Faculty Win Grants for Classroom Improvements, Equipment

Four Huntley College of Agriculture faculty were awarded campus grants to improve classrooms or purchase equipment for instruction.

Assistant Professor Cord Brundage in the Department of Animal & Veterinary Science received a $24,985 grant to transform an old lab space near the Sheep Unit into a cutting-edge animal physiology teaching lab.

Assistant Professor Joanne Sohn, also in the Department of Animal & Veterinary Science, was awarded a $24,895 grant to buy surgery equipment and fixed parasitology slides.

Muditha Senanayake, interim chair and associate professor in the Department of Apparel Merchandising & Management, received two grants that will gives students the opportunity to use state-of-the-art equipment used by the apparel industry:

• The first grant of $20,345 will help pay for a machine that uses ultrasonic bonding technology to join two pieces of fabric together instead of traditional sewing systems. The machines are four times faster than conventional sewing machines and eliminate needle and sewage breakage and threads from unraveling.
• The second grant of $3,294 will go toward buying an Activeseam Merrow sewing machine. Athletic apparel companies are now using these machines to increase production speeds and create high-performance stitch lines with more comfortable, less bulky garment seams.

Saemee Lyu, an assistant professor in the Department of Apparel Merchandising & Management, was awarded a $22,500 grant to buy five more stations for a 3-D virtual garment system. The apparel industry is using 3-D virtual technology to link product development to e-commerce, saving time and resources by eliminating the sample-making process.

The grants were awarded through the 2017-18 Special Project for Improving the Classroom Experience (SPICE) program.