Research

A $293,000 grant from the National Science Foundation will help a UB team of investigators lead an effort to create more inclusive college classrooms that recognize the neurodiversity of students by building micro-credential training courses for computer science faculty.

UB’s Graduate School of Education was recently awarded a $478,000 grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to study how to improve the retention of underrepresented librarians.

Heidi Julien, professor from the Department of Information Science, and other colleagues from universities in Canada have been awarded a Partnership Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The grant will help fund a project exploring public library approaches to digital literacy.

Understanding the instructional practices of information literacy (IL) in community college libraries, as well as the perceptions of librarians and students regarding the IL needs of students, is a nationwide concern. Currently, community colleges account for over 50 percent of the institutions of higher education and these colleges educate nearly half of the post-secondary students.

Amy VanScoy, associate professor from the Department of Information Science, was collecting data in the United States when she decided to turn her research on librarians into an international study. “Personally, I find it ethnocentric if I only conduct studies in the United States,” said VanScoy. “I want to do research in other countries because there has to be some differences that we can learn from.” She is leading a global project across Slovenia, South Africa and the United States examining different librarian approaches to reference and information services (RIS).

Sam Abramovich, assistant professor from the Department of Learning and Instruction and the Department of Library and Information Studies, in collaboration with the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, has been awarded a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to develop reliable and valid ways to measure the learning and associated benefits of Makerspaces in libraries.

Amanda Nickerson, director of the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention, and professor from the Department of Counseling, School and Educational Psychology, and Dan Albertson, associate professor from the Department of Library and Information Studies, have been awarded $175,000 from the New York State (NYS) Developmental Disabilities Planning Council (DDPC) for their collaborative research project, “Multimedia and Peer-to-Peer Prevention Support.”

Dan Albertson, associate professor from the Department of Library and Information Studies, along with a colleague from the University of West Georgia, have a received a $386,569 federal grant to strengthen STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learning in rural school libraries.