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ASU faculty members present '06-'07 research

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — Albany State University faculty members presented findings from research projects Thursday on everything from tobacco industry advertising to religious involvement in HIV/AIDS prevention in Dougherty County.

The seven professors presented results from six projects conducted during the 2006-2007 academic year, said Granville Wrensford, associate vice president of the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs.

“This is an annual thing. We started it last year,” he said. “What happens is we give small awards — up to $10,000 — for faculty to do research, pilot projects. So one of the things we require of those who have been awarded those funds is they have to give a presentation at the Albany State campus.”

To be approved for a grant, a professor determines what he or she wants to research, then submits a proposal to a review committee, Wrensford said. The committee then recommends which professors be funded, he said.

Because the university gets its grant money from the National Institute of Health, project proposals must be health-related to be approved, Wrensford said.

The point of the research projects is to provide the university’s professors with preliminarily research they can submit to “external agencies” to possibly secure further funding for their research, he said.

Presenter Adansi Amankwaa analyzed the role of religious institutions in HIV/AIDS prevention and counseling.

“HIV has been a major problem in the U.S. It is pandemic around the world,” Amankwaa said in his introduction. “In Southwest Georgia, we have seen that the number of HIV cases has increased.”

While he didn’t provide a definition for conservative or liberal, Amankwaa said he found that the more “conservative” a church was in its doctrine, “the less likely they are to provide consulting services” for HIV/AIDS patients.

“Religious organizations that are more conservative are less likely than churches with liberal doctrines to be involved with HIV-related prevention and counseling,” he said.

He also said that churches are selective in providing services to HIV, gay, transgender and other sexually-related groups.

Faculty members George Thomas and Rani George presented a portion of their research analyzing tobacco industry promotional markets. Tobacco-industry advertising, they said, targets high-risk groups, namely low-income women, blacks and Hispanics.

The two then showed information from surveys they took on campus showing that males, members of Greek organizations, students who had friends that smoke, students who are exposed to tobacco promotions and members of an athletic team were more likely to smoke.

Presenters had only about 15 minutes each during the two-hour program to go over their findings, and a few had to cut short or only go over portions of their research.

Other research projects presented Thursday were a study of counselors’ perception of crisis-counseling competence, cloning of a human androgen receptor gene with short and long CAG repeat, understanding non-covalent interactions in carbon-nanotube-bioconjugates and synthesis and biological evaluations of novel tetrahydropyridine derivatives.

Of the researchers who presented projects Thursday, only Yixuan Wang, who presented the carbon-nanotube-bioconjugates research, has received funding from another agency to continue his research, Wrensford said.

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