Wartburg College faculty have received national, state and local grants to support research and education.

Drs. David McCullough, professor of biology, and Eric Merten, associate professor of biology, received two environmental science grants for research they will do with Wartburg students.

A U.S. Forestry Service award will assist with fieldwork to study and improve streams and adjacent sites in the Superior National Forest in northeast Minnesota, which includes the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness along the Canadian border.

An Iowa Department of Natural Resources award will aid field research on the presence of rusty crayfish in the Shell Rock and Winnebago River drainages. The rapidly expanding rusty crayfish —used as bait by some fishermen — is a threat to some fish and plant life.

The college also will participate in a three-year project to offer advanced online studies.

Drs. Joyce Boss, professor of English, and Rachel Clark, assistant professor of English, will prepare courses through the Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction, which is sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Project goals include enriched teaching, improved learning outcomes, working with a consortium of liberal arts colleges, cost savings and establishing best practices in online instruction across the curriculum. Dr. Stephanie TeKippe, acting dean of the faculty, will coordinate the college’s participation. 

The Waterloo-based Max and Helen Guernsey Charitable Foundation is supporting two Wartburg summer programs.

The grants assisted participation of Cedar Valley-area students in the recent High School Leadership Institute, which enabled students to study and practice skills related to community and civic engagement, and also will aid Summer Knights, a program to help selected promising first-year students make the transition from high school to college.

Program directors are Dr. Bill Soesbe, assistant professor of education, and Jette Irgens, Pathways associate for the Writing/Reading/Speaking Lab, respectively.