In the tissue culture lab in the University of Mary Washington’s Jepson Hall, Chloe Fusselman donned a white lab coat, put on gloves and carefully picked up a beaker of liquid. She was practicing her sterile lab techniques with her adviser, Professor of Biology Deborah O’Dell, since the methods are critical to her research project […]
Culturing Independent Inquiry
Student lab research reveals real-world applications.
UMW Undergrads Get Chance to do Original Research (The Free Lance-Star)
Uncovering the Past
Classics major helped archaeologists excavate and analyze thousand-year-old artifacts in Menorca and Portugal.
Rock Star 101
If UMW offered a Rock Star 101 course, Mark Snyder would be the undisputed choice to teach it.
Growing a New Generation of Educators
Grades aren’t foremost on the mind of Laurie Abeel. The College of Education associate professor focuses more on the journey for her graduate-level students. “My approach in every single class deals with growth, not grades,” said Abeel, who teaches gifted education courses. “I’m more concerned with ‘do they understand what I’m trying to teach’ and […]
Summer Science Symposium Honors Student & Faculty Research
On Wednesday, July 25, Jepson Hall was home to more than 20 posters and presentations on topics ranging from acid mine drainage to zebrafish as part of the 2012 Summer Science Symposium. UMW’s Summer Science Institute, a 10-week undergraduate research program, started in 1999.
At the symposium’s awards ceremony, Yoshi Takeda won first place for his oral presentation “Turtles in the Fredericksburg Canal: Identifying and Estimating Populations Sizes,” under the direction of Professor Werner Wieland. Robert Higgins won second place for his oral presentation “Pegylation of Guanyl Pyrazole to Provide a Guanidinylation Reagent,” under the
direction of Professor Janet Asper.
In the poster category, Robert Clark won first place for his project “Spatial and Isotopic Analysis of Soil Erosion and Sediment Fluxes in Three Rappahannock River Tributaries, Stafford County, Virginia,” under the direction of Professor Ben Kisila. Sarah Marzec won second place in the poster category for her project “Phylogenetic Classification of Nematodes,” under the direction of Professor Theresa Grana.
The symposium program lists abstracts of all 22 presentations and posters.
UMW Students Help with Research Project Abroad
A group of University of Mary Washington students camped out in a Madrid library, scrolling through decades-old microfilm to learn more about Spanish women’s social and civic activities during the early 20th-century.

(From left to right): Sarah Abbott, Lara Pugh, Madeline Albrittain and Katie Lebling visit the Roman Bridge in Salamanca, Spain
“We got a better sense of the breadth and depth of what charity meant at that time,” said Betsy Lewis, professor of Modern Foreign Languages, who led the nine-day trip to Spain this summer.
Sophomores Sarah Abbott, Madeline Albrittain, Katie Lebling and Lara Pugh, read and cataloged women’s publications from the period of Spain’s civil war through the early Franco dictatorship. The magazines, a window into trends and culture of the time, are not digitized or readily available outside of Spain, making the journey from UMW a necessary one.
The trip was the capstone of the research team’s semester-long project, “Women and Charity in Spain,” one of 15 undergraduate research projects for spring 2012 and one of dozens of projects to receive an undergraduate research grant for the spring or summer.
Part of a larger project on the evolution of women’s charity from the late 18th- through the early 20th-centuries, this year’s research team examined several Spanish women’s magazines published by the Sección Femenina de la Falange, the fascist women’s organization supported by dictator Francisco Franco. The group from Mary Washington explored how women’s civic activity and charitable work through the Sección Femenina was presented in the weekly and bi-monthly magazines, which also included features typical of women’s publications such as fashion, home decorating, recipes, love advice, child-rearing tips and crossword puzzles. Placing the work of the conservative Sección Femenina in the context of women’s civic work and social action, searching for the points of contact and divergence with their more progressive predecessors sets this research apart from other current work, Lewis said.
In the semester prior to the trip to Madrid, Lewis and the students did preliminary research, worked on data collection techniques and explored background reading on the time period.
“This was an amazing experience for me because it gave me so much experience with Spanish and gave me time to work one-on-one with a professor,” said Albrittain, a Spanish major.
This is the second year Lewis has taken a group of students to Spain as a part of her larger research project, though each trip has taken a different focus.
During this year’s trip, the students spent four to five hours each morning at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the National Library of Spain, poring over documents, then used the afternoon to visit museums, exhibits and historic sites.
“The students had all these opportunities, mostly unplanned, to see history still alive,” Lewis said, noting an exhibit on women’s history that the students stumbled upon during the trip.
For Lebling, the semester of research and the trip to Spain provided a new perspective on her academic work.
“It was a great experience to be able to take all my knowledge I have been learning in Spanish classes and be able to apply it in real life,” she said.
Because of UMW’s undergraduate research grant, the students were able to take the trip without cost as a factor, Lebling explained.
“The whole experience has made me feel I definitely belong at Mary Washington,” she said.
Lewis and the four students will continue the project this fall to expand their work with the information and data they collected over the summer.
“The most rewarding thing is being able to include students in my research,” Lewis said. “I can cover a lot more ground in a short period of time with their help.”
Undergraduate Papers to Appear in Online Journal
Four papers by undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences will appear in an upcoming issue of the online journal “Metamorphosis.” The journal is a publication of COPLAC, the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.
The papers include “The Language of Rape: Margaret Mitchell’s Defense of Spousal Rape in Gone with the Wind” by Shirin Afsous (faculty advisor: Gary Richards), “Media Coverage of Iraq and Iran: Decoding the Warpath of a Democracy” by Ryan Hayes (faculty advisor: Stephen Farnsworth), “Sex, Luxury, and Power: The Stereotype and Perceptions of Ottoman Imperial Harems in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” by Sara Krechel (faculty advisor: Nabil Al-Tikriti) and “Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und das Abstammungsargument”[National-Socialist Germany and the ancestral argument] by Anne Zimmerman (faculty advisor: Marcel Rotter).
Historic Preservation Students Blend Humanities and Sciences
When Audra Medve first visited Mount Vernon as a child, she was struck by the timelessness of George Washington’s home, so much so that she returned dozens of times. She never could have imagined she would be an intern at the estate decades later as a senior in the historic preservation program at the university named for Washington’s mother.
Medve enrolled at the University of Mary Washington after the Navy transferred her husband to the Washington, D.C. area in 2008.
“There are very few undergraduate degrees in historic preservation available in the United States, and when I decided to return to school I realized I lived within 30 miles of a truly wonderful program,” Medve said.
Medve’s internship is one of a dozen this spring through UMW’s historic preservation department, regarded as among the best in the nation. Each year, internships range from local preservation organizations like the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation and the Fredericksburg Area Museum, to organizations in Richmond and Washington, D.C., such as the Smithsonian Institution, and even National Park Service sites across the country.
“Given our program’s interdisciplinary basis, we see internships with organizations representing all of our fields: archaeology, architecture, museums and planning,” said Doug Sanford, professor and Prince B. Woodard chair of historic preservation.
On the first day of her internship at Mount Vernon, Medve expected to work on a door from a barn, or cellar, or maybe a back room of the first president’s estate. Much to her surprise, the manager of the project led her to one of the main doors of the mansion.
As an intern, Medve performs the duties of an assistant to the Restoration Manager Steven Mallory, with her main task to restore a door from the 1750s to its original color and condition. The process requires paint analysis of dozens of layers of centuries-old paint with the assistance of conservator and paint analysis expert Susan L. Buck.
“[Her project] is the perfect example of the blending of humanities and the sciences,” Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation Michael Spencer said.
Medve is able to apply coursework from seven or eight different historic preservation classes to her internship.
“You can’t help but be in awe of all the stuff you learn,” she said.
For senior LeeAnne Brooks, her three internships have reinforced her decision to pursue a career in historic preservation.
“The hands-on experience is helping me to prepare for the job market,” Brooks said. “I love that the reality of historic preservation is even more exciting than the classroom experience led me to believe.”
This semester, Brooks is volunteering at Richmond National Battlefield Park’s Shelton House at Rural Plains Plantation in Hanover County, using infrared thermography (IRT) technology to find original features of the historic house. IRT is the measurement of surface temperature distribution through non-destructive methods, Spencer explained.
Barbara Yocum, senior architectural conservator with the National Park Service, said she is grateful for the work of UMW’s historic preservation interns at Shelton House.
“The infrared thermography study has provided valuable insights on the construction of the house that will be included in an upcoming historic structure report on the building,” said Yocum, noting that the more than 250-year-old house sustained shelling during the Civil War.
“This is a leading edge interpretation,” Spencer, who advises both Medve and Brooks, said.
Brooks explained that the process helps minimize the hidden costs associated with preservation work, allowing for a more accurate estimate of the restoration process.
“I love the hunt, the hidden stuff,” she said. “It’s like finding Waldo.”
As an adult student, Brooks’ main motivation is a career she loves. She’s well on her way with the historic preservation program.
“Here was an opportunity to work in history; to do something that I can be passionate about. I’ve always loved historic buildings and sites, and here is a career in helping to protect some of this country’s most valuable resources – it is a natural fit,” she said.
The fieldwork projects like the ones at Rural Plains and Mount Vernon are a way for students to take lessons learned in the classroom to a new level.
“This highlights the caliber of students that are graduating,” Spencer said. “We are always thinking ‘how can we set our students on the right track?’”
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By: Brynn Boyer