Gladys Snyder Junior Faculty Grants

Eligibility and funding

Proposals for Gladys Snyder grants will be accepted from any faculty member who has fewer than five years at Penn State and is either non-tenure-track or pre-tenure.

Award requests up to $5,000 will be considered, and submission of smaller requests (<$5,000) is encouraged. The award period will be for the CALENDAR YEAR (January-December). Extensions beyond December must be made in writing to Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education.

NO department match is required; however, if a match is available, it may increase the chance of funding. Preference will be granted to those proposals that benefit the undergraduate education mission in the College.

Proposal timeline

Each calendar year, a request for funding to the G&H Snyder Memorial Trust is submitted in July, with notification of funding amounts for the college in the fall.

In late September or October, the Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education will contact the department heads and provide the detailed proposal information. Department heads will disseminate the information to faculty members. Faculty proposals should be submitted to the department head for initial review and approval. The department head will send the proposal to the Associate Dean for consideration. The deadline for proposal submissions is in early December.

List of Recipients

2025 Recipients

Jingchun Chen, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, “Math Learning Saturday Program”
Mark Ortiz, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, “Who Are We Sustaining For: Leveraging Student-Centered Research to Enhance Sustainability Education and Outreach in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences"

2024 Recipients

Antonia Hadjimichael, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, “Navigating the Complexity of Earth System Risks Through Cross-Class Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Experiential Learning”
Kevin Haworth, Assistant Teaching Professor and Giles Writer-in-Residence, “Writing Pedagogy Workshop for Graduate Teaching
Emily Rosenman, Assistant Professor of Geography, “The geographies of racial justice philanthropy in Detroit, Michigan”
Pengfei Zhang, Assistant Research Professor of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, “Using machine learning to improve the modeling of air-ice interaction during atmospheric rivers reaching

2023 Recipients

Brandi Gaertner, Assistant Teaching Professor, Geography, “Historical and Future Climate and Hydrologic Changes in the Mid-Atlantic, United States”
Louisa Holmes, Assistant Professor, Geography, “Spatial and contextual variations in opioid use and co-use across Pennsylvania in the wake of COVID-19”
Ashish Ranjan Kumar, Assistant Professor, Energy and Mineral Engineering, “Development of a Virtual Reality System for Classroom Teaching of Complex Mining Operations”
Benjamin Reppert, Lecturer, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, “Enhancing the Online Education Environment with State-of-the-Art, Hands-on Technology to Connect the Classroom and the Real World”

2022 Recipients

Barbara Arnold, Professor of Practice in Mining Engineering - “3-D Printing in Energy and Mineral Related Laboratory and Engineering Courses”
Brian Kelley, Assistant Professor of Geosciences and Kimberly Lau,Assistant Professor of Geosciences - “Fostering a Sense of Place with an Accessible Virtual Field Trip for Gold Rush: Geology and History, a New General Education Inter-Domain Course

2021 Recipients

Allison Baczynski, Assistant Research Professor, Geosciences - “Reinterpreting landscape change in the Denver Basin: geochemical evidence for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum”
Kevin Bowley, Assistant Teaching Professor, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science - “Into the Simulator: Development of the next generation community weather forecasting training tool for Penn State students and beyond”
Maria Higgins, Assistant Teaching Professor, Materials Science and Engineering - “Gamma-ray induced degradation of Polyethylene terephthalate. Radiation therapy for water resources”
John Hooker, Assistant Teaching Professor, Geosciences - “Geochemical tracers of fluid flow through fractures in the Appalachian basin: A field laboratory for student-led research in Penn State’s backyard”
Miquela Ingalls, Assistant Professor, Geosciences - “Creation of teaching collections and an accompanying virtual field trip to support the development of a sedimentology and stratigraphy course”
Rob Lydick, Researcher and On-Air Meteorologist, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science - “Enhancing Student Experiences in Weather Communications”
André J. van der Vlies, Assistant Research Professor, Materials Science and Engineering - “Elucidating the role of chemical structure on charge transport in conducting polymers”

2020 Recipients

Sekhar Bhattacharyya, Associate Teaching Professor EME - “Transforming Teaching Focus from Fossil Fuel to Mineral Resources used in Enduring Products and in Renewable Energy Sector”
Feifei Shi, Assistant Professor of Energy Engineering, - “Novel Monolithic Single Atom Catalyst for Renewable Fuels”

2019 Recipients

Jeremy Gernand, Assistant Professor of Industrial Health and Safety - “An Engineering Design Simulator for Risk-Related Decision Making”
Danielle Hickey, Assistant Research Professor - “Harnessing Machine Learning to Engineer Quantum Materials”
Joel Landry, Assistant Professor of Environmental and Energy Economics - “The Unintended Congestion Cost and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Impacts of Solar Policies in California”

Gladys Snyder Junior Faculty Grants

Purpose

Eligibility and funding

Proposal timeline

Questions

List of Recipients