Preston Williams

Students adapt summer research projects for Mason Impact

Colleen Rich — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 09:00:56 +0000

Students adapt summer research projects for Mason Impact Colleen Rich Thu, 08/20/2020 - 05:00

In her group's virtual presentation, Mason sociology major Karmen Perry walks audience members through the group's research findings on isolation and loneliness in older adults.

Karmen Perry’s summer research plan was supposed to include a two-week trip to Japan to study social isolation and loneliness among older adults. When the trip was canceled because of COVID-19, Perry made the most of her disappointment—she incorporated the pandemic into her research.

Perry’s was one of more than 30 projects on display Friday at the Virtual Celebration of Student Scholarship and Impact, hosted by George Mason University’s Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR). The event, representing programs across the university, is part of the Mason Impact initiative.

“Since COVID was brand new, there was no research to show what kind of questions or what kind of experiences people are having,” said Perry, a senior sociology major and Honors College student from Greensboro, North Carolina. “We had to conduct all of our interviews online, which was kind of ironic, because our results found that technology isn’t as comprehensive as it could have been or should have been [in long-term care facilities].“

Biology major Alexa Herrerias monitored elephants' movements at Smithsonian’s National Zoo.

Biology major Alexa Herrerias also had to shift course. She was supposed to research Asian elephant hormones at Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. When COVID-19 restricted lab availability, Herrerias shifted her focus to video surveillance to monitor the animals’ movements, behavior and space usage to learn more about how zoos can provide the optimum habitat for captive endangered elephants. Accelerometer bracelets yielded data that enhanced her research.

Even from afar, Herrerias feels like she made two new friends she can recognize by their personalities and behavior.

“That’s one thing I’m looking forward to if I go to the zoo—oh my God, that’s Spike, or oh my God, that’s Swarna!” said Herrerias, a senior from Mexico City who will graduate in December.

Projects at the Virtual Celebration of Student Scholarship and Impact covered a broad scope of subjects, including French linguistics, Alzheimer’s disease, explosives detection, the portrayal of Indian Americans in popular literature, ant biodiversity, queer liberation pioneers, e-cigarette countermarketing, microplastics, Floridian forests, drug-related violence in the Philippines, and student-run businesses, among others.

“The Food, Water, Energy Nexus in Rapidan, Virginia,” presentation won an audience recognition award.

Two projects were singled out for recognition based on a four-day audience survey: “Belonging in the Nation’s Capital: Mutual Aid as a Response to Racialized Displacement,” from sociology major and Honors College student Kyler Buckner, and “The Food, Water, Energy Nexus in Rapidan, Virginia,” from Jordan Boyle, Seth Mahowald and Meghan Widmaier.

OSCAR assistant director Karen Lee said she was impressed with how students and their faculty mentors were able to adapt their research methods by analyzing data, using software and video, or even by acquiring equipment to use safely at home.

Presentations are generally made in person via poster, not virtually via pre-recorded videos. Visitors to the virtual event engaged with participants by leaving questions and comments.

“While this summer is not what we could have predicted in February when summer projects were planned,” Lee said, “the students and their mentors worked hard so that students had an authentic experience.”

Talk highlights the importance of exploration and discovery

Damian Cristodero — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 17:45:32 +0000

Talk highlights the importance of exploration and discovery Damian Cristodero Thu, 04/25/2019 - 13:45

Gary Shapiro (right), author of "Ninja Future: Secrets to Success in the New World of Innovation," speaks with Mason President Ángel Cabrera about the importance of embracing technology. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Mason Creative Services.

Groundbreaking technological advances such as 5G, blockchain and artificial intelligence should be embraced, not resisted, because they can help solve problems and usher in a brighter future, author Gary Shapiro said Tuesday night in a fireside chat with Mason President Ángel Cabrera at the MIX@Fenwick.

“Technology is simply a tool,” said Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association and author of “Ninja Future: Secrets to Success in the New World of Innovation.” “It’s not good, or it’s not bad. It’s like nuclear energy or power. You could use it to light up the world and use it as a relatively safe source of energy. Or you could use it in nuclear bombs. It depends on the user.”

Shapiro inspired budding entrepreneurs in the audience by emphasizing their ability to nimbly adapt when developing their ideas.

“Big organizations spend too much money going down the wrong direction,” he said, adding that larger companies now want to partner with and invest in smaller companies rather than ignore them. “Well, if you’re a startup or a small entrepreneur, you adjust quickly. You don’t waste a lot of money. You don’t stay on a path that’s unsuccessful. You adjust in the marketplace.”

That point registered with sophomore Alex Hughes, a bioengineering major with an entrepreneurship minor, who emerged from the chat even more determined to pursue his innovations. He is president of Hypernova Solar Racing Team, which designs solar cars to compete in international competitions.

“If I’m not working on this every single day, someone else is going to beat me on it,” said Hughes, a Manassas, Virginia, native and Mason Honors College member who attended Governor’s School on the Science and Technology Campus while in high school. “It kind of gives me that sense of urgency that I need to continue working on it and not just wait for the world to reach that point. I need to be the one leading to that point.”

Shapiro said that 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants or children of immigrants, an observation that inspired senior and information technology major Dolica Gopisetty, who moved to the United States from India and graduated from a Virginia high school.

“He really talks about different kinds of innovation and how innovation doesn’t only mean building something,” Gopisetty said. “Many people tend to misunderstand innovation as a tangible thing. In reality, a small thing like a different shade of light can also be an innovation.”

Shapiro served on Mason’s Board of Visitors from 2001 to 2005 and noted his admiration for the university’s “incredible, fast growth” and “amazing focus on entrepreneurship, the little robots running around campus, the cybersecurity focus, the partnership with the local business community.” He also said that Amazon locating near Mason’s Arlington Campus will have “a halo effect for the whole area.”

Both Cabrera and Shapiro serve on the board of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, whose president and CEO, Bobbie Kilberg, attended Tuesday’s talk, as did other members of the region’s technology community.

“There has been really a constant in American culture from the very beginning that continues to attract people like many of us in this room, including me,” Cabrera said, “who choose to come to this country [because of the] sense of ingenuity and optimism about the future, that nothing is impossible and that when you get the right people in the room, magic can happen. I think we need constant reminders that that is the case.”

Looking ahead, honoring the past

Melanie Balog — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 10:00:32 +0000

Looking ahead, honoring the past Melanie Balog Tue, 03/05/2019 - 05:00

A memorial to honor the enslaved people of George Mason. A building named for trailblazing African American mathematician Katherine Johnson.

Two major campus projects designed to better reflect and symbolize the university’s vision of inclusion were approved by the George Mason University Board of Visitors last week.

Mason will rename a building on the Science and Technology Campus to honor Katherine G. Johnson, a trailblazing African American mathematician who champions civil rights and equal opportunities for women in STEM. And as the next phase of the Enslaved People of George Mason project, the university will build a memorial on the Fairfax Campus that will provide a more thorough perspective of the contradictive life led by the university’s namesake.

Mason President Ángel Cabrera said the two projects support the university’s mission as an innovative and inclusive academic community and enable Mason to “evolve in our symbols to be true to that vision of inclusion.”

“We’re proud to be one of the most diverse universities in the country,” Cabrera said. “That also increases the responsibilities to deliver on our mission, to deliver on our values, to be a space where everybody can thrive regardless of their background. These projects will support and reflect that fundamental aspect of our university.”

Bull Run Hall, the largest building on the SciTech Campus in Manassas, will be named Katherine G. Johnson Hall in recognition of the 100-year-old NASA mathematician who overcame racism and sexism to emerge as an integral contributor to the early success of the U.S. space program. Mason also will create a scholarship in her name.

One of the three main characters portrayed in the 2017 Oscar-nominated film “Hidden Figures,” Johnson performed the complex calculations and flight path analysis of spacecraft that led to the United States achieving flight during the early years of the space program, including America’s first human space flight, early missions of Alan Shepard and John Glenn, and the Apollo 11 flight to the moon in 1969.

Johnson has received several NASA awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2015, and has NASA facilities named in her honor.

The Enslaved People of George Mason memorial, part of the Core Campus Project in Fairfax, and designed by Perkins + Will, will provide a more complete account of the complicated legacy of George Mason IV, a founding father who championed individual freedom but who also owned slaves.

The memorial, scheduled to be completed in 2021, will honor two of the more than 100 people enslaved at Gunston Hall—a 10-year-old girl named Penny and James, Mason’s manservant. The memorial on Wilkins Plaza will be designed to convey the hidden voices of the enslaved, the traditional voice of George Mason, and a space designed for students and others to reflect and share their own voices.

“The three elements provide a space for us to think about the past, the present, and what it means to engage in difficult dialogue,” said Wendi Manuel-Scott, a professor of history and art history at Mason and director of the Enslaved People of George Mason project. “Our intention here is to give visitors an opportunity to see the fullness of George Mason, the enslaved laborers he held, and their contributions to who we are as a nation.”

In addition, four quotes will be added around the bottom of the George Mason statue to convey his conflicted role in American history.

Manuel-Scott, professor of history and art history Benedict Carton, Fenwick history librarian George Oberle, and three of the five undergraduate students involved in the project (Alexis Bracey, global affairs; Kye Farrow, history; Ayman Fatima, government and international politics and systems engineering; Elizabeth Perez-Garcia, criminology, law and society; and Farhaj Murshed, applied statistics) made a presentation about the memorial at the BOV meeting last week. The team began its archival research in the spring of 2017.

Wilkins Plaza is an apt home for the memorial and the Mason statue—late Robinson Professor Roger Wilkins was a civil rights leader known for his insightful writing and speaking about the history of race in America. A fountain that also will be part of the memorial will be embedded with a quill and a Wilkins quote: “We have no hope of solving our problems without harnessing the diversity, the energy, and the creativity of all our people.”

In 2016, inspired by Honors College student questions about the enslaved people of Gunston Hall, Carton and Manuel-Scott applied for a grant through the Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research (OSCAR) to dig into the past and seek to understand the life of the school’s namesake and those enslaved by him at Gunston Hall.

“One of the things that this project does is confront the full legacy of our namesake in a way that speaks to who we are as Mason, in a way that’s courageous, in a way that exemplifies what we do best as a university,” said Julian Williams, Mason vice president of Compliance, Diversity and Ethics. “And that is to turn student questions into action, into work with faculty members, and to make that into something that’s long-lasting.”