RIVETING RESEARCH

ECU honors faculty at annual Research & Scholarship Awards

East Carolina University faculty were honored Tuesday at the university’s fifth annual Research & Scholarship Awards.

The awards recognized a pair of Five-Year Research & Creative Activity Award winners from the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Art and Design.

The faculty members were honored for originality and excellence in research, and creative activities through sustained high-quality work performed while contributing to the academic success of the university. Award winners are selected by the Research & Creative Activity subcommittee of the Faculty Senate Academic Affairs committee and included members from five ECU schools or colleges.

Additionally, faculty members were recognized in each college and school for their research and creative activity achievements, along with ECU’s inventors and the 2020 Engagement of Outreach Scholars Academy cohort.

The university continued its rise in the National Science Foundation’s annual Higher Education Research and Development Survey (HERD), moving up 21 spots in the survey’s latest 2019 ranking. The survey ranks nearly every aspect of research productivity for more than 600 American colleges and universities, including research sponsored by federal agencies, state and local governments, industry, and non-governmental organizations.

ECU ranked third in the UNC system in research expenditures based on the HERD rankings.

This year’s winners highlight the important work ECU faculty members lead in eastern North Carolina and across the nation. The winners include an art history professor who uses lessons of the past to inform the way we view the world today and a biology associate professor who’s studying the processes of tiny microbes in wetland soil.

Read more about each award winner below.