Barbara Walker has a PhD in Geography from Berkeley, she came to UCSB as a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow to work with Geography affiliate faculty member Susan Stonich, and she is now UCSB Director of Research Development for the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Fine Arts. On June 7, she was featured in 93106’s Top Stories as one of seven members of UCSB staff and faculty to receive the Margaret T. Getman Award for extraordinary commitment to the general growth and development of students and to the quality of student life.
The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center appointed Dr. Barbara Walker as Director of Research Development for the Social Sciences, Humanities and Fine Arts this year: “Barbara will be charged with assisting faculty in generating effective extramural grant proposals. She will provide assistance in all stages of proposal development and refinement; assist faculty in identifying funding opportunities that mesh with targeted areas for humanities research at UCSB; conduct grant development workshops for humanities faculty and graduate students; and collaborate with the Office of Research, ISBER, IHC, and the College of Letters and Science to develop plans to meet campus humanists’ research and funding needs. Barbara will work with faculty across the campus to coordinate larger collaborative, interdisciplinary, institutional program development and proposal preparation. She will maintain contact with UC system-wide funding programs, federal funding agencies, and private foundation funders and, based on these, inform faculty about new funding opportunities” (source).
In his letter of recommendation for Dr. Walker’s Getman award, Geography Professor David López-Carr commented: “Barbara has served as a PhD committee member for several of my PhD students, and, for several of my MA and PhD students for whom Barbara is not a committee member, she has nonetheless invested valuable time in assisting on multiple grant and research proposals. Barbara is in an academic staff position, and teaching and mentoring students are not part of her job description. Yet, she annually volunteers to teach a grant writing class for the social sciences, humanities, and fine arts offered through the Interdisciplinary Studies department, and she also mentors and serves on committees. She provides rich, detailed, organized, timely feedback on multiple drafts of research prospecti, fellowship applications, and research papers. For several other students for which I am a primary advisor and have first-hand experience, Barbara provides a similar role and yet asks for nothing in return.” On her nomination form for Dr. Walker, graduate student Cheryl Chen commented: “Barbara has always been generous with her time. Barbara is not a faculty member but is an experienced Marine social scientist which the UCSB campus lacks. Thus, many students including myself seek out Barbara’s advice and support in our research of the human dimensions of the marine environment. Barbara sits on my committee and helped me develop my PhD dissertation, she has helped me develop proposals, she held student workshops on how to develop proposals, and generally, she has offered her time at the level a formal professor would to his or her PhD students, even though this is not in her job description – she supports students because she believes in our work and wants to support our research interests.”
Editor’s note: Many thanks to Professor López-Carr for bringing this material to our attention.
