Rock Star 101
Growing a New Generation of Educators
Summer Science Symposium Honors Student & Faculty Research
Werner Wieland (left) and Yoshi Takeda
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
Janet Asper (left) and Robert Higgins
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.
Robert Clark
The symposium program lists abstracts of all 22 presentations and posters.
Theresa Grana (left) and Sarah Marzec
Faculty and Students Showcase Research at Summer Science Institute Symposium, 7/25
Yoshi Takeda, shown on the Fredericksburg Canal, is one of 22 students who will participate in the Summer Science Institute Symposium on July 25.
More than 20 UMW students will present their research during the Summer Science Institute’s Symposium on Wednesday, July 25. Eleven students will give 20-minute oral presentations throughout the day and another 11 students will display poster presentations. An awards ceremony will begin at 4:30 p.m. All presentations and activities will take place in Jepson Hall, Room 100, with the posters on display in the atrium.
UMW’s Summer Science Institute, a 10-week undergraduate research program, started in 1999. This year’s projects are collaborations between the students and professors Dianne Baker, Theresa Grana, Werner Wieland, Janet Asper, Nicole Crowder, Stephen Davies, Jennifer Polack-Wahl, Ben Kisila, Melanie Szulczewski, Charles Whipkey, Julian Esunge, Leo Lee and Hai Nguyen.
The tentative schedule is as follows:
- 9 – 9:20 a.m. Elyse Clark
- 9:20 – 9:40 a.m. Yoshi Takeda
- 9:40 – 10 a.m. Eric Johnson
- 10 – 10:20 a.m. BREAK
- 10:20 – 10:40 a.m. Michael Crawford
- 10:40 – 11 a.m. KB Brobbey
- 11 – 11:20 a.m. Morgan Brown
- 11:20 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. LUNCH
- 12:30 – 1 p.m. Posters
- 1 – 1:20 p.m. Dan Browne
- 1:20 – 1:40 p.m. Sarah Eubanks
- 1:40 – 2 p.m. Robert Higgins
- 2 – 2:20 p.m. BREAK
- 2:20 – 2:40 p.m. Sam duBusc
- 2:40 – 3 p.m. Darren Getts
- 3 – 4 p.m. Posters
- 4:30 p.m. Awards Ceremony
Students Robert Clark, Lindsay Raulston, Lauren Nelson, Rebecca Brown, Benjamin Tuxbury, Peter Slattery, Susanna Kirschner, Jenna Stockton, Erin Stewart, Karmel James and Sarah Marzec will present posters from 12:30 to 1 p.m. and from 3 to 4 p.m.
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.
University of Mary Washington students in front of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, Spain
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
Historic preservation major Audra Medve is an intern at Mount Vernon
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.
LeeAnne Brooks uses infrared thermography technology at Shelton House
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?’”
# # #
By: Brynn Boyer
Political Science Students Collaborate on Book Project
(From left) Ian Huff, Assistant Professor of Political Science Chad Murphy, Chris Blough and Eric Stortz in Monroe Hall
As a political science and pre-law philosophy double major, Michael Behrens figured he would spend much of his senior year writing extensive research papers. He never expected to collaborate with his professor on writing a book.
Behrens and three fellow seniors — Chris Blough, Ian Huff and Eric Stortz — have teamed up with Assistant Professor of Political Science Chad Murphy to research and write chapters for a book on presidential rhetoric.
The project is one of more than dozen research initiatives in the university’s innovative undergraduate research program. This semester’s undergraduate projects delve into such issues as women in Islam; statistical consulting for after-school programs; stress, guilt and eating; the effects of Atrazine in zebra fish; and the effects of exercise and estrogen on mouse hearts.
Still Behrens isn’t surprised to be part of such a challenging project at UMW.
“That’s just the environment that the school’s attitude cultivates,” he said. “If you have a professor who has a common interest, there’s no harm in asking if there is a project you can work on.”
Murphy had no qualms about teaming with his students.
“The undergraduates here are really strong, they can pull off something like this,” said Murphy, who has published articles on the effects of political rhetoric and the media in numerous peer-reviewed journals. “This is the chance to do professional-quality research as an undergraduate. When you go to the bigger state schools, you don’t get that.”
The idea for the book project grew from a thesis written by former student Anne Morris, who graduated in 2011. Her year-long research for a paper about presidential rhetoric addressed some compelling issues.
“She answers the question in a really creative, interesting way,” Murphy said. “I think it has such promise.”
Murphy invited all students from his upper-level political science research methods class last semester to participate in the project. He assigned the students chapters based on the subjects he believed would be most compatible with their interests.
Others in the class tackled a myriad of other political issues that range from social media’s effect on voter turnout to how scandals impact of politicians’ prospects for re-election, with many continuing their projects as independent studies this semester.
One of the students who is continuing her thesis, junior political science and education major Erin Hill, agreed. She said that at other schools, undergraduates typically gather statistics and do the grunt work of the project.
“You aren’t really exploring the question,” she said. “Here, you’re doing the complete thing all by yourself. If I went to grad school, I would know how to fully explore a question.”
Blough, who has applied to several graduate schools to study urban planning, feels more prepared by working on the research for the book.
“You really have a lot of opportunities to do one-on-one research here,” he said. “You have a lot of guidance. It really helps you if you’re applying to grad school. It shows that you have the experience.”
Stortz also believes his research and writing project will give him credibility after graduation.
“It’s one thing to say ‘I’m a good writer;’ it’s another to say, ‘I’m published,’” Stortz said.
But Stortz is most impressed with the amount of faith Murphy has placed in his group of students.
“I think this project shows that Professor Murphy has a lot of faith in Mary Washington students in general,” he said. “The opportunities are out there if you put the effort in.”
# # #
By Anne Elder
