Donate to Faculty Award

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Your contribution matters!

Please consider a donation to the ERFA Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award fund. This fund, created by the ERFA Board in 2014, is administered by the Tower Foundation, which is a 501C (3) organization. As a result, all donations to the ERFA Faculty Research and Creative Activity fund are tax deductible.

There are two ways to donate:

On behalf of the membership of ERFA, the Board made awards of $2500 each for 25 faculty members from AY 2014-2015 to AY 2024-25.  Subsequently the amount increased to $3000.  The awards support current faculty – tenured, tenure-track and long-term lecturers – in their research and creative activities.

Since our Annual Spring Business luncheon in 2015, the ERFA Board has invited each year’s awardees to make a short presentation at our annual spring business luncheon. Members have enjoyed hearing about the projects that the award helped to fund.  The 2025-2026 recipients are:

  • Dr. Ismaila Diallo, Department of Meteorology and Climate Science
    • Dr. Ismaila is studying shifts in wild rire risk assessed using the Fire Weather Index in California.  This project will assess future wildfire danger across California and its northern and southern subregions using the Canadian Fire Weather Index derived from model simulators. Historical (1931-2010) and future periods (2061-2090) will be examined, focusing on the core fire-season (June-October). The project also seeks to identify the key meteorological factors influencing future wildfire conditions.
  • Dr. Edward Cohen, School of Social Work
    •  Dr. Cohen's research will evaluate a family-based program, Celebrating Families!, an innovative program that addresses families at risk of, or currently involved with, the child welfare system, with at least one caregiver who has a substance use problem.  The focus will be on development and testing of new adolescent and parent pre- and post-treatment survey instruments, to supplement current instrumentation geared mainly towards younger children. 
  • Dr. Scott Shaffer, Department of Biological Sciences
    • Dr. Shaffer's research seeks to understand how predators' function in their environment relies on quantifying the energy content of their prey. With samples collected from 65 tracked red-footed boobies (seabird) we can examine the foraging success of red-footed boobies using miniature cameras placed on the birds to see what they see when foraging.  

Grants are made possible through your generous donations and are not supported through dues. 

We invite you to join your colleagues in keeping the momentum going with a tax deductible donation to support the ERFA Faculty Research & Creative Activity Awards. Thank you for considering this request.