To UM System President Mun Choi
Written by Rodney J. Uphoff
Feb. 14, 2022

For the past three years, I have provided you a report summarizing the activities and outputs of the UMSAEP for the prior year. This report once again reflects the challenges of trying to conduct collaborative research projects during a pandemic. UM System faculty were in better shape than our UWC colleagues in terms of having time to devote to research. For UWC faculty, they faced heavy and demanding teaching loads because all of their courses in 2021 were again all online. Many labs were closed for much of 2021 and few faculty were able to access campus for much of the year. International travel was restricted, especially for South Africans. Other than me, only one UM System faculty member traveled to UWC during 2021. But we did have 13 UWC faculty and grad students travel to Missouri in the fall. Many stalled projects finally took off. And in spite of limited travel and time challenges, many UMSAEP participants continued their collaborations and produced significant outcomes. 

As noted last year, one positive development of the pandemic has been the expanded use of Zoom to promote international research and teaching collaborations in a world without travel. With Ghent and UWC, we held three in each country. We have seen more UM System faculty exploring virtual seminars series with their UWC colleagues to the benefit of both UM System and UWC students as we enhance the internationalization of our curriculum. 

Last year, our trilateral partnership awarded eight modest grants to teams of UM System, UWC and Ghent professors for trilateral virtual research or teaching proposals. While four of these projects remain works in progress, four projects were successfully completed: 

  • Vivienne Bozalek (UWC), Candance Kuby (MU) and Geert Van Hove (Ghent) built upon a successful webinar series started by Bozalek and Kuby that used presentations and discussions to assist graduate students and their supervisors to incorporate novel qualitative approaches into their research projects. After adding Van Hove, they hosted even more webinars over a 14 month period. The webinars were posted on YouTube and each session had over 1,000 viewings. They have been approached by the prestigious Sage journal, Qualitative Inquiry, to do special double issue based on those webinars.
  • Haley Horstman (MU) and Rebecca Scott (MU), Athena Pedro (UWC) and Peter Stevens (Ghent) held a joint semester virtual course on qualitative research methods.
  • Maria Florence (UWC), Shazly Savahl (UWC), Wounter Vanderplasscehn (Ghent), Jessica De Maeyer (Ghent) and Mansoo Yu (MU) are working on book entitled "Addition, recovery and quality of life: Cross-cutting perspectives from around the globe." This book is an interdisciplinary look at the fields of addiction and quality of life research. 
  • Jane Taylor (UWC), Aja Marneweck (UWC), William Ellis (UWC), Inge Brinkman (Ghent), Christel Stalpaert (Ghent), Suzanne Burgoyne (MU) and other MU colleagues put together a series of five activity sessions that used storytelling and theatrical procedures to explore the role of "performance" in academic research and education.

As in past years, I reached out to all 2021 UMSAEP awardees as well as past awardees and requested updates on 2021 activities with a UMSAEP collaborator. I reached out to 114 UMSAEP participants and received a response from 83. Of these respondents, three reported that they had retired or left either the UM System or UWC. So this report reflects the significant outputs of the 80 still working at UWC or for the UM System. It should be noted that several mentioned that either they or family members struggled with covid and the difficulty they encountered doing research during a pandemic. 

Publications 

UM System and UWC faculty reported one book and two book chapter published in 2021 and another under review. 29 articles were published during 2021. One additional article has been accepted for publication and six were under review or revision. In addition, UMSAEP participants reported seven manuscripts were in progress. 

Conference papers/ presentations

With the ban on international and limited domestic travel still largely in place, most conferences that were held were virtual. UMSAEP participants reported nine conference presentations. 

Grants

UM System and UWC faculty reported submitting several grant applications that were not funded. Three more grant applications have been submitted and are under review. The following grants were awarded in 2021 based on their UMSAEP funded work: 

  • David Mendoza-Cozatl (MU), based on work with Marshall Keyster: 
    • USDA, $500,000
  • Wilson Majee (MU), co-PI on grant awarded to Cape Peninsula University of Technology: 
    • National Research Foundation, R450,000 
  • Antonis Stylianou (UMKC), with Trent Guess (MU) as co-PI:
    • Kansas City Consortium of Musculoskeletal Diseases, $20,000
  • Marshall Keyster (UWC), with David Mendoza-Cozatl (MU) and Antje Heese (MU) as co-PIs:
    • National Research Foundation, R100,000 
    • Grain SA, R463,139 
    • Centre of Excellence in Food Security, R390,000 
  • Chris Arendse (UWC):
    • Armaments Corporation for SA, R300,000 
  • Takalani Mulaudzi-Masuku (UWC):
    • National Research Foundation Thuthuka Institutional Grant 2021, R300,000
  •  Brian Van Wyk (UWC), with Michelle Teti (MU) as co-PI on both:
    • National Research Foundation, R1,300,000 
    • SA Medical Research Council, R600,000 
  • Ndiko Ludidi (UWC), with Bob Sharp (MU) and Scott Peck (MU) as co-PIs on both:
    • National Research Foundation, R1,704,000 (spread over three years)
    • National Research Foundation, R 810,000 (spread over three years) 
  • Maria Florence (UWC), with Mansoo Yu (MU) as co-PI on both:
    • National Research Foundation, R668,000 (spread over three years) 
    • SA Medical Research Council, R435,000 

Student opportunities/capacity building

The ban on international travel also adversely affected the ability of UWC and UM System students to travel. The MU law group was the only MU study abroad program that went to South Africa in 2021. Two Henry Mitchell scholars traveled from UWC in the fall. Sheridon Lloyd worked with MU’s Greg Biedermann on a research project with Sheridan’s supervisor, UWC's Mongi Benjeddou. Mihlali Badiwe accompanied his supervisor Ashwil Klein to work with MU’s Walter Gassmann. The UM System has played a major role in helping to build capacity at UWC since the inception of this partnership. This continued in 2021. A few examples: 

  • MU’s David Mendoza-Cozatl co-supervised, one of Marshall Keyster’s students, Arun Gokul, who did his post-doc in Mendoza-Cozatl’s lab. Gokul now holds a faculty position at the University of the Free State in South Africa. 
  • MU's Bob Sharp is currently co-supervising one of Ludidi’s Ph.D. students, Ali Elnaeim Elbasheir Ali. He and MU’s Scott Peck also serve on Ali’s dissertation committee. Finally, UMKC's John Kevern currently has two former UWC students he met while working on a research project at UWC who are now Ph.D. candidates in his lab. 

Fulbright awards

MU’s Haley Horstman was awarded a Fulbright to go to Poland in 2021/22 based on the work she did with her UWC collaborator Athena Pedro. UWC’s Ndiko Ludidi was awarded a Fulbright to work at MU with Bob Sharp and Scott Peck. He arrived in Columbia in November 2021 and will stay until the end of May 2022. 

Conclusion

This report highlights the major outputs of the UMSAEP in 2021. Find that describe the broad range of UMSAEP-funded projects across a variety of academic disciplines.