Impact of Giving

Twenty-two faculty members at UNB have increased research, publishing and teaching support for the 2018-19 academic year, thanks to funding from the Harrison McCain Faculty Awards. The awards are focused in four areas: young scholars, conference and research travel, visiting professorships and scholarly book publishing. They were initially established in 2006 with a grant of $1 million from the Harrison McCain Foundation, and renewed with an additional $1.25 million in 2016.

The awards include:

The Harrison McCain Young Scholars Awards, which provide up to $25,000 to support new or recently hired faculty who have received their highest degree within the last 10 years. The Young Scholars Awards are designed to provide special support to tenure or tenure-track faculty members who received their PhD less than 10 years ago and whose employment at UNB does not exceed six years. The awards may be used for research projects, additional study, travel, equipment, stipends to provide release time for increased research activity, the hiring of a laboratory assistant, or other initiatives deemed to be supportive of establishing an academic career at UNB.

The Harrison McCain Visitorships offer up to $50,000 to UNB faculty to enable them to participate in the academic life of another institution. The visitorships are intended to provide opportunities for current faculty to participate actively in the academic life of another institution, expanding their knowledge, enhancing their pedagogical skills and/or fostering research collaborations.

The Harrison McCain Visiting Professorships offer up to $50,000 to allow UNB faculty to bring colleagues from other institutions to enrich the UNB experience. The visiting professorships are intended to attract scholars of especially high calibre to either campus of the University of New Brunswick in any discipline. The intent is to bring to UNB unusual expertise and new perspectives.

The Harrison McCain Grant in Aid of Scholarly Book Publishing provides up to $5,000 in funding to assist faculty with the costs of publishing their research. The Grant in Aid of Scholarly Book Publishing is designed to provide support to UNB faculty and librarians who require funding to defray costs directly associated with publishing a scholarly, analytical book.

Nine faculty members received young scholars awards for 2018-19, four were awarded visitorships, three received visiting professorship awards, and six received scholarly book publishing grants.

Harrison McCain Foundation Young Scholars – 2018

Kaveh Arjomandi (Civil Engineering) is investigating how to apply sensor-based technologies to assess the condition of building structures. This award will help him expand his research to include high-frequency ambient vibration tests.

Scott Bateman (Computer Science) is an internationally-renowned researcher in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), which is concerned with understanding how computing technology and software should be best designed so that it successfully meets the needs of its users.

Jason Bell (Philosophy) focuses his research on ethics and the relation of pragmatism and phenomenology. Through previous funding, including a McCain Young Scholars Award in 2017, Dr. Bell established an international research team with renowned philosophy scholars at University College Dublin.

Tia Dafnos (Sociology) researches critical policing and security studies. While her investigations are specific to Canada and New Brunswick, her aim is to make a broader interdisciplinary contribution in the fields of political sociology, critical security studies, and political geography.

Elizabeth Effinger (English) has covered diverse and interdisciplinary topics in the area of Romanticism, including William Blake and science, Mary Shelley and the end of humanity, and Samuel Beckett and ontology. She is currently working on her forthcoming book A Fragile Romanticism: Emergent Knowledge and the Waning of Human Exceptionalism.

Jeffrey Hebert (Kinesiology) is Chair of Musculoskeletal Health Research, thanks to support from The New Brunswick Health Research Foundation and the Canadian Chiropractic Research Foundation. Dr. Hebert’s primary research at UNB involves the surgical treatment of individuals with lumbar spine stenosis.

Jason Hickey (Nursing) conducts community-driven Indigenous health research. His primary goal is to empower the urban Indigenous community in Fredericton so they can develop an evidence-based wellbeing program.

Audrey Limoges (Earth Sciences) researches the impact of climate change on aquatic ecosystems surrounded by ice, particularly those between Canada and Greenland. Her primary goal is to produce high-resolution data on changes in the sea-surface conditions which will help determine the impact of climate variations on the ecosystem and predict how ongoing climate change will influence its future productivity.

Hsin-Chen Lin (Business Administration) investigates the impact of social media marketing campaigns on brand performance. Specifically, Dr. Lin examines how brands’ online post activities relate to consumers’ reactions to brand equity, and what cultural and national conditions are most effective for this type of marketing.

Harrison McCain Foundation Visiting Professorship - 2018

Joseph Hall (Mechanical Engineering) will be hosting Dr. Nan Gao from the School of Aeronautics at Dalian University of Technology in China. Dr. Gao is a Canadian living abroad and is one of China’s best turbulence and flow-control researchers, specializing in aerodynamic drag on vehicles like aircraft, ships, trucks and cars. During his stay at UNB, Dr. Gao will use simulation of flow data obtained by Dr. Hall to develop flow-control schemes for drag reduction.

Mohsen Mohammadi (Mechanical Engineering) will be hosting Dr. Durga Janaki Ram Gabbita from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai, India. While at UNB, Dr. Janaki Ram will work on developing new alloys for additive manufacturing. Based on these studies, samples will be produced for mechanical, corrosion and wear testing. A very likely outcome of this effort is a new alloy for additive manufacturing components for use in marine and offshore applications.

Daniel Tubb (Anthropology) will be hosting Dr. Claudia Mosquera Rosero-Labbé from the National University of Colombia. Dr. Rosero-Labbé is one of Colombia’s preeminent Black scholars, and an expert on the African Diaspora and the Black Americas. Her goal at UNB will be to work on a manuscript on the complexity of the processes of ethnic-racial self-identification in the Colombian Caribbean. She will also collaborate with Dr. Tubb on a study of the racialized communities in the plantation industry in the Caribbean and the resource industry in New Brunswick.

Harrison McCain Foundation Visitorship - 2018

Joanna Everitt (History & Politics) will travel to the University of Exeter, UK to continue research studies involving gender, media and politics. She will work with Dr. Susan Banducci who is co-investigator in two important studies of the British General elections and the impact of traditional and social media on their outcomes. At Exeter Dr. Everitt will examine the degree to which a person’s gender conditions his or her acceptance of media messages about male or female candidates.

Heather Hunt (Biological Sciences) will travel to the University of Tasmania in Australia to conduct research in the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies in collaboration with Dr. Gretta Pecl, an international expert on changes in species distribution due to climate change. Together, they will explore the use of citizen science reports of marine species outside their usual ranges as early indicators of climate-driven range shifts.

Chris McFarlane (Earth Sciences) will travel to the University of Wyoming to collaborate with two well established senior faculty in the Department of Geology & Geophysics. The objective of this collaborative research is to define and describe the distribution of some of the oldest rocks on Earth within the Archean rock range in central Wyoming. This research is expected to establish a new data set for the nature of Earth’s oldest crust.

Cheryl Patten (Biology) will travel to Neiker Tecnalia Institute for Agricultural Research in Arkaute, Spain. Along with forest pathologist Dr. Eugenia Iturritxa, Dr. Patten will investigate disease-causing fungi that infect the roots of pine and spruce seedlings, reduce tree growth and wood quality, and are responsible for significant economic losses to the forest industry. Together, they will develop a pre-transplantation seedling treatment with beneficial bacteria that inhibit the growth of the fungal pathogens.

Harrison McCain Foundation Award in Scholarly Book Publishing – 2018

Danielle Bouchard (Kinesiology) will publish Exercise and Physical Activity for Older Adults, a book for exercise professionals or members of the general public who want to know more about the expected physical changes associated with aging. The book will explore challenges affecting older adults who are in community dwellings and those in long-term care facilities.

Jason Bell (Philosophy) will publish Eine kritische Untersuchung der Erkenntnistheorie Josiah Royces: Mit Kommentaren und Änderungsvorschlägen von Edmund Husserl. This volume is the first publication of a recently discovered 1914 manuscript, which studies Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce’s relevance to phenomenology. The study presents a missing link in the scholarship that compares German phenomenology and North American pragmatism and idealism.

Joanna Everitt (History & Politics) will publish The Mediation of Gendered Identities in Canadian Politics, an edited collection that will provide important new theoretical and empirical contributions to the gender and political communication field. It builds upon the “gendered mediation thesis,” which argues that political reporting reinforces impressions of politics as a masculine domain that privileges men and treats women as “other.”

Stephen Heard (Biology) will publish The Strangest Tribute: How Scientific Names Celebrate Adventurers, Heroes, and Even a Few Scoundrels (working title). This book explores the custom of eponymous Latin naming in biology and asks why taxonomists indulge in eponymous naming and explores how this can give insight into how taxonomists and scientists in general process information.

Martin Hrynick (Anthropology) will publish The Archaeology of the Atlantic Northeast, which will offer a comprehensive overview of the archaeology of this region, and by extension, the archaeological history of local Indigenous peoples. The volume will span the time from the earliest Indigenous occupations of the area, more than 13,000 years ago, to the first few centuries of European occupation, ending approximately 400 years ago.

Donald Wright (Political Science) will publish Symbols of Canada, a collection of 22 short essays on Canadian symbols, including hockey, maple syrup, Anne of Green Gables, the beaver, the flag, the canoe, the national anthem, and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Each essay is written by a leading scholar in the field.

Apply for a Harrison McCain Faculty Award for 2019.