2023 Faculty Summer Grants Awarded

2023 Faculty Summer Grants Awarded

Lipscomb funds summer research to advance discovery in family science, robotics, art and faith, youth ministry and theology.

Janel Shoun-Smith | 04/26/2024

Each year, Lipscomb University awards up to six grants to allow faculty to focus on research and scholarship during the summer. Past grants have benefitted the development of new courses, the writing of books and poetry, innovative research in chemistry and biology, research of current business trends, engineering advancements and programs to enhance Lipscomb's relationship within the national and international community.
In 2024, five faculty were awarded grants to conduct projects adding to humanity's knowledge base in personal relationships throughout open adoptions, artificial learning by intelligent robots, the intersection of artistry and faith, effective youth ministry and Black Christianity in America.

Dr. Shaun Calix
Lead Faculty for Family Science
Qualitative Study of Open Adoptive Family Relationships.

Calix's summer project involves a qualitative study of relationship dynamics between adoptive parents and birth parents in open adoptions, including factors such as boundary formation and power.

The project, expected to involve interviews of 10-15 each of adoptive parents and birth parents, will deepen scholars' and practitioners' understanding of open adoption relationships and how to support them. The intended result of the study is a theoretical model of relationship dynamics between adoptive and birth parents that will serve as part of the basis for future population-level research. Calix's intended program of research, of which this study is the first, also will contribute to the development of educational programming for adoptive and birth parents in open adoptions.

Dr. Calix became interested in this area of research after he and his wife became adoptive parents in 2022; they are in an open adoption with their son's birth mother. Currently, there are few educational resources available to adoptive families on how to healthily navigate their relationships with birth parents, in addition to little research on the topic that would form the evidence-base for such research. Calix hopes to fill both gaps.

Jan Harris
Professor of Writing/English and Center for Teaching & Learning Faculty Fellow for Well Being
Professional Development on Mindfulness, Wonder and Professional Writing

Harris will spend the summer actively studying subjects that frequently arise in her work teaching creative and professional writing and conducting teacher training in Lipscomb's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).

The Mindfulness Center is an accredited nonprofit with in person and online training and events devoted to the evolution of the standard of health care from one of managing disease to one of fostering health.

Harris plans to use her accredited mindfulness teacher training to expand weekly "reset sessions" held for faculty in the CTL, to refine and develop curriculum for the Mindfulness Minute Breakout Chapel she has been leading since fall 2021 and to establish partnerships to hold other mindfulness events for faculty and students.

In addition, she will attend the Wonder Festival sponsored by the EcoTheo Collective, which is based at Princeton Theological Seminary and publishes the EcoTheo Review (ETR).

"My interest in the intersection of creative work and theology began in college when I was an English major and Theology minor," said Harris. "As a poet and creative writer, my work often engages with questions about wonder, grace, and community through an interdisciplinary lens.
"The Wonder Festival would provide me with an opportunity to listen and learn from other creatives and theologians whose works are involved in a similar conversation."

Finally, to address an increase in students interested in professional writing. Harris will acquire an up to date understanding of what skills students would need for professional writing jobs like proofreading and editing and use her knowledge to assess the university's professional writing courses.

Aaron Howard
Assistant Professor of Ethics and Reconciliation in the College of Bible & Ministry
"Incommensurable Paradigms: The Competing Claims of Black Pietism and Black Liberationism"

Howard, who holds degrees in ethics and society, theology and Biblical studies, education and counseling, and anthropology, is working to become one of the few black theologian authors of a book-length critique of black liberation theology and womanism.

His funded research project will entail revising his Ph.D. dissertation into book form to submit for publication.

By using primary sources to identify the central theological beliefs of black Christianity in America from its inception in slave religion to its development in black church institutions during the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, Howard's book will contrast those beliefs with the current philosophy of black theology/womanism to demonstrate incongruence between these two traditions.

His writing argues that these traditions cannot be harmonized and should remain conceptually and institutionally distinct.

"This book will provide non-black academicians and laypeople who reject the methods and beliefs of black liberation theology/womanism with a helpful resource for clearly articulating their views," said Howard, who served in ministerial leadership for over 25 years.

He now teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in ethics, directs the Lipscomb University Gospel Choir and teaches a class on multicultural worship.

His research interests include the ethics and theology of Martin Luther King, Jr., divine command ethics, virtue ethics, emotion and embodiment in worship and revivalism. in worship and religious experience, and revivalism.

Juan Rojas
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
"Real-time Robot Policy Learning Acceleration via Iterative Symmetrical Transformation Deployment"

Building on a deep bench of experience in intelligent robotics, Rojas' summer project will relaunch research work Rojas was conducting in his previous posts in China.

He seeks to develop learning algorithms that can be used by robots in near real-time. The goal is to develop a framework allowing robots to learn new deep reinforcement learning (DRL) policies in near-real time as they face new environments that they do not know how to solve.

DRL algorithms are able to take in very large inputs and decide what actions to perform to optimize an objective, thus teaching robots how to carry out real-world tasks in unfamiliar environments.

According to Rojas, DRL has been shown to be very effective for robots' manipulation, gripping, locomotion and navigation, but currently most DRL training occurs offline. Once trained the robot is then launched to do a task.
"I hope to enable the 'quick' learning of policies as a robot agent encounters new situations in real time," said Rojas. "Effectively developing a real-time learning framework would advance the state-of-the-art in intelligent manipulation."

Walter Surdacki
Professor in the College of Bible & Ministry
"Made in the Streets (MITS) Staff Development and Best Practices"

Made in the Streets (MITS) is a youth ministry organization with a 27-year successful track record of serving early, middle and late adolescents in Nairobi, Kenya. It is a multi-site residential program with a property to serve currently unhoused teens, a boarding school serving about 130 students and a vocational school which provides job training and job placement.

MITS has earned a great reputation among regional nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), who have often asked MITS leaders about the best practices that have earned them their extremely high success rate.

Surdacki will travel to Nairobi to identify, document and package MIT's "best practices"
for trainings for other organizations. "The data that I gather will also better train and equip my students who are preparing to serve in youth ministry, particularly those who serve teens who have suffered trauma and abuse," said Surdacki.

"There is much to be learned in the world of youth ministry from success in other cultures. Sometimes in the U.S., youth ministry seems like an "extracurricular activity" in which parents enroll their teens," he said. "American ministries would benefit from different ways to think of the transforming power of the Gospel, as well as what Kenyan Christian community life can teach us about ministry to adolescents."

These training materials would be designed so that MITS may use them to help train future staff members as well as to partner with outside organizations asking for their wisdom, said Surdacki.

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