in Faculty Research Initiative

Top: Kelly Farquharson, Jessica Wendorf Muhamad, Mia Lustria, Don Latham; Bottom: Melissa Gross, Christopher Constantino, Yolanda Rankin, Sana Tibi

In the interest of promoting strong proposals for external funding and building interdisciplinary collaboration, FSU’s College of Communication and Information (CCI) initiated an internal research award competition. Faculty were encouraged to write proposals that could be used to support initiatives that connect CCI faculty to Florida priorities or Community needs, e.g. new collaborations with the local community, e.g.  businesses, schools, health care data; expansion of research to other locations, e.g. adding new sites in Gadsden and Jefferson counties or collecting data from private as well as public juvenile facilities; or additions of faculty from CCI to explore a new theme within ongoing projects.

The overall purpose was to build community within CCI, FSU and Florida by contributing to the acquisition of knowledge where we work and live. Proposals were required to include at least one team member from another school or college and to address a new are of research for the faculty applying.

Three types of awards were offered:

Proposal Preparation- $5000 awards for eligible faculty teams to prepare a proposal for submission to an external agency.

Title: “SSpeaCS – Spelling and Speech Coding Scheme”

Collaborators:  Kelly Farquharson (SCSD) and Nicole Patton-Terry (FCRR and COE)

Project Development $10,000 awards to support a small project with data collection and analysis to expand a data set or complete a small pilot project.

No proposals funded. 

New Collaborations $25,000 to support cross School or College collaborations that are strongly aligned with the CCI goal of interdisciplinary research to support Community Building.

Title: “Data Visualization and Game-Based Approaches for Educating At-Risk Young Adults About Non-Medical Prescription Opioid Use”

Collaborators: Jessica Wendorf Muhamad, Ph.D. (School of Communication, FSU) Mia Lustria, Ph.D. (School of Information, FSU) Fan Yang, Ph.D. (University of Alabama, Birmingham, Casey McLaughlin  (Research Computing Center) 

Title: “Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Use Among Rural Child Welfare Workers in North  Florida”

Collaborators: Melissa Gross (School of Information), Don Latham (School of Information) Christopher Constantino (School of Communication Science and Disorders), and Karen Randolph (College of Social Work)

Title:  “Designing a Socially Interactive Video Game”

Collaborators: Yolanda Rankin (School of Information), Sana Tibi (School of Communication Science and Disorders),

The project’s final report is a grant proposal prepared for submission to an identified agency such as (e.g., IES, NIH, NSF, ASHA Foundation, Other Foundations) during the 2019–2020 academic year.