HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY • OFFICE FOR RESEARCH & SPONSORED PROGRAMS
The
SPRING 2021 ISSUE 8
GRANT Seeker
A spotlight on excellence in grant development by a Hofstra University employee
Dr. E. Christa Farmer By: Drashti Mehta
Dr. E. Christa Farmer was hiking and driving through the Sierra Nevada mountains for the U.S. Forest Service when she first gained Dr. E. Christa Farmer interest in further studying climate change. A graduate of Stanford University, she holds a bachelor’s degree from the then newly established Earth Systems Program, an intersection of biology, geology, and economics. Since then, Dr. Farmer went on to become a trained paleoclimatologist with a master’s and PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Columbia University. Currently a professor in the Department of Geology, Environment, and Sustainability with just under two decades of experience at Hofstra, Dr. Farmer is working to keep the momentum and passion for the Earth Sciences alive. Prior to the pandemic, she and her students worked with The Nature Conservancy in its efforts to better assess the impact that nitrogen pollution had on the stability of marshes. Dr. Farmer and her students used a traditional method to measure the grain size of sediments. They also had the opportunity to gain insight into a newer method used by The Nature Conservancy, which involves running sediment cores through a medical MRI machine to characterize the grain size of the sediments. Now, Dr. Farmer hopes that her passion for the Earth Sciences will inspire the next generation of aspiring scientists, researchers, and teachers. With the assistance of colleagues, Dr. Farmer’s proposal received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)
GEOPATHS program in 2019 to help start a summer program that would expose students and preservice teachers to the types of careers and research available within the Earth Sciences, and increase the participation of underrepresented minority students in the field. “Whenever K through 12 students hear about research, it’s usually in the medical field. We’re hoping to raise awareness of the fact that there are some amazing opportunities and really interesting questions in the geosciences as far as research goes.” While the inaugural program faced a setback because of the pandemic, Dr. Farmer and her team are already making strides toward getting the program ready for its summer 2021 debut. Though still in the planning stage, the department is in the process of recruiting participants and establishing an application for the program. “We hope that we can do [the program] in person, but we’re definitely working on Plan B. We can pursue the projects that we want to pursue remotely by acquiring data sets in ways that are socially distanced ... but we’re definitely hoping to be in person by the beginning of July.” From studying volcanoes in Greece to using virtual reality to raise awareness about geohazards, each faculty member involved has projects in mind to help participants experience every facet of the Earth Sciences. “Each of the faculty in my department is going to lead a research team. Each team is going to have a high school student, an undergraduate STEM major, and a geoscience education major. And each team is going to do a research project together.”
geologic past, with her students. She hopes to focus on studying small fossils found at the bottom of the ocean to reconstruct ocean temperatures. Ultimately, Dr. Farmer hopes the program will encourage education majors to approach the teaching of the geosciences with a new perspective. “Hopefully, the experience that students have will not only translate into high school students coming to college and pursuing undergraduate geoscience degrees, but also education students becoming teachers with a much richer set of experience and understanding of what geoscience research is like.” While she is honored to have been named the Grant Seeker of the Year, she says it would not have been possible without the faculty and administrative staff who have been incredibly supportive throughout the process. The NSF grant was five years in the making, initially spearheaded by Dr. J Bret Bennington, professor of geology and chair of the Department of Geology, Environment, and Sustainability. Following two submissions, reviews, and revisions of the proposal, Dr. Bennington asked Dr. Farmer if she would be willing to take over and submit the proposal a third time. “The third time was the charm ... it was really fun to write with my colleagues. Everybody’s got different ideas, everybody’s writing different pieces of it, and we’re trying to integrate it together. And it’s just really fun because I have such great colleagues, and co-PIs on this particular award.”
Personally, Dr. Farmer aims to circle back to the roots of her dissertation this summer and research paleoceanography, the study of the history of the ocean’s
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