Record-breaking grant funds celebrated at reception

The Furman Scholarship Reception on Feb. 16, sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Furman University Libraries, showcased 159 scholarly and creative works. It was also a celebration of more than 40 external research grant awards received during 2023, totaling upward of $8 million in funding – nearly double the amount announced in last year’s event, said Caroline Mills, Furman’s director of libraries.

This year, the event was open to submissions by staff members as well as faculty.

Among the scholarly and creative achievements during 2023 noted in the program were journal articles (many with undergraduate student co-authors) covering sustainability, psychology, public health, history, education, mathematics, chemistry and other academic topics. Also featured were dozens of creative works such as poems, artwork, musical compositions and photographs. Additionally, Furman faculty and staff contributed to the publication of several books as authors, editors and chapter writers.

Four Furman scholars shared their work in four-minute “speed talks.”

Chris Alvin, an associate professor of computer science, and his collaborators developed eVir, an artificial intelligence system designed to evaluate how effectively existing oral therapies might be repurposed to treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

The eVir system, which “stands at the intersection of computational biology, systems biology and pharmaceutical research,” works by identifying pharmaceutical compounds that mirror the effects of antiviral peptides that interfere with the life cycle of a virus, said Alvin. The software extrapolates the probable antiviral efficacy of a given compound by analyzing its established and predicted impacts on the human protein-protein interaction network.

“There’s a pressing need for cost-effective therapeutics for infectious disease,” he said. “The reality is that bringing any new drug to market is time-consuming and costly on the order of billions.”

Caroline Davis ’13, a visiting assistant professor of theatre arts, spoke about her experience directing “ODD,” a play written by 2020 Furman graduate Cammi Stilwell commissioned by the Warehouse Theatre in Greenville, South Carolina.

David Eubanks, assistant vice president of Institutional Assessment and Research, presents at the Furman Faculty Scholarship Reception.

“Developing a new play is similar to the work that happens in a laboratory,” said Davis. “You develop a question, you posit an answer, you test your hypothesis and you continue to experiment … The biggest difference is that in theater, the questions are more important than the answers.”

David Eubanks, assistant vice president of the office of institutional assessment and research, addressed the fact that course grades are not typically used as primary data for assessing learning in reports prepared for accreditation. Grade analysis that takes into account student ability and course rigor may lead to more accurate assessments, he said.

Yang Gao, an assistant professor of sociology, studied how the TV watching habits of youth in China can function as a form of cultural capital.

Using surveys and interviews with students at an elite university in Beijing, Gao and her coauthor discuss the “chain of disdain” in TV consumption in China. English-language TV sat on top of the chain, with its viewers looking down on Japanese-language TV viewers, who in turn looked down on fans of Korean TV, Gao said.

“The link between taste and class means that not only we are what we like,” said Gao, “but also what we consume will affect where we end up on the social ladder.”

Eunice Kim, an assistant professor of classics, defended a section of “The Iliad” that many scholars claim lack artistic merit. The Trojan Catalogue, also known as the Trojan Battle Order, a list of the contingents that fought for Troy in the Trojan War, is, in Kim’s view, “a highly poignant memorial that evokes pity, sympathy and compassion for warriors setting off to war, never to return home alive again.”

The reception’s guests – including members of Furman’s Board of Trustees and representatives from The Duke Endowment – hopefully got “a sense of what makes Furman so absolutely special,” said Pontari.

“Here we have faculty and staff who are excellent and innovative inside the classroom, and they care about students’ success,” said Beth Pontari, interim vice president for academic affairs and provost, after Kim concluded her talk.

 “And they’re doing this level of scholarship. I love this event.”