1. Kansas State University
  2. »Division of Communications and Marketing
  3. »K-State Today
  4. »Oz to Oz program announces inaugural recipients

K-State Today

July 24, 2014

Oz to Oz program announces inaugural recipients

Submitted by Communications and Marketing

Six Kansas State University faculty have been selected to be the first inaugural participants in the Oz to Oz program, a new part of the university's Australia Initiative.

The Oz to Oz program supports short-term visits to Australia for K-State faculty to advance collaborative research activities. In return, 14 professional and senior Australian Fulbright scholars have been invited to visit one of the K-State campuses during the coming academic year.

"The Oz to Oz program is designed to ground our Australia Initiative in faculty-faculty interactions and increase international collaborative research programs, which are important assets to becoming a Top 50 public research university by 2025," said Kansas State University President Kirk Schulz.

The K-State faculty members receiving up to $5,000 in travel awards are Sam Bell, assistant professor of political science; Huston Gibson, assistant professor of landscape architecture/regional & community planning; Alexander Mathews, professor of civil engineering; Richard Rosenkranz, associate professor of human nutrition; Matthew Sanderson, associate professor of sociology, anthropology and social work; and Dean Zollman, university distinguished professor of physics.

Bell will work with Richard Frank, research fellow and project manager at the University of Sydney. Bell and Frank will collaborate on a project linking transparency, electoral processes and the onset of civil war. They will research transparency of electoral processes and how political regime type relates to the onset of civil war.

Gibson will work with Neil Sipe, deputy director at Griffith University, and Karen Vella, senior lecturer in property and planning at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. They will collaborate to compare community perceptions and institutional frameworks to help create parks that serve communities and the environment.

Mathews will work with Marjorie Valix, associate professor in chemical engineering at the University of Sydney. They will collaborate to research techniques for biofilm control and measures for control of carcinogenic disinfection byproducts in potable water supplies.

Rosenkranz will work with Tony Okely, professor and director of the Interdisciplinary Educational Research Institute at the University of Wollongong. They will collaborate on the development, execution and evaluation of after school programs that promote physical activity and healthful eating.

Sanderson will work with Graeme Hugo, director of the Australian Population and Migration Research Centre and professor of geography at the University of Adelaide. They will study international migration into rural communities that have little history of receiving immigrants — such as in the Midwestern U.S. and southeastern Australia — to better understand the relationships between immigrant integration, socioeconomic mobility and rural community development. They also will research the effects of climate change on agricultural water consumption in the Ogallala Aquifer in the U.S. and the Murray-Darling River Basin in Australia for a comparative study.

Zollman will work with David Treagust, professor in science education at Curtin University, and Manjula Sharma, associate professor of physics at the University of Sydney. They will collaborate to develop effective teaching-learning techniques for online physics courses.