Summer 2024

SeaGlide Summer Camp ends swimmingly

Martha Bushong — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:58:56 +0000

SeaGlide Summer Camp ends swimmingly Martha Bushong Tue, 08/06/2024 - 09:58

Lap swimmers at the Freedom Aquatic and Fitness Center on ��ӽ紫ý's Science and Technology Campus shared the pool with some unusual visitors on Friday, July 25, as more than a dozen high school students tested their underwater gliders on the final day of the SeaGlide Summer Camp.

Splashdown! High school campers launch their maritime robots at the pool inside the Freedom Aquatics and Fitness Center. Photo by Ayman Rashid/Office of University Branding

The camp is supported by the National Science Foundation grant (NSF), BRITE Relaunch: Persistent and Accessible Maritime Monitoring (PAMM), which promotes STEM outreach activities in maritime robotics. College of Engineering and Computing Professor Leigh McCue started the camp a few years ago to help get high schoolers excited about STEM.

According to Kim Campbell, a parent of one of the high schoolers, the camp exceeded its goal. “This camp engages your child mentally and physically,” said Campbell. “I felt it resembled an abbreviated summer college course. The instructors were hands-on and made the course exciting. My child talked about the camp every day for a minimum of an hour after she departed.”

At the camp, students built an untethered underwater glider from a kit designed by RoboNation. The kit provides supplies and directions, but students can innovate and experiment with different designs. The kit includes a sports water bottle that forms the hull of the glider with material for wings that extend from the sides. The glider moves by changing its buoyancy, taking in or expelling water. making it sink and rise. As the glider travels up and down, its “wings” generate lift, which propels the glider forward. Different colored lights indicate the glider’s status as it rises, falls, and moves forward.

The high school students built their gliders from a kit and tested them in the Freedom Aquatic and Fitness Center pool. Photo by Ayman/Rashid/Office of University Branding

Graduate research assistant Vanessa Barth who works in McCue’s lab at the Potomac Science Center on fundamental research in maritime robotics supported by the NSF grant helped McCue coordinate and manage the camp activities. She said the students experimented through trial and error using pieces of a pool noodle or adding weights to achieve neutral buoyance with their gliders.

In the past, campers tested the devices in a four-foot-deep tank at ��ӽ紫ý’s Innovation Drive facilities, but this year McCue wanted to try something different, so she contacted the team at the Freedom Aquatic and Fitness Center, and they agreed. “I want to be sure to give a shout-out to them. They couldn’t have been more helpful and accommodating,” said McCue.

In the pool, the gliders could move more freely, even if they didn’t always stay within the lane lines. Sometimes they drifted into the lanes of recreational swimmers, but McCue said everybody was understanding. Some even stopped to watch and ask questions. Though the grant ends soon, McCue hopes to keep the camp going and wants to continue the partnership with the aquatic center.

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Leigh McCue-Weil

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National Science Foundation

“I will respond to your email when I return”: Psychology professor explores how to be better at taking vacation

Sarah Holland — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 16:41:16 +0000

“I will respond to your email when I return”: Psychology professor explores how to be better at taking vacation Sarah Holland Wed, 07/10/2024 - 12:41

With schools out and summer in full swing, many of us take advantage of ��ӽ紫ý’s location to spend some vacation time at the nearby beaches, local mountains, or even just at home. For most of us, it’s relaxation. For Lauren Kuykendall, it’s research.

Kuykendall, an associate professor of industrial-organizational psychology at ��ӽ紫ý, is working to define the relationship between out-of-office availability and organizational culture in order to help employees and employers be better about taking restful, recuperative vacation time.

She started her research last year with a survey of away messages.

Lauren Kuykendall. Photo provided.

“We wanted to see how people signal availability, and how that aligns with their perceptions of the norms of their team or work group,” she explained. “Most people don’t want to check emails on vacation, but if this is normalized in your work group, you start to worry about what others will think if you’re gone for two weeks.”

They found evidence that people in groups with high expectations for responsiveness, for example, were more likely to avoid setting firm no-contact boundaries in their away messages.

This inspired Kuykendall to design a more robust research model. During summer 2024, she will be conducting more comprehensive surveys with research participants before and after their vacations to better understand how workplace social dynamics impact vacation experiences.

As an expert in employee well-being, burnout, and work-nonwork balance, Kuykendall believes that “people do things because they are desirable and because they are feasible. Vacations are desirable, but they don’t always feel feasible because of the repercussions: hundreds of emails, working long hours right before in order to be able to go on vacation, so on and so forth. So people sometimes choose not to bother. They don’t see the net positive of it.”

But she believes there are ways employees can set up themselves and their teams for vacation success. First, through forming habits around recuperative and restful behaviors. “Habits are essentially self-controlled behavior, and it’s funny to think about leisure as a self-controlled behavior,” she said. “But it’s important for us to have these leisure activities that are habits for us to create that separation between work and nonwork. It’s a great protection against burnout.”

Second, Kuykendall emphasized that a group’s culture of work-nonwork boundaries is established through modeling. “The leaders, supervisors, and organizations as a whole have a crucial part to play in making it easier for people to set and maintain the balance,” she said. “And there are practical things that teams and leaders can do, like encouraging their team to plan for expected absences.”

She uses the phrase “pausing requires planning.” People don’t go on vacations because there is a fear that taking time away doesn’t feel feasible, whether you’re working on complex projects, running interdependent research, or supervising employees or students. But even the act of preparing others for your absence can make a huge difference.

“The sooner you tell people your plans, the more time everyone has to prepare and set up alternative workflows to accommodate,” she said. “And, if you’re in a leadership position, it models for employees that vacations are possible.”

Kuykendall said it’s become more commonplace, now, for colleagues in her department to let others know their upcoming out-of-office dates well in advance, a behavior that was modeled by a former department chair so everyone could plan accordingly for his absence. Several of her colleagues now include their upcoming unavailability in their email signatures.

These practices aren’t just for multi-week vacations. “There’s a place for all lengths of vacations and breaks in our work-nonwork balance,” she said. “Everything from lunch breaks to week-long vacations have a purpose in restoring us.”

Skipping lunch every day but taking a two-week sojourn every six months, for example, isn’t an effective long-term solution for most people. It’s about the total package, Kuykendall said, and how we prioritize healthy work-rest rhythms in both the short- and long-term that will protect us from burnout.

Kuykendall is teaching and researching over the summer. But she also has her own vacation coming up in August to the Pacific Northwest. Talking about her upcoming vacation served as a reminder to for her to send an email with further information about her departure and what to expect while she’s gone.

“It’s PTO,” she joked. “I have to Prepare The Others."

Enhance human potential in the Department of Psychology

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College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Psychology

Summer 2024

Local high schoolers discover bioengineering at ��ӽ紫ý’s BioE Buzz Summer Camp

Teresa Donnellan — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 15:18:20 +0000

Local high schoolers discover bioengineering at ��ӽ紫ý’s BioE Buzz Summer Camp Teresa Donnellan Mon, 07/08/2024 - 11:18

A group of local rising high school juniors and seniors attended the BioE Buzz Summer Camp at ��ӽ紫ý in June. Organized by the Department of Bioengineering’s Internship Coordinator and Adjunct Professor Carolyn Wilson, the four-day camp introduced campers to the discipline’s applications in solving medical problems.

Research Assistant Professor David Lemonnier works with a student. Photo by Eduardo Macedo/Office of University Branding

Throughout the week, campers met graduate and undergraduate students and faculty, received tours of ��ӽ紫ý's state-of-the-art research facilities and the Fairfax Campus, and participated in lab activities led by faculty on such topics as molecular biology, nanotechnology, neuroscience, ultrasound technology, and community-engaged design.

Hands-on experiences allowed students to apply their knowledge and develop their interests in practical settings.

One activity, led by Associate Professor Remi Veneziano and doctoral student Dylan Scarton, introduced the campers to DNA origami through a lab that involved gel electrophoresis.

Doctoral student Zahra Taghizadeh led an activity about muscle movement. Photo by Eduardo Macedo/Office of University Branding

In addition, the students learned some basics about sterile technique and gained hands-on experience in cell culture during an activity led by doctoral student Bryce Dunn.

Another activity, led by postdoctoral researcher J. Jesus Hernandez-Perez, involved using computer simulation of neuromuscular junctions.

Shirin Movaghgharnezhad, an assistant research professor, led an activity where students could activate and record muscle movement on each other.

Doctoral student Erica King led an activity that involved using ultrasound and force plate technology to visualize muscles in the body.

Master's student Gavin Smiga leads virtual reality activity. Photo by Eduardo Macedo/Office of University Branding

Research Assistant Professor Samuel Acuna and Professor Siddhartha Sikdar led another activity in the Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions (CASBBI). In addition to introducing the students to methods that measure brain rhythms, the pair demonstrated and had the students interact with a former undergraduate team’s senior design project, a virtual reality system for physical therapy.

By participating in the BioE-Buzz Summer Camp at ��ӽ紫ý, campers not only improved their understanding of bioengineering and their familiarity with ��ӽ紫ý but also developed critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

An exceptional opportunity for high school juniors and seniors to immerse themselves in the world of bioengineering, the BioE Buzz Summer Camp is planned to recur in summer 2025.

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First Cohort of NEW Leadership Virginia Wraps Up Weeklong Visits with Women Leaders

Andrew J Schappert — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 16:48:02 +0000

First Cohort of NEW Leadership Virginia Wraps Up Weeklong Visits with Women Leaders Andrew J Schappert Tue, 06/25/2024 - 12:48

While some college undergraduates enjoyed downtime during the summer break, 16 students from universities in Virginia skipped the beach and spent six days in June meeting business, social, and political leaders in and around Washington, D.C., with a focus on women’s leadership in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger is surrounded in her office by the NEW Leadership Virginia cohort. Photo by Xavier Jimenez/Schar School of Policy and Government

U.S. Rep. Don Beyer makes a point during his meeting with the NEW Leadership students. Virginia House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, the NEW Leadership Virginia Faculty in Residence, is in green. Photo by Xavier Jimenez/Schar School of Policy and Government.

The weeklong residential summer program was the pilot edition of NEW Leadership Virginia, a program designed to engage students from Virginia colleges and universities with women in prominent leadership roles and allies as they shared their experiences and insights, learn about women’s participation in American policy, politics and public life, and develop and practice leadership skills. The program, the only one of its kind in Virginia, was hosted by the Gender and Policy (GAP) Center at ��ӽ紫ý’s Schar School of Policy and Government in partnership with the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP).

"NEW Leadership Virginia is a unique opportunity for undergraduate students in Virginia pursuing a range of academic majors to gain a sense of the possible in the public sphere,” said codirector Jill Deering, senior assistant dean for student and academic affairs at the Schar School. "This week is about building leadership skills, networks, and a supportive cohort that will serve the participants for years to come."

The cohort included students from ��ӽ紫ý, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC), James Madison University, the University of Virginia, the College of William & Mary, and Norfolk State University. Two participants were spring graduates while the remainder were undergraduates. Events took place from June 9 to 14.

The recipients of the ‘Women Who Mind the GAP’ Leadership Awards stand with Bonnie Stabile, second from left: From left, Doorways CEO Diana Ortiz, Director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Civil Rights Center Naomi Barry-Perez, and President of the Consumer Technology Association Kinsey Fabrizio.

The program included an “action project” in which faculty and Schar School interns helped students research a public-facing issue, imitate a legislative hearing, and defend their team's position, with the idea being to develop public speaking and communication proficiencies, among other skills.

A highlight of the week took place on Thursday, June 13, when the program descended on Capitol Hill to speak to visit the offices of U.S. Reps. Jen Kiggans (R), Abigail Spanberger (D), Jennifer McClellan (D), and Don Beyer (D), who is also a ��ӽ紫ý student. While the students met in person with Spanberger, McClellan, and Beyer, they were hosted by Kiggans’ professional staff in her place.

For government and international politics major Ella Duncan-High, the week was exactly what she was hoping for. “I was looking for ways to specifically get involved and gain experience and training outside of the school year, so the summer was the perfect opportunity,” she said. “And I feel like I’m learning a lot even though I’m technically not in school right now.”

Duncan-High said her favorite part of the week was “the session where we get to role-play a press conference and judiciary hearing. I really am enjoying the hands-on experience of being able to work with not only the professors and the assistants who have real work experience with these scenarios, but also getting to work with people my age and similar interests.”

Zateya Jackson, a rising senior at VCU studying political science with a civil rights concentration, said highlights for her were meeting Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan “and my favorite speaker was Charniele Herring, the Virginia House Majority Leader and NEW Leadership Virginia Faculty in Residence, because of their backgrounds as Black women,” she said. “They encourage me to run for office and show that women of color can overcome adversity.” (Herring, who accompanied the students on their visits, is a 1993 ��ӽ紫ý alum in economics.)

U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan meets the NEW Leadership members on the steps of the Capitol. Photo by Ron Aira/Creative Services

“My favorite was Abigail Spanberger,” said NVCC second-year business management student Karen Blanco. "When talking about confidence, Spanberger advised, ‘Don't think about it twice, just say it, and don't worry about what others would say.’ Since English is my second language, I often debate if I should speak up, but never do. So that inspired me.”

The insights offered to the students applied to many fields, not just politics. GAP Director and Schar School professor Bonnie Stabile, who accompanied the NEW Leadership students every step of the way for the week, made that point clear. “You don't have to be elected to office to exhibit leadership and make a difference,” she said. “Many industries need similar skills.”

That idea was on display during a dinner and networking event on June 12 featuring the three “Women Who Mind the GAP” Leadership awardees: U.S. Department of Labor’s Civil Rights Center Director Naomi Barry-Perez; Doorways CEO Diana Ortiz; and Consumer Technology Association President Kinsey Fabrizio, a 2003 ��ӽ紫ý alumna in government and international politics and Spanish.

During the NEW Leadership program, students quickly used their new skills to pursue their political interests. Ayman Habib, a rising ��ӽ紫ý global affairs junior is the director of administration and logistics for No Lost Generation. She thanked Beyer for supporting Virginia refugees and invited the congressman to meet the three refugee students who will be on ��ӽ紫ý’s Fairfax Campus this fall through the State Department’s Welcome Corps.

NEW @ Mason: There’s no question about where the NEW Leadership Virginia program took place. Photo by Buzz McClain/Schar School of Policy and Government

“I wanted to gain clarity at the policy level for our cause and expand our outreach so refugees will have federal support,” she said following the meeting with Beyer. “How fantastic would caring congresspeople be for our students?”

At the end of the week, students shared their future plans, whether academic, personal or professional, and connected on all manner of social medias with the new people they met.

The 2025 edition of the New Leadership Program Virginia takes place in June and Samantha Mendoza-Hernandez, a political science and international studies major at VCU, encourages anyone with a similar ambition to polish resumés and professional skills to apply next year.

“I think it's definitely worth it,” she said. “The program has covered ground that a lot of professionals sometimes overlook and helps with foundations like networking, rhetoric, mannerisms in the workplace, and other details. And really helps with fine-tuning and confidence going into the workforce.”

The biggest takeaway from the week for the Schar School’s Duncan-High “has been meeting people from all different backgrounds,” she said. “Everyone here has very different interests, majoring in different things that aren’t just policy and government related, and everyone is here because they all hope to be a woman in leadership in the future.

“Being surrounded by women who have big aspirations in various fields is so inspiring and is an experience I wouldn't have been able to have otherwise.”

Additional reporting by Buzz McClain