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 (BURC) grants.

Recipients of $3,000 stipends and up to $600 for research expenses are Dr. Jeffrey Boehm, professor of music; Dr. Susan Streeter Carpenter, associate professor of English; Dr. William Slater, professor of psychology and chair of Bluffton's social sciences department; and Dr. Zachary Walton, assistant professor of communication.

Boehm is working on "Music on the Ohio," a mini-documentary about the music-especially jazz-of the Ohio River riverboats and the Delta Queen in particular. Directed at students in late elementary school and older, the film will include information about the role of the riverboats in spreading jazz throughout the United States; Ohio's historical role within the context of the riverboat-travel era; and examples of the musicians who entertained the travelers.

Carpenter's grant is funding a summer stay at a studio in Yellow Springs, Ohio, to facilitate completion of her second novel, tentatively titled "The Lost Family Store." She also received a BURC grant in 2006 for a similar stay at the Vermont Studio Center, where she worked on her first novel, "Riders on the Storm."

Slater is pursuing training to teach Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a program developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979 to alleviate suffering and promote well-being through psycho-educational presentations, mindfulness meditation and yoga. He is attending a retreat led by the founders of MBSR at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and plans to incorporate an MBSR course and daylong retreat into his Positive Psychology course at Bluffton.

Working toward a scholarly article on the subject, Walton is undertaking a research project on the rhetorical discourse of the late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. He is specifically analyzing Yoder's theory of "middle axioms," which holds that nonviolent Christians, rather than separating from the world, could attempt instead to persuade and witness to the "fallen" world by appealing to a nation-state's highest and commonly held ideals-the middle axioms.

All four grant recipients will make public presentations about their research on campus during the 2011-12 academic year.