Launch Awards Program (LAP)

The Diversity Research Network (DRN) invites applications for competitive awards under the auspices of the Office for Inclusive Excellence and Impact. The DRN-LAP is intended for faculty and scholars at MSU whose work addresses a broad spectrum of diverse communities where disciplinary vantage points can improve those communities and the lives or outcomes of their inhabitants. The award is intended to aid scholars in launching new research through pilot studies, creative projects of scholarly merit or the enhancement of a measure or technique. Collaborations across departments or colleges are also of high priority. 

Aim

Consistent with the goals of the DRN, the DRN-LAP supports and promotes productivity among scholars at MSU. This award is designed to provide support for new research programs or initiatives that enable scholars to build toward external grant success. In this program, we recognize the difficulty of working with systemically challenged populations and the challenges associated with early career, access to resources and supports. Domestic and international populations can be addressed in these terms. We are interested in applications that emphasize programmatic research, innovation, community engagement, etc. Applications having the greatest potential for external funding are particularly supported. 

Award

Grants will be awarded in amounts of up to $5000. 
Budgets for the Launch Awards Program may include student hourly wages, supplies and travel. Please note that funding cannot be used for faculty buyout or summer salary support.

Application Process

 Applications must be submitted electronically to the Diversity Research Network via the application link below.
Applicants are asked to submit blinded and unblinded versions of their proposals. Only 1 proposal per scholar should be submitted. 
Proposals are limited to four pages (eleven-point font, one-inch margins). They must clearly articulate the rationale and methods, offer a concise statement of expected outcomes, and justify the use of this funding source. 
A professional bio and detailed budget should be included.
A letter of support from the unit chair or director must accompany each application.
Previous awardees should wait at least 1 academic year before submitting new proposals.

Applications for 2026 will open on May 1, 2026. The review period is traditionally in September with awardee notifications announced in October.

Follow-up Reporting Required

A brief midterm report (1-2 pages) detailing progress to date and use of funds is required. The final report detailing results or outcomes of the project, final accounting and plans for follow-up grant submission is required within 10 months of the award date. 

Questions: Please submit any questions to drn@msu.edu or call 517-353-2919

2025 LAP Award Winners
to be added
2024 LAP Award Winners

Celeste Campos-Castille

College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Media and Information

Project: Co-designing Accessible Mental Health Screeners with Racially Diverse Autistic Adolescents

Tama Hamilton-Wray

Residential College in the Arts and Humanities

Project: Resurrecting Cultural Heritage Sites in the Historic African American Resort Town of Idlewild, Michigan

Salah Hassan

College of Arts and Letters, English/Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities

Project: Aesthetics of Solidarity by Arab American and Arab/Swana Diaspora Artists in the US, 1948-Present: "Programming + Publication Proposal"

Chamara Jewel Kwakye

College of Arts and Letters, African American and African Studies

Project: Chronicling Cimarron: The Making of Diaspora Across Space and Time

Jungmin Kwon

College of Education, Teacher Education

Project: Heritage Language Learning and Maintenance Among Children, Families, and Communities of the Asian Diaspora in Michigan
2023 LAP Award Winners

Safoi Babana-Hampton

College of Arts and Letters, Romance and Classical Studies

Project: Spectral Visions of the Atlantic: A French Caribbean Odyssey of the Black Voyage

Nerli Paredes Ruvalcaba

College of Arts and Letters, Philosophy

Project: Gunna Rucaalu: Community-based comprehensive sexuality education with Zapotec youth in Mexico

Dr. LeConte J. Dill

College of Communication Arts and Letters, African American and African Studies

Project: dWELLING: Black feminist contemplative practices towards wellness

Hanzhe Zhang

College of Social Science, Economics

Project: Gender and Racial Diversity of Economists

Discretionary Interdisciplinary Awardee

Dr. Julian Chambliss

College of Arts and Letters, English

Project: Afrofuturism and Comics
2022 LAP Award Winners

Jennifer Cobbina

College of Social Science, Criminal Justice

Project: Process Evaluation of Advance Peace

Lucia Cadenas Curiel

College of Education, Teacher Education

Project: Nuestros Cuentos

Geri Alumni Zeldes

College of Communication Arts and Sciences, School of Journalism

Project: The First Lady of Boxing

Delia Fernandez-Jones

College of Social Science, History

Project: Latinx Historical Marker Project: Public History, Community Collaboration, and Saving Latinx Experiences from Erasure in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Clausell Mathis

Lyman Briggs College and Teacher Education

Project: An Investigation of Physics Teachers' Identity Towards Culture-Based Equitable Instruction
2021 LAP Award Winners

Ashlee Barnes-Lee

Dean’s Research Associate in the School of Social Work

Project: A Multi-Stakeholder Understanding of School Discipline and Restorative Practices

Amanda Chuan

Assistant Professor in the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations

Project: Improving Social Belonging and Social Network Formation among Women in STEM Fields

Hanzhe Zhang

Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics

Project: Helping Female, Underrepresented Minorities and International Students via Intelligent Multidisciplinary interventions of Student Project Teams

Ranjani Krishnan Ernest W. & Robert W. Schaberg

Endowed Chair in Accounting and Information Systems

Project: Construing the impact of Board Gender Diversity on Firm Innovation Strategies

Vicki Johnson-Lawrence

Assistant Professor in the College of Human Medicine

Project: The Church Challenge: A Community-Based Multi Level Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial to Improve Blood Pressure and Wellness in African American Churches in Flint, Michigan

Young Anna Argyris

Assistant Professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences

Project: Development of Machine-Learning Algorithm for Identifying Topics of Pro- and Anti-Vaccine Rhetoric on Social Media
2020 LAP Award Winners

Prabhat Barnwal
College of Social Science, Economics
Project: Improving Public Service Delivery to Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Citizens in India

Jennifer Cobbina
College of Social Science, Criminal Justice
Project: Protesting During a Pandemic: Narratives on Risk Taking and Motivation to Participating in the 2020 March on Washington

Angela Hall
College of Social Science, School of Human Resources and Labor Relations
Project: An Exploratory Examination of Technologically-Mediated Challenges and Discrimination Experienced by African-American Job Seekers and Employees

Jungmin Kwon
College of Education, Teacher Education
Project: Teaching and Learning World Languages in Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Contexts

Naoko Wake
College of Social Science, History
Project: Toward a History of Disability in the Asian Pacific Islander American Diaspora

Kevin Walker
College of Natural Sciences, Chemistry
Project: Biocatalysis of Precursors of the Chemotherapeutic New-Generation Taxane SB-T-1214

Bruno Takahashi
College of Communication Arts & Sciences, Journalism
Project: Environmental risk perceptions among recent Latin American and Caribbean immigrants: The role of information sources and acculturation processes

Junghee Yoon
College of Social Science, Human Development and Family Studies
Project: Pathways of Purpose in College Transition Among Asian/Asian American Students
2019 LAP Award Winners

Young Anna Argyris
Communication Arts and Sciences
Project: Dr. Instagram Is a Liar: Underserved women's reliance on social media for image sharing and low rates of receiving Human Papillomavirus vaccine (HPV)

Soma Chaudhuri
Sociology
Project: Smart Phones, Apps, and the Fight to End Violence Against Women

Higinio Dominguez
Education

Project: Mobilizing Excellence in Teaching Mathematics with Diverse Learners

Emine Evered
History
Project: American Influences on Turkish Prohibition of Alcohol (1833s-1930s)

Tama Hamilton-Wray
Residential College in Arts and Humanities
Project: The 'Eclipse' Film Development/Pre-Production Research Project

Sudha Sankar
Psychology
Project: Sexual Socialization of Girls in South Asian Families; South Asian Mother's Perspectives

Philip Warsaw
Community Sustainability
Project: Equity or Gentrification? Social and Environmental Impacts of Urban Agriculture as a Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy

Geri Alumit Zeldes
Journalism
Project: The Documented- Oral Histories from Spartan Students

Ning Hsieh
Sociology
Project: Underutilization of Healthcare and Barriers to Care among LGBTQ People of Color

Janani Ravi
Veterinary Medicine
Project: A computational approach to repurpose drugs to fight infectious disease
2018 LAP Award Winners

Nwando Achebe, CSS History

Project: Viewing the Masquerade Dance from Varying Perspectives: A Visual and Audial Repository of the Nigerian-Biafran War

Safoi Babana-Hampton, CAL Romance and Classical Studies

Project: Mapping Legacies of Trauma and of the Unfinished Work of Memory of French Slavery

April Baker-Bell, CAL Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures

Project: Early Career Black Women in Academia: From the Academic StrongBlackWoman & Mammy to Self-Preservation

Yomaira Figueroa, CAL English/AAAS Tamara Butler, CAL English/AAAS Delia Fernandez, CSS History/CLS Estrella Torrez, RCAH Arts & Humanities

Project: Proyecto Palabras Puerto Rico

Alexandra Hidalgo, CAL Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures

Project: The Weeping Season

Dongbin Kim, College of Education, Educational Administration

Project: Immigrant professors at Michigan State University: Experiencing conflicts between immigrant and cosmopolitan scholar identities and the implications for their engagements in civic service and leadership.

Sidney Xu Lu, CSS, History

Project: Japanese Exclusion in the United States and Japanese Trans-Pacific expansion, 1897-1964

Michael Olabisi, CANR, Agricultural Food and Resource Economics

Project: Trade and Employment Shocks

Maribel Santiago, College of Education, Teacher Education

Project: A National Comparative Study on Teaching Latinx Social Studies Topics

Mieka Smart, College of Human Medicine
2017 LAP Award Winners

Jennifer E Cobbina and Bianca Riesdorf, CSS School of Criminal Justice; CCAS Media & Information

Project: Digital rehabilitation: A pilot study of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the prisoner reentry process

This study aims to evaluate the use and usefulness of ICTs in parolee’s reentry process.

Peter De Costa, CAL Linguistics, Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages (L & L)

Project: Building a Foundation for a Research-Practice Partnership with the Lansing Refugee Development Center

This project aimed to further the development of research-practice partnership between Lansing’s Refugee Development Center (RDC), Dr. De Costa and Dr. Carrie Symons (Department of Teacher Education) by analyzing asset inventory data from the RDC’s 2017 GLOBE summer program, and collaborating on the design of the curriculum for GLOBE 2018.

Laura Dilley, CAS Communicative Sciences & Disorders

Project: Neurocognitive basis of disparities in clinical evaluations of speech of African Americans

This project aimed to identify acoustic‐phonetic properties responsible for auditory detection of AAE dialect and determine how listener bias and listener experience affect speech intelligibility, specifically for African Americans and AAE dialect.

Alexandra Hildago, CAL Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures

Project: The Weeping Session

This project aimed to develop a website and preview of the film The Weeping Session in support of completion of the film. The Weeping Session intertwines the repercussions of the loss of a beloved person with the loss of one’s country through emigration and through political upheaval like the dictatorship currently oppressing Venezuela.

Cecelia Martinez-Gomez, CNS Microbiology and Molecular Genetics

Project: Enhancing sustainable agriculture by unraveling the metabolic footprint of plant-microbiome interactions dependent on rare earth element

This project aimed to unravel the mechanisms by which an effective group of agrochemicals, rare earth elements (REE), affect plant-microbe interactions. Specifically, this project aimed to uncover the functional effect of REE upon Methylobacterium, and seeks to identify the mechanism leading to plant growth stimulation.

Chezare A. Warren, Education Teacher Education

Project: Utility of Empathy in Culturally Responsive Interactions with Young Black Men and Boys

This project aimed to produce an instructive model for the application of empathy in multicultural classroom contexts by studying specific pedagogical moves teachers make during one-on-one interactions that produce evidence of culturally responsive pedagogy, the motivations underscoring their actions, and the role empathy ultimately plays in their professional decision-making.