A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Research conducted by Psychology Professor Miriam Liss recently appeared in Psychology Today. For the article, called “10 Signs Insecurity Is Spreading to Your Facebook Behavior,” Liss and students administered a set of personality measures along with FOMO (fear of missing out) as predictors of use of, and addiction to, social media.
Kris Shaffer, an instructional technology specialist at the University of Mary Washington, was recently quoted in Inside Higher Ed. In the article “Net Neutrality Rollback Concerns Colleges,” Shaffer said that many students working from home already have slow internet, making it difficult for them to access course materials. “If ISPs start charging customers more for content such as video, this issue may get worse,” he said.
At Mary Washington, said Shaffer, many students take part in an institutionwide initiative called Domain of One’s Own, in which they are encouraged to create their own websites and share the content with friends. He said that the university works with small companies to provide this service to students — companies that, he worries, wouldn’t have the cash to buy prioritization from ISPs, potentially making the websites less accessible to the public.
“The internet was invented for universities. If educational content is now going to take a back seat … it’s disheartening, to say the least,” said Shaffer.
Rosalyn Cooperman, Associate Professor of Political Science, presented research on polarization of Democratic and Republican party delegates at the 2017 State of the Parties conference sponsored by the Ray Bliss Institute of Politics at the University of Akron.
Jesse Stommel, executive director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at UMW, and founding director of the Hybrid Pedagogy journal, was quoted recently in Inside Hig
her Ed. In the article, “Do Professors Need Automated Help Grading Online Comments?,” Stommel said that he found Blackboard’s proposal to evaluate student writing in this way to be alarming. “There is certainly space for technology to help us create dialogue in an online class, but using a technology to assess the success of a discussion, ultimately it reduces student engagement to a rote series of behaviors. ‘Write a comment of 60 words, citing two sources, responding to at least one of your classmates’ — those kinds of behaviors do not make a discussion successful. They’re arbitrary markers.”
Don’t forget the Blood Drive today, Nov. 17, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hurley Convergence Center Digital Auditorium. The event, sponsored by UMW’s Red Cross Student Organization, is your last chance to donate life-saving blood during the fall semester. Walk-ins are welcome but please be aware that appointments take priority. Please email umw.redcrossclub@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.
Holly Schiffrin, professor of psychology, was recently quoted in Voice of America. The article, “Does Your Mother Still Do Your Laundry?,” discussed the problems of helicopter parenting. “Helicopter parenting is … parents being involved at a level that is inappropriate,” she said. Schiffrin told VOA that she sees students struggling to deal with issues ranging from anxiety to maturity to handling simple tasks that come with independence, such as doing laundry or cooking a meal.
Op-ed columns by Stephen J. Farnsworth, professor of political science, and Stephen P. Hanna, professor of geography, appeared recently in The Washington Post and The Richmond Times-Dispatch respectively. The columns, “This one map shows the Republicans’ problem in Virginia” and “Virginia’s Changing Dynamics,” provided a post-mortem of the Virginia elections.
To the University Community:
UMW’s governing body, the Board of Visitors, met last Thursday and Friday. In addition to hearing updates from the University Faculty Council President Marcel Rotter, Student Government Association President Sarah Karwowski, and Honor Council President Joshua Hunt, board members set the agenda for their meetings this year, heard reports on a variety of topics, and passed several resolutions. Of particular importance, the Board authorized funding for the renovation of Willard Hall (to be completed by Fall 2019), signed off on the Master of Science in Nursing degree program (to start in Spring 2019), approved the creation of six scholarship or endowments, and affirmed my priorities for the academic year.
Troy Paino
President
Guy Roberts
UMW faculty member Guy B. Roberts is poised to take a top position with the United States Department of Defense. President Donald J. Trump announced last week his intent to nominate Roberts as assistant secretary of the DOD’s nuclear, chemical and biological defense (NCBD) programs. To read more, visit
http://www.umw.edu/news/2017/08/15/umw-professor-tapped-top-dod-position.