Category: Featured Stories

Using Virtual Realty to Prevent Falls in Older Adults

Annually, one in four senior citizens seek emergency care from a fall-related injury. To help combat this statistic and prevent falls — which are often the result of poor balance — conventional physical therapy rehabilitation approaches have traditionally been utilized. However, many in the physical therapy field now view immersive virtual reality (VR) technology as an intriguing option for older adults. While laboratory-based experiments provide promising findings, to date this technology has yet to be scaled-up and translated into clinical settings.

Two scholars at 4-VA schools with multidisciplinary backgrounds in related fields envisioned a future where clinicians could use affordable VR technology to outperform traditional diagnostics, therapeutics, and pharmaceutical approaches in fall prevention. They saw an opportunity to develop effective uses of VR technology to detect cognitive-motor function in older adults, and identify fall-risk factors for this population.

The two scholars, Tiphanie Raffegeau, in George Mason’s School of Kinesiology, College of Education and Human Development, and Christopher Rhea, Old Dominion University’s Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, Ellmer College of Health Sciences, developed this project. Raffegeau’s prior research focused on inducing anxiety during walking to study the fear of falling with an elevated height VR paradigm, while Rhea has primarily concentrated on examining how people adapt their steps to avoid obstacles in virtual environments. Through a 4-VA partnership, they wanted to increase accessibility to rehabilitative VR technology for interventions focused on reducing older adult fall-risk, while developing a framework for future scalable and fundable research.

Following 4-VA approval, Raffegeau hired three student programmers, Trevor Hsu, Chara Canfield, and Micah D Williams from the Virginia Serious Gaming Institute (VGSI), a Mason affiliated entity. The student programmers were supervised by VSGI research faculty member Jacob Enfield.

Raffegeau enlisted two of her graduate students to volunteer on the project — Kelly Poretti and Mackenzie Barrowman.

After a year of research Raffegeau notes, “Our testing proved fruitful and we identified a number of important results.” First, they found that experiencing fall-related anxiety in immersive VR can further impair walking performance. Interestingly, they also found that the anxiety response tapers over time, suggesting that experiencing virtual high elevation settings may reduce fall-related anxiety. They also saw that anxiety-provoking VR settings could promote stability-related adaptations during overground walking in impaired populations, suggesting that the VR experience could serve as a clinical intervention to improve walking.

Their findings were enthusiastically shared at the Gait and Clinical Movement Analysis Society Annual Meeting, the American Society of Biomechanics Annual Meeting, and the College of Education and Human Development Research symposium.

Using preliminary data from the VR project, Poretti was awarded the Switzer Research Fellowship for Doctoral Dissertation Research by the Administration for Community Living for her dissertation project ‘Using Virtual Reality to Reduce Mobility-Related Anxiety in Lower-Limb Prosthetic Users’ which will support her dissertation work. Raffegeau and Rhea recently submitted an NIH R21 proposal to the National Institutes on Aging entitled, ‘Investigating Biobehavioral Responses to Mobility-Specific Anxiety Across the Menopause Transition and the Effects on Mobility and Fall-Risk’ focusing on the effect of VR-induced fall-related anxiety on walking in pre- and post-menopausal older women.

Concludes Raffegeau, “This 4-VA funding provided crucial funds to support my work as an early investigator and it has made my future grant applications stronger as evidence of institutional support for my career trajectory.”

View two videos produced during the research which illustrate the Low VR and High VR findings.

4-VA Funds Public Writing Collaborative to Support Virginia Educators and Students

4-VA was designed to encourage partnerships and resource sharing to advance higher education in Virginia. Bringing together researchers and thought leaders from around the commonwealth to work in concert has been key to the success of the program since its launch in 2010.

One area of higher education which has lacked comprehensive study is the pedagogy of public writing. Public writing is generally defined as writing that is intended for a general audience with the goal of informing, persuading, or creating change. While courses in this focus have increased in number and scope, they have received relatively little support and scaffolding. Consequently, when Michelle LaFrance’s proposal The Virginia Community and Public Writing Collaborative was received by 4-VA@Mason, it won approval. LaFrance, who focuses on Writing and Rhetoric in George Mason’s English Department, saw the need to connect faculty and students in this growing educational community to pool knowledge and address opportunities for professional development and student success.

LaFrance explains, “Classes in community literacy, community writing, and public writing have all seen an emergence amongst Virginia-based writing studies researchers in the last five years.” However, LaFrance recognized that few formalized lines of communication existed between the faculty who design, develop, and carry out research and deliver curricula at different institutions. Working in silos, she reasoned, was no way to advance the implementation of successful writing programs at this level.

Thanks to 4-VA, LaFrance brought together Sweta Baniya and Sherri Craig at VT, Jen Almjeld at JMU, David Coogan at VCU; and Steve Parks and Kate Stevenson at UVA to begin the work of collecting information and developing relationships. LaFrance then hired Emily Sok, a PhD student in Mason’s Writing and Rhetoric department, to coordinate the project and assist with the planning of the collaborative’s efforts and the creation of the website.

LaFrance also involved four Mason PhD candidates in Writing and Rhetoric as volunteers in the program: Tyler Martinez, Kelby Martinez, Kerry Smith, and Rosemary Pinney.

Fast forward one year from the grant award… Today, a variety of strategic outreach and communication efforts have come to fruition… The Virginia Community and Public Writing Collaborative has:

Constructed an archive of shared online resources,
Built a website (https://vacommunitywriting.org/) to foster the growing community,
Established a conversation to implement both formal and informal mentoring mechanisms,
Developed stronger relationships with off-campus communities and stakeholders and,
Created an email list of Virginia faculty and graduate students to carry on collaborative work.

The researchers began by looking closer at the widespread and wide-ranging growth of public writing programs in the state: At George Mason, ENGH 302: Advanced Composition, a required course for all undergraduate majors, includes a public writing assignment. Within VT’s Center for Rhetoric in Society, a community and corporate writing project explored how to better serve local nonprofits via workshops about writing email, mission statements, and other storytelling. At JMU, WRTG 486: Writing in the Community is offered, as well as WRTG 484: Writing for Nonprofits, which teaches writing as a tool for socio-political engagement in local communities. In doing so, many JMU faculty members have developed partnerships with local public schools, hospitals, refugee resettlement agencies, public history programs, and other community agencies. At UVA, faculty and students created a “Community Writing Collective,” that includes partnerships with local nonprofit and civic organizations and seeks to make visible opportunities in teaching, studying, and understanding writing in community contexts.

The team facilitated several video-based meetings to discuss the shared goals, needs, and interests of those carrying out community writing and community literacy research and curriculum development in Virginia. These meetings allowed members of the collaborative to discuss shared research interests, identify additional funding sources, highlight ongoing research undertakings, and consider the mentoring needs of graduate students. Additionally, they reviewed potential opportunities for the team at the national Conference on Community Writing — which nine of the team members subsequently attended.

Next, they funded a speaker series for faculty and graduate students which featured scholars of community writing including Aja Martinez, Donnie Johnson Sackey, Ada Hubrig, and Jo Hsu.

The work continues. Recently, the team hosted Annabel Park, a nationally recognized community organizer, documentary filmmaker, and founder of The Coffee Party, as well as author Ryan Skinell.

Although much has already been accomplished, LaFrance sees an expanded future for the work. She envisions building on the groundswell of interest by establishing a research and pedagogical collaborative of faculty and graduate students from public universities and faculty at two-year colleges in Virginia, targeting emerging issues for the writing and rhetoric program.

“It was truly terrific to support graduate students and faculty with this grant—these achievements are important and energizing, as well as a key part of professional development,” says LaFrance. “Through this, we have shared information about the projects, partnerships, campus initiatives, and strategies for community engagement that have been our most successful undertakings within the state.”

Taking Out the Trash Takes on New Meaning for Geoenvironmental Engineering Team

A growing concern among jurisdictions across the U.S. is the increasing amount of municipal solid waste entering treatment plants — generally comprised of and categorized as food, green, dry, and recycling. One simple option to reduce the stress on waste treatment facilities is to pre-sort the materials, which also reduces the amount of waste going to landfills. Although inexpensive and effective, this route critically depends on residents’ participation — an element that can be difficult to assure in order to achieve a successful outcome.

George Mason’s Kuo Tian and Ran Ji wanted to tackle this challenge. Tian specializes in geoenvironmental engineering and Ji’s expertise is in system engineering. Their proposal to 4-VA@Mason focused on developing a decision support framework integrating the residential waste sorting process and real-time collection demand information.

The project team aimed to incorporate a range of interdisciplinary knowledge in civil engineering, data analytics, and operations research. Their first objective was to build a database including publicly-available socio-demographic and economic information from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Census Bureau, which would provide logistical support to put the system into action. Secondly, they were interested in creating a learning-and-simulation framework to accurately predict waste generation and community participation rates in waste sorting and recycling programs. To do so, it would be necessary to consider the range of elements effecting the entire waste transfer system.

As 50–80% of total waste management expenditures are based on collection and transportation, Ji and Tian proposed the development of an optimization model to incorporate a myriad of important statistics. The model would include: staff and shift scheduling, vehicle routing and weight, truck capacity assignment, fleet size, service time windows considering traffic patterns, facility operation hours, and school/restaurant collection time requirements. The model also examined emissions released by the transportation sector. Finally under Tian’s microscope was the composition and weight variabilities associated with population density, waste generation rates, and local regulations; combined with family incomes, habits and customs, and seasonal changes. It was a tall order, but the team saw that the seed funding provided by 4-VA could provide the means to collect and capture this important information.

After receiving the grant approval, their next move was to set the theory into a real-world application. Tian and Ji connected with 4-VA colleague Weijun Xie, then in the Industrial & Systems Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. Tian selected graduate students Seyed Omid Hashemiamiri and Hanrui Zhao and undgrads Thu Le, and Kyle R Lowther to round out the research team.

Next, they worked with the Prince William County (Va.) Solid Waste Division to build the data-driven models to validate the results of the proposed decision support framework with practical data. Taking more than one year, the work was methodical and painstaking, but garnered important findings.

“Our research has achieved significant results in enhancing municipal solid waste management using a multidisciplinary approach,” says Tian. “This body of work represents a pivotal step toward smarter, more efficient, and sustainable waste management practices.”

The model has led to a publication in the Sustainability journal titled “An Integrated Location–Scheduling–Routing Framework for a Smart Municipal Solid Waste System” https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/10/7774. Upon the proposed model and approach, Hashemiamiri has further developed it into multi-layper multi-objective optimization framework for waste management, leading to a joiurnal manuscript “Multi-Objective Optimization for Sustainable Municipal Solid Waste Management Using Genetic Algorithms” (currently under review). This research also constituted a vital component for Hashemiamiri’s PhD dissertation.

Tian concludes, “Further and more complex development of this model is now underway, with the aim of submitting another paper to Waste Management, a top tier journal. Based on the proposed modeling and solution framework, the team has developed and submitted one proposal to USDA and now is working on another NSF proposal.”

George Mason University’s Younsung Kim to Lead State 4-VA Cross-Institutional Course Redesign and Experiential Learning Project

Younsung Kim

In a first-of-its-kind statewide program, the 4-VA partnership of ten higher education institutions in Virginia has awarded George Mason University Professor Younsung Kim a grant to conduct collaborative multidisciplinary research with colleagues at partner 4-VA schools. The results will then be implemented as learning modules into undergraduate courses.

Although 4-VA has awarded Collaborative Research Grants for more than ten years, the grants have been funded separately by each institution. This new 4-VA effort is the first to be supported collectively by the statewide partnership and has added a course redesign and experiential learning element. The project will include faculty members from George Mason, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia with a focus to grow 4-VA’s collaborative research success.

Specifically, Kim’s proposal, “Designing Experiential Learning Modules for Stormwater Management and Climate Adaptation via Spatial Analysis Tools,” plans to use spatial mapping tools to incorporate appropriate green infrastructure to best reduce the effects of stormwater runoff. From there, the team will migrate the information into environmental policy coursework at their respective institutions, and plans to ultimately make the content available statewide.

Kim, a member of George Mason’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy for 15 years, will collaborate with UVA’s B. Brian Park, professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering and Systems & Information Engineering, and Mintai Kim in VT’s College of Architecture, Arts, and Design. Also joining the team is George Mason PhD student Colin Chadduck.

In reviewing the proposal, 4-VA evaluators noted Kim’s proposition as a standout, citing a number of key factors, including ‘addresses an important topic affecting the state and beyond,’ ‘inherent interdisciplinary approach incorporating science policy, data science techniques, and architecture,’ and ‘lends itself to creative cross-school collaborations — and the experiential module will be incredibly useful.’

“I am delighted and honored to accept this award as we work together across the commonwealth to raise the bar for our faculty and students studying this important work,” says Kim. “As climate change is increasing faster than climate prediction models have suggested, it is critical that we place more emphasis on integrating green infrastructure in climate vulnerable regions. Together, we can tackle this critical challenge.”

In addition to George Mason, other schools in the 4-VA collective include Christopher Newport University, James Madison University, Old Dominion University, Radford University, the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Tech, and the College of William and Mary. 4-VA was established in 2010 upon the recommendation of the Governor’s Higher Education Commission and the Governor’s Commission on Economic Development and Job Creation to encourage collaboration in both education and research, leverage the strengths of each institution, and reduce working in silos.

State Working Group Chair Matt Banfield of UVA explains, “4-VA has a long track record of success with the Collaborative Research Grants program and we are excited to expand this model to support course redesign initiatives. 4-VA collaborative projects have built bridges between our institutions, nurtured hundreds of faculty and student relationships, provided valuable opportunities for experiential learning and hands-on research, and jumpstarted novel research projects that have gone on to receive national and international attention. We are looking forward to supporting this project proposed by Professor Kim and her team.”

Kim’s Research Team Joins State 4-VA Meeting

Examining the Consequences of Land Ownership in Rural Virginia

Van Sant

Assistant Professor Levi Van Sant’s work in George Mason’s School of Integrative Studies focuses on environmental (in)justice surrounding food, agriculture, and land use. Previously, Van Sant has analyzed how land ownership affects the ways that racial and class dynamics of the past are reproduced in the present, focusing on the coastal United States South. More recently, however, he was interested in the ramifications of land ownership closer to home — in “the backyard” of two 4-VA partner universities, George Mason and James Madison.

Van Sant wanted to apply an existing model which suggests that higher rates of absentee and corporate-owned timberland in rural Alabama are associated with lower quality-of-life indicators such as income and education. It has also been observed that large landowners hold disproportionate political and economic power in rural communities.

Van Sant wanted to examine land use and ownership in the Shenandoah Valley and Middlesex County in Virginia. He also saw an opportunity to provide students at both schools a chance to hone their analytical skills — as a first reading of land use and ownership records often only tell part of the story. He wanted the students to research the differences in data management between municipalities, recognize the difficulties in accessing information in rural counties, and understand how land ownership has repercussions for low-income and minoritized communities.

Van Sant applied for and received a 4-VA@Mason grant for this research and set his team to work. Jeremy Campbell, the Associate Director for Strategic Engagement at George Mason’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth; and Case Watkins, Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice Studies at James Madison agreed to volunteer their time to help coordinate the project.

The project centered on two partnerships with communities for whom patterns of land use and ownership are crucially important: small farmers in the Shenandoah Valley, which was overseen by Watkins, and the Indigenous Tribal Nations of the Middle Peninsula Region, which was facilitated by Campbell.

“We produced a large database of land ownership records for the two study regions in rural Virginia. From this database we created a series of maps that represent trends in land ownership across both study regions. We also compiled a set of maps to contextualize and present this work. The datasets and maps are significant resources for further analysis,” noted Van Sant. “This grant provided invaluable support for further developing our research methods; creating a solid dataset for on-going research; and, most importantly, building analysis and tools for future community engagement.”

Several students were involved with the project. George Mason graduate student Tyler Grant received funding for his work handling Geographic Information System analysis and data organization. Undergraduate students Yonna Angeles, Erin MacMonigle, and Jacquelyn Batchelor received funding as mapping assistants, as well as Tamar Gorgadze, who acted as a research assistant.

At JMU, three students also worked on the project — Gina Bigo analyzed land ownership trends, Madelynn Warren looked at county land use, and Ally Windham considered the historical overview and analysis.

George Mason and Virginia Tech Team Up to Improve Online Searches

Although algorithms can make online searches faster and easier, they can also be fraught with dangerous biases. Research has shown that image search engines can exhibit discrimination against females or people of color, and bias is also found in online searches in employment recruiting and the healthcare field.

While efforts have been made to unveil and tackle fairness and bias glitches in search and recommendation systems, two key issues have been largely overlooked: Existing research treats different types of bias in isolation, resulting in specialized methods that are difficult to generalize; and, they focus on bias in the static environment leaving the dynamic nature of the search and recommendation process unexplored.

Zhu

Ziwei Zhu, Assistant Professor in George Mason University’s College of Engineering and Computing, wanted to demystify the underlying correlation of different types of bias and develop new multi-task and graph learning algorithms to support fair and unbiased searches and recommendations. Using this information, he wanted to create and release open-source software on this subject for the research community, significantly advancing trustworthiness of AI techniques. Finally, Zhu was intent on ensuring the debias system would be sustained long term.

Zhu enlisted the help of 4-VA partner Dawei Zhou in Virginia Tech’s Department of Computer Science. Together, they responded to the 4-VA call for proposals, and, “Towards Consolidated and Dynamic Debiasing for Online Search and Recommendation” was approved for funding.

Joining the effort at George Mason was graduate student Jinhao Pan, who handled algorithm implementation and paper writing. Pan was supported by a team of Zhu’s student researchers (pictured below).The group began by developing an end-to-end adaptive local learning framework to provide recommendations to both mainstream and niche users.

Zhu sees the audience as other researchers focusing on fair and unbiased recommendations and searches, or practitioners — software developers and AI engineers — in the industry who want to improve the fairness and trust of their systems. To that end, Zhu’s group created a boosting-based framework designed to decrease a broad spectrum of biases. This framework employs a series of sub-models, each tailored for different users and item subgroups.

The results were impressive, with experiments demonstrating superior debiasing capabilities against state-of-the-art methods across four model bias types.

However, Zhu knew that their new framework for recognizing and removing biases would only be effective if implemented. To that end, the group made the algorithm implementation open source through various options — https://github.com/JP-25/end-To-end-Adaptive-Local-Leanring-TALL- and https://github.com/JP-25/CFBoost.

They also presented and published Combating Heterogeneous Model Biases in Recommendations via Boosting at the Association for Computing Machinery International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining. End-to-End Adaptive Local Learning for Alleviating Mainstream Bias in Collaborative Filtering was also presented and published at the European Conference on Information Retrieval.

In addition to the framework developed, the project increased collaboration between George Mason and Virginia Tech through coursework. The new algorithms have been integrated into materials of Mason’s undergraduate and graduate level Data Mining courses CS584 and CS484.

Zhu has used the outcome of this project as the foundation for a proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation Computer and Information Science and Engineering Core program.

Concludes Zhu, “This 4-VA grant helped me set up some computational resources so that I can conduct further research and supported travel to academic conferences to disseminate our research and learn from others. We believe this provided the groundwork for some very important first steps in this field.”

Course Redesign Using Game Playing Promotes Understanding of Data Base Management

Undergraduate computer science majors in the database management course at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) are now having fun learning Structured Query Language (SQL), through a unique game playing approach — bypassing the traditional educational methods of memorization and passive participation.

Although mastery of SQL is recognized as a necessary skill to manage a variety of data-intensive domains, it is acknowledged that the instructional methods have not evolved to address the learning challenges found in the course materials. Thanks to George Mason’s Jacob Enfield, in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the Virginia Serious Game Institute, and Sherif Abdelhamid at VMI — along with a 4-VA grant — students at VMI are approaching SQL education in an entirely different way, and the results are impressive.

To add in the fun factor, Enfield and Abdelhamid created a ‘murder mystery’ game. As players advance through the game, they encounter a series of questions designed to test their SQL skills. Each correctly answered question brings the player closer to solving the mystery and reinforces concepts in a practical approach. The game provides a simulated real-world context in which learners apply their skills to solve an authentic problem within the simulated context of the game world. Additionally, the game incorporates common components that enhance engagement, such as story, goals, points, and increasing levels of challenge. The scoring system introduces a competitive element among players, as players answer more questions correctly their scores increase and they can advance to the next level. “With this approach, we were able to target today’s digital-native students, accommodating their preference for interactive, feedback-rich learning environments,” explains Enfield.

Supporting Enfield and Abdelhamid in the development of the system were Mason students Swetha Annapoorna and Ajay Addike, who built the web apps.

Student evaluations show that the new learning approach is working. Students liked the system’s engaging nature, competitive elements, visual simplicity, and interactive features. In addition, students rated the game highly for reinforcing SQL concepts learned in class. All students reported interest in understanding more about SQL due to the game. Says Abdelhamid, “A large majority of the students felt that this approach taught them to manage SQL problems strategically, which is essential for learning any programming language.”

With the successful course redesign under their belt, Enfield and Abdelhamid are now in the dissemination process. The course was featured at George Mason’s Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference and presented at the Frontiers In Education Conference.

In another result of the collaboration, the Enfield and Abdelhamid relationship has proved fruitful, as the two have already received outside funding for a different project. “This 4-VA opportunity has helped me reach out to other universities and make connections I normally would not have made,” concludes Enfield. “And we were able to deliver a great new way to teach an important skill.”

Bringing Context and Focus to the Music of Early Black Virginians

In higher education, “You don’t know what you don’t know” is often the axiom that spurs research to shine a light on a subject not thoroughly illuminated. For Emily Green, music historian and faculty member in George Mason University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, this maxim served as a motivator to launch a 4-VA@Mason research project titled Music of Early Black Virginians. Green, whose previous research focused on music publishing and marketing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century western Europe and America, became especially interested in the backstory of this area of music history while teaching Nineteenth-Century African American Music, a graduate course at Mason

Green recognized that much of this important music history needed to be cataloged and made publicly available. “It was a long-standing wish of mine to create a resource for educators to help them understand the variety of genres in Black-American music,” she explained. “K-12 music educators do not always have access to library databases or peer-reviewed journals. I wanted to create an open-access landing point to help teachers navigate the rich resources they can use to learn and quickly enhance their knowledge—and build lesson plans for students of a variety of ages.”To that end, Green sought the involvement of scholars in the field at several 4-VA partner schools to help her put the project into motion: Mary Caton Lingold at VCU and Bonnie Gordon at UVA. Both readily volunteered their time to bring this multi-level and multi-faceted research to fruition. Michael Nickens (a.k.a. Doc Nix — most recognized as the leader of George Mason University’s “Green Machine,”) also eagerly joined the team. Additionally, Maria Ryan, at Florida State University, came on to collaborate on the project.

4-VA funding provided UVA graduate students Laura Carrington OBrion and Sergio Manuel Silva and George Mason undergrads Crystal D. Williams and Jaelin Mitchell the time and space to build a website of nineteenth-century sources that reference Black-American music making: https://masonlibraries.gmu.edu/blackmusic/s/music-black-va/page/home.

From there, the team then published a wide-ranging website Early Black Music in Performance https://earlyblackmusic.4va.gmu.edu/.

A zoom conference helped introduce and promote the site: Presenters included 4-VA cohort, Kayondra Reid, music educator at Oak Street Elementary School in Falls Church, VA, and Tyler Diaz, Hunter College, NY. Artist Shodekeh Talifero also gave a presentation for the Dewberry School of Music entitled “Breaths along the Potomac.”

As an added bonus resulting from the effort, Green, Lingold, and Ryan have been contracted to develop a related anthology for Oxford University Press, Sources in Early Black Atlantic Music, which is expected to be published in 2026.

“Most music educators are not taught much about the variety of Black American music in bachelor’s or master’s degrees in our field. Between the database and the web resource, and soon the anthology, our hope is that educators can learn more about reliable print and online resources to use in the future,” says Green.

George Mason and Virginia Tech Collaboration Creates Connections in Science Policy

Today, Virginia is one step closer to bridging the gap between science and policy — a critical relationship necessary to navigate a range of socio-technical issues including climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics, and poverty. Creating this connection was the result of a yearlong research project to identify U.S. and Virginia science policy programs which engage STEM-H scientists and engineers in science policy with the end result of helping both elected and non-elected officials access technical information to assist in decision making.

This work was completed thanks to a coalition of faculty and students supported though a 4-VA@Mason grant. The team was led by KL Akerlof in George Mason’s Department of Environmental Science & Policy and Todd Schenk, Chair and Associate Professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning Program of the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech and Director of the Science, Technology & Engineering in Policy Program.

To advance best practices for professional mentorship of early career researchers and to build capacity for training researchers to engage in public policy, the team developed a database of U.S. science policy programs and conducted a case study of those in Virginia through surveys and interviews with their leaders. Akerlof and Schenk were assisted in the study by Adriana Bankston, an expert in science policy, and Mason students Kelsey Mitchell, Kate Saylor, and Aniyah Syl, and Kenneth Dewberry at Virginia Tech.

Following the yearlong collaboration, the results—along with program blogs and a listserv—has been developed and is featured on a new website created to support this emerging network of science policy programs: https://scipolprograms.org/.

The results of their research showed that the majority (57%) of U.S. science policy programs are state based. These programs include student organizations, government placements and fellowships, and academic certificates, degrees, and other training. However, it was recognized that there is only a limited ability to implement evidence-based approaches within these programs.

The team compared programmatic outcomes from Virginia’s science policy programs with those described in academic literature. Academic and professional scholarship in science communication, and public affairs suggests that curricula for engaging scientists and engineers should broadly cover communication and policy processes.

In addition, they found that training programs would benefit from evaluation models and measures, although the lack of consistent theoretical foundations and constructs across this highly multidisciplinary scholarship reduces their utility. It was concluded that a common framework, which includes shared terms and relationships, is needed to promote the transdisciplinary growth of the field.

With the results of their analysis in hand, the team held a state webinar on science policy programs featuring 11 of the 13 Virginia program leaders. The project was also highlighted at a Virginia Sea Grant Symposium and was the topic of an American Geophysical Union e-lightning talk.

Bankston and Akerlof presenting research findings

While the results of the study proved important, the project also provided rich opportunities to the students participating in the effort. Undergraduate student Syl and doctoral candidate Mitchell helped lead the webinar and participated as co-authors on the publications. Further, Syl co-presented at the Virginia Sea Grant Symposium. Plus, master’s student Saylor successfully defended her thesis on the Commonwealth of Virginia Engineering and Science (COVES) Policy Fellowship. She subsequently presented her results to the President of the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, Dr. James Aylor.

The first of two research articles based on the project has just been accepted with minor revisions by the journal Evidence & Policy. A second article has also been submitted for publication. They are also in conversation with the leadership of the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine about the development of a new weeklong science policy program for undergraduate students from across the Commonwealth’s public universities.

Akerlof reflects on receiving the 4-VA@Mason award, “This funding supported our cross-institutional collaboration and ability to conduct baseline research and networking that have been fundamental to understanding how the landscape of science policy training programs is evolving across the United States.”

4-VA Team Develops Rhetorical Approach to Counter Distrust in Blood Transfusions

As the healthcare industry wrestled with vaccine denial during and after the pandemic, another related concern emerged. For some Americans, a new form of skepticism grew around blood transfusion. This population perceives that blood banks and the blood supply are unsafe due to donations from those vaccinated against COVID and subsequently protest receiving a blood transfusion even when medically necessary.

Both vaccines and the blood supply system sit at the crossroads of public health services and private decision-making. To be successful, patients must trust in the system, which necessitates strong community connections and clear messaging. A broken link in the communication structure can have dire consequences.

In George Mason’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Heidi Lawrence – who has long researched the rhetoric of medical and scientific controversies – and Julie Gerdes at Virginia Tech – who focuses on health communication -decided to team up to address this compelling, novel issue. Although Lawrence knew Gerdes, a 4-VA collaborative partnership would allow them to join forces and get the support they needed for this important research. 4-VA leadership at George Mason and Tech agreed, and the pair were awarded a grant to launch the effort.

Their goal was ambitious. They wanted to study this predicament in the field of hematology and transfusion medicine within a framework of communication; produce rhetorically informed appropriate responses and create a framework for investigating and countering similar problems with blood donation and vaccine refusal at other sites.

Lawrence and Gerdes asked graduate students Jessie Wiggins at Mason and Temitope Ojedele-Adejumo at Tech to join them in the project.

The group identified several crucial objectives for their research:

Analyze vaccine concerns expressed on websites, in social media, through podcasts, and other sources to identify misunderstandings about vaccines and blood.
Conduct interviews with clinicians who experienced patient blood refusal.
Observe transfusion medicine rounds presentations, onsite blood banks, blood testing facilities, bloodless surgery, emergency blood services, and other components relevant to blood collection and storage.
Interview patients who expressed unease about blood products and vaccine safety.

To do so, it was imperative that they conduct the research in situ at a leading healthcare facility to fully study the rhetorical context of this phenomenon. A premiere hospital system in the Midwest United States was interested in collaborating on the project. The Mason and VT team donned their hospital scrubs and got to work with the facility’s Department of Transfusion Medicine.

Gerdes, Ojedele-Adejumo, Wiggins and Lawrence outside surgery

Following a thorough assessment over months of time, the researchers identified several critical actions, and potential pitfalls, in the development of a successful communication approach to the targeted patient group.

First, they determined it was vitally important to direct patients to reputable networks and sources of information on the blood supply system. Additionally, they found that having a trusted physician engage in an extended discussion with the patient helped address and allay specific concerns. (It was recognized, however, that there is often not the time, structure, or training for a clinician to adequately implement this step. Further, the blood system is very complex and demands for specific patient accommodations are often difficult to fulfill.) One interesting observation during the onsite work was that the patient interviews positively influenced the patient’s perception of their care. Patients were grateful for the chance to tell their stories to Gerdes and Lawrence and reported that the interviews and discussions helped to restore appreciation for and trust in the hospital.

Although Lawrence’s and Gerdes’ study is still ongoing and they continue to recruit more patient interviews, the results and guidelines have already been enthusiastically received at the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Annual Conference and at the Center for Emerging Zoonotic and Arthropod-Borne Pathogens annual symposium. They are also working on a paper for a key industry journal. The project also has received continued 4-VA at Virginia Tech to support collaboration with Tom Ewing on his “Human Dimensions of Infectious Disease” project. This spinoff supports two additional undergraduate research assistants, Hailey Richards at Tech and Katy Morejon Portillo at Mason.

Lawrence praises the 4-VA support at George Mason and Tech which brought the project to fruition. “We never would have been able hire our graduate students and to conduct the site visit without 4-VA. Our time at the hospital brought the complexities of the clinical experiences—for patients and physicians—to life,” Lawrence explains. “Those firsthand encounters allowed us to truly understand the gravity of the situation many patients find themselves in, and the physicians recognized the importance of working across departments to give every patient the best care possible.”