Four Bluffton University faculty members are pursuing scholarly and creative projects in their respective fields this summer with the aid of Bluffton University Research Center grants.Recipients of $3,000 stipends and up to $600 for research expenses are Dr. Perry Bush, professor of history; Gregg Luginbuhl, professor of art; Darryl Moody, assistant professor of art; and Dr. Crystal Sellers, assistant professor of music.

Bush is working on a biography of C. Henry Smith, an early 20th-century Mennonite historian and history professor at both Bluffton and Goshen (Ind.) College.Luginbuhl has taken classes on glass kiln-forming techniques at Bullseye Glass Co., a Portland, Ore., manufacturer of colored glass for art and architecture, with plans to apply them to the Bluffton art curriculum and to his own work.

A graphic designer and digital photographer, Moody has received training at the Santa Fe (N.M.) Photography Workshop in producing large-format, fine art prints. That training will be the basis for experimentation with the Bluffton art department's new large-format printer to create a series of large digital prints.Sellers is studying what occurs anatomically while a person is singing gospel music and comparing it to findings already established for classical singing. She is writing an article for submission to the Journal of Singing, a publication of the National Association of Teachers of Singing.

All four grant recipients will make public presentations about their research on campus during the 2010-11 academic year.