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4-VA Team Applies Novel Technology to Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Incorporating control-theoretic methods into neuroscientific research was the interest that brought together Xuan Wang, Assistant Professor in Mason’s Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mainak Patel, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at William and Mary.   Supported by a 4-VA grant, the two wanted to look closer at adapting cutting edge technology in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to create a new approach to facilitate the prediction and regulation of the firing rate dynamics of brain neurons.  The real-world application of this research is to facilitate brain disease treatment, such as epilepsy, and brain-computer interface.

“As a result of this project, we have developed two network models, a firing rate dynamics model describing the microscale neuronal activities of the brain; and another to measure the small changes in blood flow that occur with brain activity,” explains Wang.  “We have also created an effective data-driven algorithm that can reconstruct and predict the rate and fMRI dynamics of the brain.”

Wang and Patel received human brain fMRI data from United States Naval Academy through Assistant Professor Duy Duong-Tran and support from Li Shen, Professor of Informatics in Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Results of the research have been publicly shared via two abstracts at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping conference.  Follow-up work submitted to the 2024 Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention Conference is currently under review. Another paper on the project was submitted to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transaction on Automatic Control and is currently being considered for publication.

Graduate student Muhammad Umair (left), who gathered and processed fMRI and firing rate data for the research, won first place at the College of Engineering and Computing Innovation Week at Mason with a poster titled ‘Subject and Task Fingerprint using Dynamic Reconstruction from fMRI Time-series Data’.

Based on the results of the 4-VA project, Shen, Duong-Tran, and Wang are currently preparing a National Science Foundation grant proposal for more extensive research.

“Thanks to the seed funding from 4-VA, my collaborators were able to jump-start our research. We successfully validated preliminary hypotheses and will now leverage our findings further. Currently, we are in the process of applying for larger grants to sustain and expand our efforts on this topic,” adds Wang.

 

 

 

 

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4-VA@Mason Funded Project Creates Professional Learning Series to Support Inclusive Classroom Co-teaching

 

Almost 10% of Virginia’s students aged 6-21 are identified as students with disabilities. Of this group, almost 68% spend the majority of their school day in inclusive, general education classrooms receiving special education services through co-teaching partnerships of general and special education teachers.

Observations of this teaching arrangement, however, reveal challenges faced by special education teachers who often simply act as an assistant. Consequently, they are often not able to deliver the specially designed instruction necessary to meet the learning needs of the student with disabilities. Co-teachers often do not understand the expectations for this scenario, or they have not received the professional learning appropriate for their classroom. Without a true co-teaching partnership, the achievement outcomes for students may not be met.

This dilemma had been on the mind of Margaret Weiss, Associate Professor of Special Education at Mason who has long researched co-teaching and pre-service teacher preparation.  She saw an acute need to develop and then test a hybrid professional learning series to prepare general and special education teachers in secondary inclusive classrooms to implement effective co-teaching practices.

In projecting out this need, Weiss knew that longtime colleague Wendy Rodgers, an Associate Professor at VCU, would be the perfect collaborator. Rogers specializes in inclusive classrooms, co-teaching, learning disabilities, single-case design methods, collaboration, and classroom observation.  As VCU is a partner in the 4-VA network, Weiss was able to invite Rodgers to join her in a 4-VA proposal as a co-principal investigator, which was subsequently greenlighted by the 4-VA@Mason Advisory Board.

Weiss and Rodgers began by assembling a team including graduate student Karli Zilberfarb at VCU and Holly Glaser from Mason for module development and production, and Boris Gafurov at Mason to develop applications.  Together, they created five professional learning modules which include information, readings, checklists, sample lesson plans, reflection documents, video samples from teacher classrooms, and application activities for teachers who are learning to co-teach together.  The series was then pilot tested by teachers at Liberty High School in Fauquier County, Va.  Although not originally planned, the 4-VA team also developed a web-based, shareable co-teaching lesson planning application that is also being pilot tested in local schools.

Weiss enlisted the help of Virtual Virginia’s Steven Sproles as module host and the Virginia Department of Education Training and Technical Assistance Center at Mason for further review of materials.

Upon presentation to teachers, the series was especially well received and was found to be very helpful as the procedures were implemented in classrooms. Weiss notes, “It has been great to be able to create these materials. We are very excited about reactions we have from school divisions and professionals in Virginia and beyond.” (School divisions in North Carolina and Georgia have already shown an interest in the program.)

Continues Weiss, “This 4VA grant was a fantastic opportunity for Wendy and me to bring our ideas to fruition; we had not been able to dedicate the time and energy to making it happen before this grant. I am hoping that this pilot study will set us up in a great position to apply for a significant external funding award.”

 

 

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Ethical Data Analytics: Investigating Data as a Pedagogical Practice for the Humanities

While data analysis is critical to any research, it is important that users are acutely aware of what is behind the data — including the moral obligations regarding the gathering and protection of the data.  It is recognized that researchers should be informed about ethical sources and uses of data and understand both the potentially marginalized voices and the audiences within the dataset.  Faculty at four 4-VA partner schools (VT, ODU, JMU and Mason) coalesced around the need to raise awareness about the opportunities and limitations in data analytics as an area of research and practice for the field of humanities.  Moreover, they were interested in building a methodological framework for humanities instructors.

As the team saw it, the need for critical data literacy should not be limited to data scientists or engineers. Communicators, designers, developers, artists, historians, and more are asked to make sense of increasingly complex data sets. They were interested in developing practice-oriented pedagogical resources to enable instructors to support students as they seek jobs and internship opportunities throughout the state. In this way, they could add diverse voices to the technology sector and Women in Tech opportunities, especially for students who are not able to afford an engineering degree.

While data analysis is critical to any research, it is important that users are acutely aware of what is behind the data — including the moral obligations regarding the gathering and protection of the data.  It is recognized that researchers should be informed about ethical sources and uses of data and understand both the potentially marginalized voices and the audiences within the dataset.  Faculty at four 4-VA partner schools (VT, ODU, JMU and Mason) coalesced around the need to raise awareness about the opportunities and limitations in data analytics as an area of research and practice for the field of humanities.  Moreover, they were interested in building a methodological framework for humanities instructors.

As the team saw it, the need for critical data literacy should not be limited to data scientists or engineers. Communicators, designers, developers, artists, historians, and more are asked to make sense of increasingly complex data sets. They were interested in developing practice-oriented pedagogical resources to enable instructors to support students as they seek jobs and internship opportunities throughout the state. In this way, they could add diverse voices to the technology sector and Women in Tech opportunities, especially for students who are not able to afford an engineering degree.


The project was led by Mason’s Nupoor Ranade, Assistant Professor in the Department of English.  Ranade was joined by ODU’s Daniel Richards, Associate Professor, Department of English; JMU’s Ja’La Wourman Assistant Professor, School of Writing, Rhetoric & Technical Communication: and VT’s Sweta Baniya, Assistant Professor, Department of English.

Armed with a 4-VA grant, the group set to work on the planning and execution of a one-day workshop for delivery at each of the four campuses.  Targeted attendees included tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty, post-doctoral scholars, graduate teaching and research assistants and graduate students.  The co-PIs acted as organizers at their respective institutions and were present for the workshops.

The workshops were delivered during April 2023 and were very well received, garnering many positive results.  Attendees left the workshops with specifically designed training materials including PowerPoint presentations and handouts.

The team’s next objective was to disseminate the workshop resources and results to the broader community, which came to fruition through their website https://www.innovationsindata.org/.

They then presented part of their findings at the International Society of Technical Communication’s Summit in Atlanta in May 2023, which resulted in numerous messages from industry practitioners interested in collaborating on further opportunities to add to the research. They have also shared the workshop summary and workshop outcomes at the Association of Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Design of Communication October conference in Orlando, Fla.

“This grant gave Daniel, Ja’La, Sweta and I an opportunity to develop and share concrete pedagogical resources with Virginia faculty (and beyond) that will enable humanities researchers and students incorporate data analytics studies in human-centered audience analysis,” concludes Ranade.  “It looks like this is just the beginning!”

 

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4-VA Team Develops Communication Center Tutor Training

 

While Communication Centers on college campuses are a relatively new concept — they were originally introduced to provide student support for basic communication and public speaking courses — over the last 20 years they have exploded in number have expanded offerings to include a wide range of communication skills assistance.  Although the model has been widely credited for a range of student accomplishments, there is a recognition that overburdened faculty charged with operating the centers suffered from the lack of time and resources necessary to create and deliver suitable training materials for tutors. This challenge was faced at the Communication Centers located on several 4-VA campuses — Mason, JMU, and VT.

Broberg

Shelby Broberg, Communication Center Director on Mason’s Fairfax campus, connected with Paul Mabry, Communication Center Coordinator and Assistant Professor at JMU, and VT’s Brandi Quesenberry, Director of Undergraduate Programs and Zack Sowder, Advanced Instructor and Associate Director at VT’s CommLab to see how they might lessen the training needs bottlenecks using a 4-VA grant.

“Shelby’s vision to work in collaboration with her partners at JMU and Tech exemplifies how 4-VA can work for higher education in Virginia,” says Janette Muir, Vice Provost, Academic Affairs, and 4-VA@Mason Campus Coordinator. “By sharing resources, strengths, and workloads, this team has created a training package that is a valuable tool for both faculty and students.”

The project began with an extensive survey of 53 Communication Center Administrators and 35 Communication Center Consultants. Explains Broberg, “Through our research we were able to conclude that the majority of communication centers in the nation need a more cohesive, effective, and accessible training program for their consultants.”

They then developed open-access training materials with ten modules of interactive content for communication center consultants: https://sbroberg.wixsite.com/communication-center. “This content was largely sourced and developed by our undergraduate students who participate in training and have extensive experience as the target audience for these educational materials,” noted Broberg.  The students were Sabeen Akhtar, Erandy Cruz-Alcantara, Erin Hess, Fadzayi Sambana, and Kamryn Satterfield from Mason; and Heather Opie, Sara Montgomery, Riley Miller, Grace Warren, and Tessa Cyrus from JMU.

Broberg credited graduate students Briana Stewart, Aditi Goel, and Neha Gour of Mason and Mercy Faleyimu of JMU for leading the undergraduate team.

The project and results were presented at the National Association of Communication Centers (NACC) Conference last spring in Blacksburg, Va, and recently at the National Communication Association conference in National Harbor, Md.  Broberg reports, “The response was really exciting. Directors from centers all across the country were grateful for the new resources to help training be more consistent and reliable nationwide.”

The Communication Center Training Team at the National Communication Association conference — L to R: Mercy Faleyimu (JMU), Brandi Quesenberry (VT), Shelby Broberg (Mason) Zack Sowder (JMU)

The 4-VA project will now be extended to two other areas identified as needing support within Communication Centers — working with multilingual clients and STEM related content. “This is somewhat unsurprising as our college campuses continue to become more linguistically diverse and current trends of popular majors include STEM-related studies,” says Broberg.

“We believe these resources will meet a crucial need for Communication Centers to train their consultants to provide expert feedback to the diverse needs of students we see on campuses across the country,” concludes Broberg. “Participants have been incredibly enthusiastic and there has been a great deal of interest in the outcomes of our 4-VA supported research.”

 

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4-VA@Mason Funding Smartphone App to Support Transfer Students

 

Over the past 10 years, 4-VA@Mason has bolstered efforts to smooth the transition for first-generation transfer students from NOVA to Mason via roles in ADVANCE, developing the Bachelor of Applied Science program, and aligning course subject content and objectives between NOVA and Mason.  It was natural, then, for 4-VA@Mason to step in to fund a proposal for a novel smartphone-based augmented reality campus tour of Mason to help traditionally underserved transfer students.

The concept is being led by Kelly Schrum, a professor in Mason’s Higher Education Program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.  Schrum has brought together a group of faculty members, undergraduate, and graduate students to put the plan into action. In addition, representatives from ADVANCE, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, and the First-Gen+ Center will also play a role in the project.

After reviewing the considerable research on common challenges facing transfer students, including the need to feel connected and find community, the group is developing a prototype of the app for prospective students to download. “After much research, we believe that an app of this type can go a long way to help make our transfer students more comfortable in the new Mason environment,” explains Schrum.  “We are so pleased with the initial enthusiastic reception from students as well as our partners in this effort.”

Through the app, students will ‘meet’ a virtual character — wearing a First Gen Mason T-shirt — who welcomes them to Mason.  Students will see a virtual panel where they will find questions and answers from current students and be invited to add their voice to the conversation.  Encouraging words from the First Gen+ Center will appear on the screen, such as “You are the first, but you won’t be the last.”

The virtual character will encourage the student to walk toward the Johnson Center where a simulated First Gen+ table is set up for an ice cream social. The student will create a sundae — with Mason colors — while interacting with the character who will share fun facts about Mason regarding first gen transfer students and provide an overview of events and activities hosted by the First Gen+ Center. The student can ask questions, powered by a chatbot, and can also submit more personalized or in-depth questions that will be directed to the right department, such as Admissions or Success Coaching, all designed to make the students more comfortable with campus and their fellow students.

The prototype is being tested this winter with prospective students in coordination with ADVANCE. The Admissions office will distribute flyers about the app, place them in bags for transfer students, and highlight the app on transfer student tours.

“This is a great opportunity to help our new transfer students feel more comfortable with their transition to Mason, and get them off to the right start,” says Janette Muir, Vice Provost, Academic Affairs and 4-VA@Mason Campus Coordinator.

Following the beta testing, Schrum’s team will collect and analyze data with the goal of improving and expanding the prototype, contributing to scholarly research on using technology to improve student success, and applying for external funding.

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Mason Study Aims to Reduce Avian Window Collision Mortality

Ornithologists, ecologists, environmentalists in the Mason Nation, and many others will welcome the findings of one of the most expansive survey-based studies to date designed to reduce avian window collision mortality. Avian window collisions are a national concern, with estimates of avian mortality between 300 million to one billion birds every year in the United States. The investigation, conducted over the past 12 months on multiple Mason campuses, was led by Biology Professor Daniel Hanley and his co-PI David Luther, with support from collaborator John Swaddle at William and Mary. Most significantly, the study has identified a critical factor — the gloss of the windows – as playing a significant role in avian window collisions and is the first research of its kind to make this important link.

Daniel Hanley
David Luther

The study was funded with a grant from 4-VA@Mason, as part of 4-VA’s commitment to help launch pilot explorations which support collaborations of faculty in higher education throughout the commonwealth.  The 4-VA research also encourages opportunities for student research that can make a positive difference for Virginia and beyond.

Jamison teaches students about window strikes at a volunteer event on the Fairfax campus

 

Smith distributes information to raise awareness about the project at one of two events he led during Global Bird Rescue Week.

Hanley explains, “Through a large-scale Mason community effort, we conducted one of the most comprehensive investigations on this subject. We completed 3,415 surveys across multiple Mason campuses — 3,017 on the main Fairfax campus alone — and found 82 total fatal collisions, with 62 at the Fairfax campus.” The surveys were undertaken by a team of more than 40 volunteer undergraduate students under the direction of graduate students Quentin Jamison and Shawn Smith.

“On our Fairfax campus, the strikes were not clustered in any particular area. Instead, we found that certain buildings were more problematic than others. Not surprisingly, buildings with greater glass coverage experienced more fatal window strikes, as this has been documented before,” notes Hanley.

Smith documents a window strike mortality event during a citizen science walk.
Smith shares avian insights with volunteers using the Lab’s teaching collection.

The researchers recorded the abundance of window strikes within the campus interior. Horizon Hall and Southside posed the greatest risk on the Fairfax campus, however, Exploratory and Thompson Halls also had a large number of strikes.

The core of the study considered the reflective properties of windows on 34 buildings as well as the proportion of glass on each side of these buildings. The team implemented a model to determine which factor could predict the count of fatal avian window strikes. “We used high-end glossmeters — Rhopoint IQ — to quantify the degree to which the glass reflects light and images to on-coming birds. There have been very few studies that have experimentally measured these features of glass. Therefore, our study provides a critical baseline for future endeavors in this field,” says Hanley.

The team coordinated with Mason Facilities, the Patriot Green Fund, and other interested parties. Further, they aligned with researchers and students at Virginia Tech, Radford, Bridgewater College, and William & Mary who are tracking fatal window collisions on their campuses. Additionally, outside organizations including the Virginia Master Naturalists and the Virginia Chapter of The Wildlife Society participated. Through this 4-VA supported research, PIs Hanley and Luther aim to greatly reduce window strikes throughout Mason campuses.

Jamison presented the project at the 2023 annual meeting of The Wildlife Society’s Virginia Chapter.

Graduate student researcher Jamison presented preliminary study results at the annual winter meeting of the Virginia Chapter of the Wildlife Society and, as a result, the group is now building a consortium on causes of window strikes and methods of reduction among researchers at the other universities in Virginia. Jamison presented at the American Ornithological Society conference in Ontario, Canada this summer as well.

Jamison at the American Ornithological conference.

 

There’s more to come.  “We have a draft manuscript on the topic, in collaboration with Dr. Swaddle from William and Mary, which will be submitted to a peer reviewed journal later this year,” notes Hanley.  “We are now focusing on the sensory perception aspect of avian vision and understanding how birds see the glass (or not) while flying in order to design methods to make the glass more obvious to the birds so that collisions are reduced.” This research could result in external funding from energy companies and developers to install avian collision avoidance systems on their infrastructures — wind turbines, power lines, transformers, and buildings.

More than forty undergraduate students participated on the project, including: Aaidah Nizumudeen, Aaron Amin, Aaron Morton, Alexander Perez, Amal Ahmad, Ari Masters, Carolina Sanabria, Caroline Tate, Caty McVicker, Chloe Fowler, Deena Chouf, Eatha Lynch, Elham Sarangi, Emily Le Bron, Grace Rapoza, Grace Shimizu, Holly Haw, Hye Jeong Kim, Jessica Winey, Jordan Bertaux, Jordan Davis, Kaitlyn Moore, Kate Mateyka, Katie Russel, Kennedy Ream, Kiersten Jewell, Maddy Gonzalez, Merri Collins, Mohammad Alaadhab, Morgan O’Donnel, Natali Walker, Nibal Negib, Nimra Kashif, Quinn Griffin, Raina Saha, Ruth Leilago, Sameer Jame, Sara Abarra, Sarah Weikel, Trent Gasso, and Zahra Slimani.

Virginia Tech undergraduate students Madeline Alt and Rachel Morse also shared expertise from years of surveys on their campus.

“We couldn’t have pulled all this together without the 4-VA@Mason funding,” concludes Hanley.  “This was a significant undertaking, and we needed the time and space to get this done right.  We believe this is just the beginning of what we hope will be a turning point in reducing avian collision mortality.”

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4-VA@Mason Awards Funding for 12 Promising Investigations Led by Mason Faculty plus Eight Additional Collaborations for Mason Co-PIs

 

4-VA@Mason, announces the Collaborative Research Awards for the 23-24 academic year — with 12 projects spearheaded by Mason faculty, and eight for Mason faculty acting as Co-PIs.  “These 4-VA@Mason Collaborative Research Grants are the core of what our state program is all about — providing seed funding to encourage faculty from our eight partner schools to launch novel research efforts and build critical relationships among the institutions,” said Janette Kenner Muir, Vice Provost, Academic Affairs and Campus Coordinator of 4-VA@Mason.

Approved proposals were from a range of colleges at Mason including the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Computer Game Design/Virginia Serious Game Institute; the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; the College of Engineering and Computing; and the College of Science.

One proposal funded this year is Dr. Chris Jones’ work, Using Taxonomic, Pigment, and Molecular Analysis to Characterize Algal Blooms in the Shenandoah River. Professor Jones, a member of the Environmental Science & Policy Department and Director of the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center, has already seen the benefit of 4-VA support with growing research projects focused on harmful algal blooms that threaten Virginia’s Shenandoah River and also plague waters throughout the world. In the Shenandoah, these blooms originally consisted of green algae, which while troublesome for recreational activities, did not present a danger to humans and wildlife.  In the past two years, however, the blooms have included cyanobacteria that contain toxins.  Environmental engineers recognize that it is critical to identify the toxic bacteria quickly and definitively, but current methodologies are inadequate.  Jones’ team of Mason faculty and students, together with their partners at Old Dominion University, will tackle this important challenge.

The following are the 4-VA@Mason 2023-24 Collaborative Research Grant winners, with partner schools in parentheses.

  • Akerlof, Karen Bridging Science and Policy in the States: A Study of Emerging Mechanisms to Train Scientists and Engineers (VT)
  • Enfield, Jacob MySQL Murder Mystery (VMI)
  • Furst, Kirin Emlet The role of the air-water interface in breakthrough of PFAS and phthalate esters during wastewater treatment (VT)
  • Jones, R Christian Using Taxonomic, Pigment and Molecular Analysis to Characterize Algal Blooms in the Shenandoah River   (ODU)
  • Kang, Pilgyu Machine learning assisted laser manufacturing of alloy nanoparticle graphene hybrid materials for high performance hydrogen sensing (UVA)
  • LaFrance, Michelle The Virginia Community and Public Writing Collaborative (JMU, VCU, VT, UVA)
  • Lawrence, Heidi A Rhetorical Approach to Challenges in Blood Donation (VT)
  • Raffegeau, Tiphanie Using Virtual Reality to Study Cognitive and Affective Risk Factors for Falls in Older Adults (ODU)
  • Straus, David The Role of Diabatic Heating in Determining Atlantic Storm Paths (UVA)
  • Van Aken, Benoit Protection of RNA by Association with Macromolecules Implications for Wastewater Based Epidemiology (VT)
  • Yu, Yun Nanoscale Visualization of Electrocatalytic Carbon Dioxide Reduction Activity at Cu Nanocatalysts (UVA)
  • Zhu, Ziwei Towards Consolidated and Dynamic Debiasing for Online Search and Recommendation (VT)

The following Mason faculty received funding as Co-PIs collaborating with other 4-VA institutions in parentheses:

  • Chowdhury, Ahsan The Commonwealth Proofs Project Collaborative: Promoting Students’ Understanding of Logical Implications and their Transformations (VT)
  • Dromgold-Sermen, Michelle New American Resources: Partnerships and Initiatives at Virginia Higher Education Institutions to Strengthen Virginia’s Migration Support (VT)
  • Jing, Hao Acoustics-enabled Noncontact Manipulation, Patterning, and Assembly of Complex-shaped Micro/nanoparticles for Advance Manufacturing (VT)
  • LaToza, Thomas Visualizing Code Changes to Understand Students’ Mental Models in Programming Education at Scale (VT)
  • Stone, Victoria Increasing Mental Health Services in K-12 Settings by Helping Provisionally Licensed School Counselors Meet the Requirements for Full Licensure as Professional School Counselors in Virginia (JMU)
  • Stone, Victoria Supporting K-12 Students after Psychiatric Hospitalizations: Piloting Mixed Reality Simulation Training for School Mental Health Professionals (UVA)
  • Van Aken, Benoit Hyperspectral imaging for the real-time detection of microplastic particles in seafoods (VT)
  • Zhu, Ziwei Break the Dilemmas between Model Performance and Fairness: A Holistic Solution for Fairness Learning on Graphs (VT)

“We are looking forward to the new discoveries we will find with these 4-VA collaborative projects,” comments Vice Provost Muir, “Our faculty, students, and the Commonwealth of Virginia will benefit from these partnerships as the schools approach the work from their own perspectives and strengths, building solid partnerships for future initiatives.”

 

 

 

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4-VA@Mason Computing Team Gets Ahead of the Game

Han

While some professors worry that they are two steps behind technology, scholars in Mason’s Department of Computer Science pride themselves on staying two steps ahead.  However, that wasn’t enough for Associate Professor Bo Han, who wanted to deepen the educational experience for students.

When Han’s proposal “Innovating Point Cloud Processing for Networked Systems” was approved for pilot funding by 4-VA@Mason, he brought together co-PI Felix Xiaozhu Lin, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science in the UVA School of Engineering, specialists from the University of Minnesota (UM), the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), and graduate and undergraduate students taking his new class.

It was an “all-hands-on-deck” project with each of the team members tackling a variety of challenges, resulting in the delivery of a product they dubbed DeepMix, a mobility-aware, lightweight, and hybrid 3D object detection framework. A unique feature of DeepMix is that it fully utilizes the mobility of headsets to fine-tune detection results and boosts detection precision. In fact, when Han’s team implemented a prototype of DeepMix on Microsoft HoloLens and evaluated its performance through both extensive controlled experiments and a user study with more than 30 participants, DeepMix not only improved detection accuracy by 9.1 to 37.3% but significantly boosted detection accuracy in mobile scenarios.

Han credits the success of this project to his collaboration with partners at UVA, UM, NJIT, and especially his students.  These include graduate students Nan Wu, who led the design and implementation of point cloud super-resolution for 3D object detection; along with Ruizhi Cheng and Puqi Zhou, who worked on the implementation and evaluation of gaze-assisted motion prediction for point cloud streaming. Undergraduate student Jing Wang also participated in the project, handling the implementation of the back-end system for image-based localization to improve the accuracy of pose estimation and motion prediction for point cloud streaming.

Pictured: Nan Wu presenting one of the project’s resultant published papers at the Association for Computing Machinery HotMobile 2022 workshop.

“This project was high intensity, multi-faceted, and challenging, but thanks to our 4-VA@Mason grant we were able to develop a great team and produce concrete results,” says Han.  “Now, we want to move our technology to the next level and build interactive holographic communication systems for truly immersive remote collaboration based on mixed reality.

 

 

 

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Providing Support for Student Activists: Advocating for Advocates

Chen

Student activism is credited with bringing positive change for political, environmental, economic, and social causes on college campuses. It is recognized, however, that students’ time devoted to organizing and engaging for their cause while balancing coursework and college life can result in burnout. Long overlooked, Mason’s School of Integrative Studies Professor Cher Weixia Chen saw the need to identify and address the stress facing student activists.

Chen wanted to explore the conceptualizations, symptoms, and remedies associated with activists and identify intervention tools for improving their well-being. To attend to the needs of these community members, Chen applied for and received a 4-VA@Mason Collaborative Research Grant “Understanding & Supporting the Well-Being of College-Level Social Justice & Human Rights Advocates/Activists in the State of Virginia.” Chen’s colleagues included Graziella Pagliarulo McCarron, Assistant Professor, School of Integrative Studies, at Mason; Steve Grande, Director of the Office of Community Service-Learning at James Madison University (JMU); and Melody Porter, Director of Office of Community Engagement at the College of William & Mary (WM). They worked together to develop a multi-pronged approach to tackling this issue. Volunteering their work on the project were Taimi Castle, Professor of Justice Studies and director of the JMU Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence, and Lisa Porter, Associate Professor of Sociology at JMU.

After intensive training, the student researchers were able to recruit student activists, conduct interviews, analyze data, and begin preparing a manuscript under the guidance of the faculty team. Student researchers on the project included Kendall Cage, Mireya Campuzano, and Rafaela Lucioni at Mason, Cristal Badu from WM, and Brenda Goodson from JMU.

The team’s initial task was to learn what college student activists face through in-depth personal interviews. Explains Chen, “We found that burnout is prevalent among student activists. They experienced anxiety, panic, depression, hopelessness, or guilt – feeling physically and mentally exhausted. They felt pressure to keep laboring, advocating, organizing, and marching despite their own needs or limits. The difficulty in balancing school, family, and activism and the lack of perceived support for activist work and/or training to do the work at the institutional level all contributed to their burnout.”

With the preliminary findings, faculty and student researchers then designed and organized a Fall 2022 workshop titled “Renewal and Resilience: A Community of Student Activists,” which featured student activists fighting for food security, prison reform, racial justice, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, and gun control at Mason, Virginia Tech, and Virginia Commonwealth University. Following the student activist panel, Castle presented “Regenerating the Self,” encouraging participants to assess their well-being with the help of a self-care workbook. Participants were also encouraged to create their own maintenance plans to help in times of stress. Lisa Porter concluded the program by sharing an interview with Crimson Solano, a community leader of Harrisonburg-based Comité Salvadoreño Paisanos Unidos, a pro-immigrant policy advocate group.

Now, the team is in dissemination mode. The project was featured at https://integrative.gmu.edu/articles/18135.  They are developing a virtual community with the Human Rights and Global Justice Initiative for student activists, which is under construction in conjunction with Mason’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth. They have also submitted a book proposal on the well-being of student activists and are in the process of identifying external grants to expand this research further.

“This 4-VA@Mason grant helped us take a big step forward to take care of student leaders on our college campuses in Virginia. Without them, positive steps toward change are in peril,” says Chen. “It helped us take a critical look at where we can go from here. There is much more to be done.”

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Best Practices for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Identified and Shared Statewide

 

Effective teaching is a cornerstone of Virginia higher education. To attain that critical bar, it is essential that successful teaching strategies are created and maintained, and that they meet students’ needs.  This necessitates classroom-based research — known as the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Faculty-focused SoTL research achieves multiple objectives including identifying best practices in educational strategies for a specific field and promoting a university’s overall teaching excellence.

While SoTL is crucial to gain a greater understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in the classroom, very few faculty are prepared to conduct such research independently. Thus, support for SoTL frequently falls to campus Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs). CTLs are generally small and tasked with a wide range of faculty assistance, so identifying appropriate SoTL strategies presents a time and resource challenge.

This dilemma faced the Stearns Center at Mason as well as three other 4-VA schools — Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia.  Each wanted to address the SoTL gap. The solution was recognized via a 4-VA Collaborative Research Grant, allowing the schools to work together to create sustainable SoTL programming.  The goal was to create or refine plans for engaging and supporting faculty in SoTL at their specific institutions, to develop and investigate the impact of cross-institutional support programming for faculty developers, and ultimately improve the research competitiveness of faculty at each institution. Although not part of the 4-VA partnership, the prospect of such work also attracted the attention of faculty at Mary Washington University who were interested in joining the effort.

Led by the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning Director, Shelley Reid, with key support from Mason graduate assistant Sophia Abbot, the team represented a state-wide effort, including Ed Brantmeier, Interim Executive Director/Assistant Director of the Center for Faculty Innovation (JMU); Dayna Henry Assistant Director of the Scholarship Area at the Center for Faculty Innovation (JMU); Kim Case, Director of Faculty Success (VCU); Kim Filer, Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development/Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (VT); Lindsay Wheeler, Assistant Director of STEM Education Initiatives at the Center for Teaching Excellence and Jessica Taggart, Postdoctoral Research Associate (UVA);  and Melissa Wells, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of the Center for Teaching (Mary Washington). “Through our 4-VA@Mason grant, as well as the Complementary Grants at our 4-VA partner schools, we saw an opportunity to help CTLs avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ in a key area of faculty support,” explained Reid. “SoTL is a growth area for CTLs, and this grant provided an opportunity to design that growth intentionally and collaboratively—and then to share the model with other CTLs nationally.”

Together, the group researched and built effective support structures for SoTL training. As a “community of practice,” the group met regularly to exchange strategies already in use and constructed additional strategies and resources for both CTL leaders and faculty. Next, they developed and presented workshops for national and local audiences to guide other CTL leaders in building collaborative structures. At these workshops, attendees learned about evidence-based models, common SoTL support programming across institution types, and received peer feedback on their plans. Presentations were made at the Professional & Organizational Development in Higher Education Network Conference, the International Consortium for Educational Development, the Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference (Mason), the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy (VT), and an online workshop for SCHEV (VCU).

Next, the team created online resources, an open access trove of tools for SoTL developers, including a Taxonomy of common language and organizational structure for understanding a variety of SoTL program models — organized by program type with a detailed description of each model. It also includes examples to further support readers’ envisioning of program possibilities. Further, visitors can access a strategic plan worksheet, which guides SoTL developers through the details of their aspirational and future plans in the context of their institution and provides a venue to receive peer feedback on specific aspects of their plan.

The group continues to spread the word about effective SoTL practices through the following publications:

  • International Journal of Academic Development Impact of a Regional Community of Practice for Academic Developers Engaged in Institution-Level Support for SoTL (Lukes, Abbot, Henry, Wells, Baum, Case, Brantmeier, & Wheeler)
  • To Improve the Academy Strategic Planning Tools for Educational Developers Supporting SoTL Cultures and Programs at their Institutions (Lukes, Abbot, Wheeler, Henry, Case, Wells, Brantmeier)
  • New Directions for Teaching and Learning Examining a Regional Educational Developer Community of Practice for Advancing Institutional Cultures of SoTL Engagement (Abbot, Lukes, Baum, Case, Henry, Brantmeier, Wheeler)

“Our team members have been particularly excited about the positive reception of the collaborative model through the well-attended national workshops. We’re looking forward to the conversations that are made possible through the multiple publications that will increase our audience and enable other CTLs to build their own collaborations.” concludes Reid.