1. Presentation of film "Crossings.....moves, Stories of Forced Migration” – A Dance Theater Project. Ferolyn Angell; Lecturer in Dance, Humanities Division, University of Minnesota, Morris.

This project is the outgrowth of previous funding from UMRA in 2012, 2015 and 2019 before the pandemic delayed the next phase of the project. Initially, UMRA funded translations of documents from my mother, Dorothea Oppenheimer Angell and later the development of a dance film, “In the Shadow”. The compilation of the translations may be accessed as Seven Girls, One Boy: A Family Endures Nazi Race Laws in JOIE. Out of all this work at least 19 hours of video footage emerged which I have now edited into a 48 minute film. The 2nd draft of this film may be viewed at: https://youtu.be/PvJ0GV7oJtU. Final edits are being completed. It is my intention to screen this film as widely as possible and to arrange for discussions of current issues surrounding the topic of immigration and refugees. This would also allow people who are three or four generations removed from the events of the Holocaust to approach that subject from a different angle. I have a standing invitation to return to Schwedt and Berlin, Germany to present the film to audiences there. This grant will provide funds for me to do that. The grant will also allow me to arrange screenings at film events, travel to various locations in Minnesota for screenings and talks and cover fees associated with entry into curated film showings.

2. Exploring the International Dimensions of Extended Learning and Youth Development. Dale A. Blyth, Ph.D.; Professor, Associate Dean & Howland Endowed Chair for Youth Development Leadership, University of Minnesota Extension and School of Social Work, College of Education and Human Development, Twin Cities.

In my career I helped build the field of youth development and efforts to expand learning beyond the classroom – including 4-H. This work included creating the Society for Research on Adolescence and launching multiple journals – from the Journal of Research on Adolescence to the Journal of Youth Development. I advise on a major study of the youth fields workforce in the U.S. During retirement my work has expanded to understanding, supporting, and contributing to the work done around the world. This now includes two critical opportunities for which I am seeking funding: 1) launching of the Global Extended Learning & Youth Development Association and 2) advising on youth engagement efforts emerging in the Somaliland region of Ethiopia – Grow Our Food, Grow Our Future. In the first opportunity, I serve on the Steering Committee, am writing the bylaws, supporting development of a new international magazine, Extensions, and will be part of the invited symposium at the conference in Brisbane, Australia in September, 2024. The second opportunity emerged with U colleagues in Extension and CFANS, crafting a partnership with Jijiga University and the regional government in Ethiopia around an Extension-like model for sustainable agriculture. I advise on youth and project-based, experiential, and service-learning approaches that can engage youth 12-20 and support work opportunities for youth 20-28. The critical next step is a visit to Ethiopia by a U team in April 2024. In order to travel to and participate in these efforts I need to match the $5,000 I can contribute personally.

3. More New Thinking about Presidential Elections and Alternative Voting Methods. Mark Bohnhorst, J.D.; Senior Associate General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, Twin Cities.

This project will provide scholarly research tools and the support of a research assistant to continue and deepen the applicant’s on-going program of research and publication concerning election systems and history. In the past several years, the applicant has collaborated with scholars of law and of history, with a law student, and with the former chair of the Federal Communications Commission in a series of publications and presentations focused on the history of the electoral college and its manifold flaws. As indicated in the CV, the recent work began with an invited submission to the May 2021 midyear meeting of the Association of American Law Schools on rebuilding democracy and the rule of law; it will conclude with publication this Spring of “Reconstruction, Racial Terror, and the Electoral College” in a highly regarded, peer reviewed journal: the Journal of the Civil War Era. Future projects are outside the scope of the prior collaboration, and one important research tool—newspaper archives—that has been used extensively by one collaborator might not be fully available to the applicant. Limited funding is requested to assure full access to newspaper archives. Funding is also requested for a research assistant. It is hoped that a faculty member in law, history or public affairs (current or retired) will participate at some level (ranging from minimal student oversight to full collaboration and joint authorship).

4. Analysis of a Government Program for the Assimilation of Jewish Immigrants to the United States between WWI and WWII: Archival Research and a Case Study. Katherine Fennelly, Ph.D.; Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Twin Cities.

I have spent the last seven years examining declassified government files and conducting research to understand how my maternal grandfather, Francis Kalnay, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant, rose to become the head of a prestigious espionage unit in the Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the CIA) during the Second World War. The findings are summarized in my book, Family Declassified: Uncovering My Grandfather's Journey from Spy to Children's Book Author (Sunbury Press, August 2023). In the course of the research I learned that Kalnay used his work with the Foreign Language Information Service (FLIS) and the Common Council for American Unity (CCAU) as stepping stones to intelligence work with the government. One of the divisions of the FLIS was the “Jewish Bureau” which worked with predominantly Yiddish-speaking communities and publications in the 1920s. There is little published research on the work of the Bureau or its success at reaching Jewish immigrants and achieving the agency’s assimilation goals. It is also unclear to what extent the FLIS hired Jewish immigrants like my grandfather outside of the Jewish Bureau, or whether others succeeded in using FLIS or CCAU work as a means of establishing careers. I propose to address these questions by delving into the FLIS archives held by the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. The archival research will be combined with a case study of my grandfather’s ascension and incorporated into a series of academic and public presentations.

5. A Traveler’s Art Quest in Native America: Documenting a Collection of Contemporary Native American Beadwork. Andrea Gilats, Ph.D.; College of Continuing and Professional Studies, Twin Cities.

Between 1987 and 1997, I took fourteen road trips to Native American communities whose homelands are on the Great Plains. These trips facilitated my research into intercultural tourism, and they also allowed me to indulge my passionate interest in contemporary Native American beadwork made for sale to tourists. Not surprisingly, then, these travels also led to my purchasing more than two hundred exquisite examples of Native American beadwork. Now, I am committed to permanently returning these artworks to an appropriate Native American cultural organization. At intervals over the past year, I have been writing a personal travel memoir that tells the stories of how and where I came to collect these objects, including historical and cultural background about the people and places I visited. In this memoir, I will also reflect on how this art form and these places have changed over the past thirty years, and I will tell the yet-to-unfold story of my search for a Native American cultural organization to permanently house my beadwork collection. I seek travel funds to revisit selected tribal communities in order to 1) learn how Native American bead art has evolved over the past thirty years, 2) discover how selected reservations have evolved with regard to tourism and cultural enterprises, 3) revisit selected historical sites to refresh my memory so that I can write more accurately and vividly about them, and 4) visit the Red Cloud Heritage Center at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to explore whether it might make an appropriate home for my beadwork collection.

6. Are there EEG Signatures of Tantrum-proneness in the Brains of 3 Year Olds? Michael Potegal, Ph.D.; Associate Professor, Program in Occupational Therapy, College of Pharmacy, Twin Cities.

This proposal requests support for statistical consultation with the University of Minnesota’s Biostatistical Design and Analysis Center to complete analysis of EEGs recorded from tantrum-prone 3 year olds. This analysis will extend the two-component model of tantrums developed in my previous work: Anger, indicated by, e.g., screaming and hitting and Distress (sadness), indicated by crying and dropping to the floor. Data previously collected from two small groups of older children found, then replicated activity in right frontal lobe to be associated with sadness and in the left posterior temporal lobe associated with anger. Unfortunately, the small size of these groups precluded publication. Fortunately, I have been given access to a much larger data set collected by Stony Brook University colleagues and, already prepared to EEG analysis standards, is ready for identification of EEG-tantrum correlations. As my previous application to the PDGR noted, tantrums are clinically important because they can be associated with general irritability, functional impairment, psychiatric diagnoses and use of clinical services, e.g., hospitalizations and treatment with psychotropic medications. Because the EEG/behavioral data were collected on a very young, community based sample, the proposed analysis will provide insight into variations in the normal population from which these pathologies emerge.

7. Resilience and Burnout Prevention for Health and Helping Professionals. Thomas Skovholt Ph.D.; Professor Emeritus, Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education and Human Development, Twin Cities.

I have been invited to present my research at the University of Stavanger Hospital in Norway and conduct a workshop there. This invitation follows a presentation and workshop I did there in person in 2014. I received positive feedback from those who heard my presentation and attended the workshop in 2014 and the organizers have now invited me to return although there is no funding tied to this invitation. I also did a keynote presentation in 2021 to the Nordic Mental Health Conference via video. I plan to be in Stavanger for three full and two half days. I will make a presentation on Resilience and Burnout Prevention for Health and Helping Practitioners for an audience of physicians, nurses, other health professionals, psychologists, social workers and chaplains. The Skovholt, December 28, 2023 presentation will include key constructs I have developed including the Cycle of Caring and Boundaried Generosity as well as Vicarious Trauma, Emotional Depletion, and the Resilient Practitioner Compass. This will be followed by a workshop for nurses on resilience and wellbeing using an inventory I have developed (Skovholt Practitioner Professional and Resiliency and Self-Care Inventory, 2014). In Stavanger, I will also have a chance to share research ideas with Professor Kjetil Moen, an associate professor at the university and a chaplain at the hospital. He is one of the most thoughtful scholars I know on the ‘Cost of Caring’ and is author of the book Death at Work (Moen, 2018). This presentation, workshop and in person collaboration with Professor Moen will enable me to deepen my research and work on resilience and burnout prevention. Perhaps we will do an article together.