November 23, 2024

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Hirshberg Presents at American Academy of Religion Meeting

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Dan Hirshberg, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Contemplative Studies program, presented a new paper, “Where is my mind? Teaching critical subjectivity at an inclusive university,” for the Contemplative Studies Unit at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion.

The paper highlights the unique features of UMW’s Contemplative Studies program, the roots of which extend back to 1999 with its first practicums offered by Professors David Ambuel and Angela Pitts in 2012, and presently culminates in a minor and two recently approved Special Majors. It then surveys Hirshberg’s contemplative pedagogy for training and sustaining “meta-awareness,” the cognitive ability to establish a critical separation from mental content. Rather than automatically identifying with thoughts and feelings, the meditator centers attention and observes that content as the object of contemplation.

There is consensus in current psychological research that, for many people, mind wandering is closely connected to a range of negative emotional impacts, and that meta-awareness is closely connected to many of meditation’s therapeutic outcomes. Despite the cogency of meta-awareness in the contemporary discourse of the contemplative sciences, its primary functionality is vague and often disputed in classical Buddhist phenomenologies of mind – a topic of Hirshberg’s ongoing textual research.

Hirshberg introduced the acute relevance of these pedagogies for UMW’s current student population, as demonstrated by the results of a 2016-18 controlled study completed with Professors Miriam Liss and Mindy Erchull on UMW’s introductory Contemplative Practice course (CPRD 104). It documents statistically significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and disassociation, and statistically significant increases in attentional awareness, self-compassion, and non-reactivity, among other positive outcomes, for students who completed the course. He also addressed some of the risks of contemplative practice.

The audience of the conference panel (60-80 people) had an especially enthusiastic response to Hirshberg’s design of a contemplative exercise to closely observe the personal impact of smartphones in our present environment.

Farnsworth Discusses New Presidency Book on C-Span

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Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, discussed his new book, “Presidential Communication and Character: White House News Management from Clinton and Cable to Twitter and Trump” at the Fall for Book Festival, held at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

The book talk was recently broadcast on C-Span. Link here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?452900-3/discussion-presidency

 

 

Purdy Contributes to WHO Database on Research Priority-Setting

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Britnae Purdy, Project Coordinator in the Office of Title IX, has published an article titled “An analysis of research priority-setting at the World Health Organization – how mapping to a standard template allows for comparison between research priority setting-approaches” in the journal Health Research Policy and Systems. By reviewing 116 documents published over 15 years by the WHO, the researchers extracted 2145 research priorities and categorized them according to disease group, priority-setting method utilized, stage in the research cycle, and document type in a common database. The goal of this interactive and open-access database is to emphasize the importance of a standardized priority-setting approach and encourage the establishment of such by the WHO Global Observatory on Health R&D. This report and database features work conducted by Purdy as a 2015 Duke University Global Policy fellow in the Special Programme for Research and Training in Neglected Tropical Diseases (TDR).

Fill Holiday Stocking for Those in Need

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Holiday stockings are now available to departments that wish to fill them with non-perishable food items, as well as personal hygiene and toiletry products, for local individuals and families in need.

The over-sized stockings are approximately 3 feet long and can fit an ample amount of contributions.  Give your stocking some festive flair by decorating it with your office and colleagues!

Employees can pick up their stocking from the Office of Events & Conferencing in George Washington Hall, Room 307.  Stuffed stockings will need to be dropped off on Wednesday, Dec. 12 at the Jepson Alumni Executive Center, Rappahannock Grand Ballroom, between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. The stockings will be incorporated into the décor for our holiday gathering.

This year’s donations will be given to Micah Ecumenical Ministries before the holiday break.  Please direct any inquiries to Marissa DiMeo at ext. 1087 or mdimeo@umw.edu.

Rao Receives National Communication Service Award

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Anand Rao, professor of communication, was awarded the 2018 Hobgood Service Award at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was recognized for “dedication to excellence, commitment to the profession, concern for others, appreciation of diversity, and vision of what could be.”  As past chair of the Communication Centers Division for NCA, he helped run the annual business meeting. In addition, he also served on a discussion panel titled “Communication at Play: Creating Strategic Partnerships between the Basic Course and First Year Experiences.” There he talked about UMW’s QEP/FSEM, how it serves as a basic communication course for new students, and how the Speaking Center helps to support the FSEM.

Farnsworth Lectures on Presidential Communication

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Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political science and director of the University’s Center for Leadership and Media Studies, delivered an invited lecture at American University in Washington entitled “The Twitter-based Media Management Strategies of Donald Trump.” The talk was drawn from his new book, Presidential Communication and Character: White House News Management from Clinton and Cable to Twitter and Trump, which was published by Routledge earlier this year.

Buster-Williams Presents at National Conference

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Kimberley Buster-Williams, vice president for enrollment management, presented at American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officer’s (AACRAO) SEM Conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday, November 12, 2018. Buster-Williams presented with colleagues Alicia Moore (Central Oregon Community College), Tara Sprehe (Clackamass Community College), and Jody Gordon (University of the Fraser Valley). The 90 minute session was titled, “SEM and Retention: A Perfect Pair.” The session was interactive and fast-paced. Presenters discussed a wide range of potential retention strategies and focused on these three aspects; access, progression, and completion. The session was geared towards those interested in more intentionally engaging in effective SEM- based retention work.

AACRAO’s Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Conference is an annual conference and provides conference participants with practical solutions, promising practices, training, research, and guidelines for enrollment management practitioners looking to maximize student success, improve operational efficiency, and enhance the financial well-being of their institution.

The SEM Conference brings together a comprehensive lineup of experts, researchers, and practitioners—who showcase both the core concepts that are the foundation of SEM, as well as new and best practices. Approximately 1,000 people attended this year’s conference.

Lorentzen Gives Talk at Victorians Institute Conference on Literary Tourism

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Eric Lorentzen, associate professor of English, recently presented the paper, “Literary Tourism: Consuming Dickens, Sherlock, and the Sites/Sights of British Culture,” at the Victorians Institute conference in Asheville, NC.  The conference theme was “Consuming the Victorians,” and the particular panel involved postmodern consumption of literature through literary and cultural tourism.  Professor Lorentzen argued for the efficacy and exigency of approaching museums as texts to be read through cultural studies methodologies, and for museums to embrace the critical and pedagogical tactic of “presentism” in their curation.  He discussed different aspects of the Agatha Christie Estate at Greenway, the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, and the Charles Dickens Museum in London.

Lower Costs for Closed Captioning and Transcription Services at UMW!

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Lower Costs for Closed Captioning and Transcription Services at UMW!

ODR is pleased to announce long-term collaboration led by George Mason University that has resulted in reduced rates for video transcription and captioning services. The standard turn-around time (about 4 business days) is less than $2/minutes for each of the three vendors. Additional costs apply with alignment services. 3Play Media is the only vendor currently providing alignment services. If you unable or unavailable to do the alignment within your department, you will need to use 3Play Media and pay for the alignment service in order to have a final product that is usable. Specific pricing information can be found on the ODR website: Video Captioning and Transcription Services.

Danielle Smith, ODR Assistive Technology Coordinator, has planned the following dates for walk-in hours to learn more about how to set up an account and answer questions regarding these vendors.

Walk-in hours (Lee Hall, 431 – AT Coordinator Office)

  • Wednesday 11/28- 1:30-3:30
  • Thursday 11/29- 9:30-11:30

Reminders:

  • All videos posted online must be captioned. Videos should be shown with closed captioning, and at least be available with closed captioning, in case the need arises. Don’t find yourself in a bind without the captioned content – work on getting videos captioned as soon as you can.
  • Rates are based on turn-around time from when content is uploaded. It does take time for a user to learn the system and convert the content into a format that is acceptable in the system. Build in time for this learning process. ODR recommends designating someone in your department who can learn how to use the system and creating your own process to avoid last-minute issues.
  • Use of these services allow for the purchase of SRT files (caption text files). Alignment is needed in order to merge caption text files with video files. This allows for the end product to be a captioned video and ready for use. This service can be provided for an additional fee by 3PlayMedia when using 3PlayMedia for the complete captioning service.

ODR encourages every department and office at UMW to develop their own system and provide accessible content, now at lower costs than ever before!