ACH I EVE RESEARCH & GRANT ACTIVITIES AT ROBERT MORRIS UNIVERSITY
> Director’s Message On behalf of the Research & Grants Administration, welcome to the inaugural issue of the ACHIEVE Newsletter. As our faculty, staff, and students actively carry out research, explore/submit grants, and receive grant funding, we feel that it is important to share this with the campus community so that we are informed on “what is happening” in the research and grants front at RMU. We hope this newsletter will play an important role in showcasing our research activities. This is one way we plan to recognize and appreciate faculty, staff, and students for the research work that they do. In this issue we focus on grants received in the academic year 2014-15 as well as grant projects that are currently active. Going forward we will portray both research and grant activities. We hope this will be a starting point for us to share our research experience with the campus community and beyond. We plan to bring out an issue of the newsletter every semester and hope to improve this as we go along. The Research & Grants Administration encourages all faculty and staff to pursue research and participate in various activities it conducts. The administration is available to help you answer questions related to grant searching, writing, and managing. Please contact us with your questions, comments, and concerns. Sincerely, Sushil Acharya, Director
SPRING 2016
> Mobile Forensics Security Project The Mobile Forensics and Security (MFS) grant, received by Dr. Karen Paullet (PI), launched this fall. It aims to improve cybersecurity in a variety of U.S. industry and government sectors by advancing education in the field of mobile cybersecurity and cyber forensics. The project creates an online Mobile Forensics and Security (MFS) certificate, a train-the-trainer program for Computer Information Systems faculty. As a result of the project, over the next few years at least twenty additional faculty members will be trained and fully equipped to teach mobile forensics. They will be able in turn to train others on their campuses and potentially impact thousands of students learning about mobile security. School: SCIS
> Improving Students’ Understanding of Multivariable Calculus > Grable Grant Creates the Ohio River Consortium Funding from the Grable Foundation has allowed the School of Education and Social Sciences and four local school districts led by Dr. Mary Ann Rafoth (PI) to create a consortium to advance their students’ learning and invention. The consortium builds active engagement experiences into the curriculum at all levels and across disciplines. It involves developing and borrowing projects, techniques, games, simulations, and instructional plans that push student engagement and challenge students to think creatively. The grant has allowed the teacher education program at RMU to infuse more active learning instruction into the curriculum and create a “Makerspace” for RMU where RMU students can more deeply explore active learning. The Consortium consists of Avonworth, Valley, Moon Area and Cornell school districts, with the Teacher Education Programs of Robert Morris University. Weaving experiential lessons into every subject and every grade level is achieved by work teams made up of teachers from the four districts and university faculty members. School: SESS
> Shell Chemical Economic Impact Study The team of Drs. Steven Clinton (Marketing), Stephen Foreman (Healthcare Administration), Patrick Litzinger (Economics) and Marcel C. Minutolo (Management) completed an economic impact study of a proposed petrochemical facility in Beaver County. The report was accepted by Shell Chemical Appalachia, LLC and entered into public record as part of the firm’s application process for approval to build. The study was conducted over an approximately 6-month process and was funded by Shell Chemical Appalachia, LLC. 2
School: SBUS
Dr. Monica VanDieren (co-PI), working with collaborators at Monroe Community College and the University of Buffalo, received a National Science Foundation grant for Improving Undergraduate STEM Education. The project uses visual exploration to help students develop a deeper understanding of multivariable calculus concepts. It fills a gap in the existing educational research by addressing the effects of visualization on student understanding of threedimensional concepts. This project builds upon the success of the CalcPlot3D multivariable calculus applet, an award-winning, interactive Java applet, to facilitate the teaching and learning of multivariable calculus. This project enhances the use of CalcPlot3D by creating a series of visual concept explorations for physics, engineering, differential equations and linear algebra courses. VanDieren and her collaborators will use 3D printers and the CalcPlot3D program to create physical mathematical models to use in Calculus III demonstrations. They will also research how student learning is impacted by visualization. School: SEMS
> United Way Tax Assistance Grant
> Constellation Energy Inventor Labs Constellation Energy’s E2 Energy to Educate Grant enabled RMU’s Dr. Tony Kerzmann (co-PI) and a colleague from the University of Pittsburgh to create “Energy Inventor Labs” that have engaged over 500 students and 40 teachers across the K-12 spectrum. These labs have enabled a diverse population of students in the Pittsburgh area to think more deeply about energy while furthering their understanding of scientific and engineering principles. The labs deliver an innovative hands-on energy curriculum in which teams of students design and build energy technology prototypes, and learn fundamental concepts through labs and demonstrations. The rapid prototyping and physical modeling of energy technologies requires students to practice high-level thinking, while building a culture geared toward energy technology and innovation. School: SEMS
For the fourth year in a row, Robert Morris University has won an award from the United Way of Western Pennsylvania to be part of the Money in Your Pocket Coalition as a volunteer income tax assistance site. The grant provides funding for paid internship for two students managing the overall activities of the site, and engages an average of eighteen volunteers who include students and members of the community. The program provides income tax preparations for low income individuals and families. In 2015, the RMU site completed approximately 300 returns for nearly $500,000 in total refunds. Our student interns learn how to complete international student returns, military returns, and advanced individual returns. They have been featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Tribune Review. Dr. Marcel Minutolo (PI) was recognized by “Money” magazine as a “Money Hero” for his volunteer work with this effort. School: SBUS
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> Additional Grant Awards
> RMU Oral History Center’s Veterans Project Funding from the Jacob Ferree Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution has enabled Robert Morris University’s Oral History Center’s Dr. John McCarthy (PI) to work on collecting oral history interviews with veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The project (rmu.edu/IAVP) aims to preserve first-hand, on-the-ground histories of America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to create a vital repository of primary sources for future scholars, students, and citizens interested in these two wars.
AWC in Education Monica VanDieren (PI) School of Business Koch Foundation Brian O’Roark (PI) School of Communications and Information Systems Association of Leadership Educators Stuart Allen (PI)
School: SESS
IBM Faculty Award John Turchek (PI)
> Research Funding on Property Taxation
AEJMC Anthony Moretti (PI)
Dr. Zhou Yang (PI) received her third consecutive grant from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to fund her research on two-rate property taxation, the taxing of land value at a higher rate than the structures on the land. The project makes the first attempt to empirically investigate the effect of two-rate property taxation on land value and the heterogeneous responses to two-rate property taxation across property types. It constructs a dataset and uses a new empirical model to address key policy questions, especially important implications for property tax reforms. Zhou also continues to get RMU students engaged in research. Over the past few years she has created 18 research assistant positions for RMU students. School: SBUS 4
School of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science RAMP-Lehigh/CMU Arif Sirinterlikci (PI)
School of Business PWC Carol MacPhail (PI) Academic Affairs Heinz Endowments Derya Jacobs Anthony Robins Heniz Endowments Derya Jacobs Chester Thompson
> Building a Skilled Verification and Validation Community > Advanced Nursing Education Grant The Health and Human Resources Department awarded an Advanced Nursing Education (ANE) grant to Dr. Kirstyn Kameg (PI) to address the lack of access to mental health care. ANE grants support projects that develop and test innovative academicpractice partnership models for clinical training and preparation of advanced practice registered nurses. The grant funds the Access to Interprofessional Mental Health Education (AIME) program, which seeks to increase the number of Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioners who are prepared to provide mental health treatment to individuals across the lifespan, especially those living in underserved and rural areas, where the shortage of mental health providers is critical. The need for this is clear. One in four families have at least one member with a mental disorder, and one in five youth are thought to have a diagnosable mental disorder such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, eating disorders, depression and substance use disorders. Only 20-25% of affected children receive treatment, and lack of access to specialized mental health care is a significant barrier to treatment. The AIME program recruits students from rural areas and other states, who attend classes online via the grant-funded distance education technology installed in four state-of-the-art classrooms in Scaife Hall. ANE funding has also supported faculty development to provide curricular enhancements and “hands-on� interprofessional training. One event involves students and medical residents diagnosing and prescribing treatment for their simulated medical and mental health conditions of actors trained to portray patients. School: SNHS
Dr. Sushil Acharya (PI) (Engineering), Dr. Priya Manohar (co-PI) (Engineering), and Dr. Peter Wu (co-PI) (Computer and Information Systems) received a National Science Foundation Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics grant. The project improves software education at the undergraduate level and enhances on-the-job professional training, with the aim of increasing the pool of professionals with Verification and Validation (V&V) knowledge and skills. There is a general lack of appreciation of benefits of V&V, and a shortage of practitioners in the software industry. This project incorporates real world experiences into teaching by developing effective active learning tools, so that students will learn to develop software that meets rigorous quality standards in both functional and application domains. It incorporates academic research and industry best practices in conjunction with four industry partners. Sixty hours of active learning tools were developed and disseminated to eleven universities, which are currently using the materials in their courses. School: SEMS
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> Adaptive Basic Life Support Training Grant
> Actuarial Foundation Grant Dr. Liang Hong (PI) won a grant from the Actuarial Foundation for a research project with a colleague at the University of Illinois Chicago, working on flexible Bayesian nonparametric credibility models that push the boundary of credibility theory. Credibility theory is a fundamental branch of actuarial science and one of the cornerstones of property and casualty insurance; it concerns the estimation of future claims from policyholders in different risk classes based on past observations of claims made by policyholders in these classes. Not much progress has been made since the 1970s, mainly due to the fact that the computational resources needed to fit realistic Bayesian models were not available. This project takes advantage of the recent advances in computing power, and the numerical methods to harness that power. The general model extends the classical credibility model by giving a flexible characterization of the predictive distribution of the next policyholder’s loss and providing genuine Bayes estimators of any relevant feature of that predictive distribution. It does not impose any parametric assumption on the loss model, providing greater flexibility for practitioners. Numerical examples and free and ready-to-use software is also provided in order for practitioners to easily implement the new model in their work. School: SEMS
> Acknowledgements
School: SNHS
Contact Us Sushil Acharya Director acharya@rmu.edu 412-397-4023 Lisa Nauman Administrative Coordinator nauman@rmu.edu 412-397-6227
rmu.edu/researchsupport
4490-05-15
Research & Grants Promotion and Marketing Advisory Council: Drs. Nadine Englert, Philip Harold (Chair), Jacqueline Klentzin, James Rebele, and Helena Vanhala
This two-year project being managed by Dr. Suzie Kardong-Edgren (Project Manager) looks at various training and retention regimes for CPR skills. In addition, the study uses a USAF fighter pilot algorithm known as a performance predictor optimizer algorithm that is being tested with about 50% of the students. Based on a combination of both cognitive and psychomotor skills (tested by the CPR manikin and a Japanese word association game), the PPO group is providing data to evaluate a currently developed predictive model for CPR skill maintenance against the more periodic retraining requirements. They are currently in the start up phase of the study at 10 schools of nursing around the USA.