Nineteen faculty have been awarded Mentor Relationship Travel Grants through the FORWARD project. The grants offset the costs of meeting with mentors from outside NDSU to build long-term professional mentoring relationships. Some grants are used by NDSU faculty to travel to meet with mentors and others are used to bring a mentor to NDSU.

Amy Rupiper Taggart, associate professor of English, and Kelly Sassi, assistant professor of English, used their funding to travel to Las Vegas, Nev., in March to participate in the 2013 Conference on College Composition and Communication. At the conference, Taggart attended a workshop focused on mentoring, administration, community engagement, authority and the intersections of feminist work and race. Taggart also met with her mentor Rebecca Moore Howard, professor of writing and rhetoric at Syracuse University. While at the conference, Sassi met with her mentor Ann Ruggles Gere, Arthur Thurnau, professor of English and education at the University of Michigan. 

Sheela Ramamoorthy, assistant professor of veterinary and microbiological sciences, used her funding in April to meet with her mentor, Peter Nara, professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine and W. Eugene Lloyd Chair at Iowa State University, at the National Foundation for Infectious Disease Annual Conference on Vaccine Research in Baltimore.

Also in April, Stephanie Day, assistant professor of geosciences, welcomed her mentor, Anne Jefferson, assistant professor of geology at Kent State University, to NDSU. While at NDSU, Jefferson gave a seminar, observed Day’s teaching and reviewed her research goals.

Deirdre Prischmann-Voldseth, assistant professor of entomology, will use her funding to meet with her mentor, William Snyder, professor of entomology at Washington State University, in late June.

Other recipients for Mentor Relationship Travel Grants for 2012-13 include Erika Berg, Senay Simsek and Abbey Wick from the College of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Natural Resources; Cecilia Kang and Christina Weber from the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; Stevie Famulari and Annie Tangpong from the College of Engineering and Architecture; Kristen Benson, Elizabeth Erichsen, Mary Larson, Melissa O'Connor and Woo Mi Phillips from the College of Human Development and Education; and Hyunsook Do and Wei Jin from the College of Science and Mathematics.

NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.