By George Foulsham

Six research programs at UCSB have received awards in the 2009 University of California Multi-Campus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) competition — the most at any UC campus this year.
While leadership for the programs will be based here, the research will also be conducted at many of the UC campuses.
In addition, David Marshall, dean of the Department of Humanities and Fine Arts and executive dean of the College of Letters & Science, will be the principal investigator for a special project based at UC Irvine. Marshall, who is chair of the UC President’s Advisory Committee on Research in the Humanities, submitted this proposal for the UC Humanities Network on behalf of the committee, so all of the UC humanities deans will serve as co-principal investigators. The Humanities Network is administered out of the UC Humanities Research Initiative, located on the Irvine campus. The following UCSB programs receiving grants include the following:
UC Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), directed by Kim Yasuda, professor of art; Transliteracies, directed by Alan Liu, professor of English; Italian Studies, directed by Jon Snyder, chair of French and Italian; New Racial Studies in the Age of Obama, directed by Howard Winant, professor of sociology; Ocean Acidification, directed by Gretchen Hofmann, professor of ecology, evolution, and marine biology; and the UC Educational Evaluation Center, directed by John Yun, associate professor of education.