Classroom & Online Teaching

Announcing the recipients of the 2023 Presidential Faculty Excellence Awards

Melanie Balog — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 18:00:36 +0000

Announcing the recipients of the 2023 Presidential Faculty Excellence Awards Melanie Balog Tue, 04/18/2023 - 14:00

��AV President Gregory Washington has announced the recipients of the 2023 Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence, honoring 12 Mason faculty members for their work on behalf of the university, students, and the broader community.

This is the seventh year for the Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence, selected by a review committee that includes prior award winners and university senior leaders. Recipients will be honored at a reception May 11.

The awards honor faculty with up to six years of service, six to 12 years of service, and more than 12 years of service.

“Our faculty continue to make extraordinary contributions in all fields and at all levels,” Mason President Gregory Washington said. “The awards are a way to honor faculty for their outstanding work in teaching, research, scholarship, social impact, and diversity and inclusion. The honorees exemplify the caliber of faculty we have here at the largest and most diverse public university in Virginia.”

The John Toups Presidential Medal for Excellence in Teaching is presented to a faculty member whose teaching inspires and stimulates students in the finest tradition of higher education.

The Beck Family Presidential Medal for Excellence in Research recognizes extraordinary contributions by members of the Mason faculty to consequential research of high impact. The award is presented annually to a Mason faculty member whose research represents groundbreaking advances in their field.

The United Bank Presidential Medal for Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion recognizes extraordinary contributions in teaching, research, scholarship, creative works or service that directly advances diversity and inclusion inside and outside the Mason community.

The Earle C. Williams Presidential Medal for Excellence in Social Impact is presented to a faculty member in any discipline who makes extraordinary efforts to use their scholarship to solve real-world problems.

The complete list of 2023 honorees is below. See prior recipients for 2017-2022.

Faculty Excellence in Teaching

Evmenova

The John Toups Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Teaching:

Anya S. Evmenova is a professor in the Division of Special Education and disAbility Research in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD). She specializes in accessible instruction methods grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with application in face-to-face, hybrid, and online environments.

Evmenova is an exceptionally prolific advisor to doctoral students and has gone to great lengths to involve graduate students in her research projects and publications. She has also raised more than $14 million in federal grants to support her research, which focuses on the use of assistive technology in the instruction and cognitive development of diverse learners. Her research projects include professional development opportunities for teachers, caregivers, students, or individuals with disabilities to enhance their use of technology.

Evmenova has conducted workshops for teachers in numerous countries to transform their inclusive education practices for students with disabilities. At Mason, she has helped develop and conduct the Online Teaching Initiative to prepare CEHD faculty for effective online teaching. She serves as one of CEHD’s coordinators of digital learning and the associate director for the Global Online Teacher Education Center. She has received the Teaching Excellence Award for Technology-Enhanced Teaching (2016) and the inaugural Online Teaching Excellence Award (2018).

Lewis

Gwendolyn (Wendy) Lewis is an instructional associate professor in the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience (IPN) in the College of Science. Lewis joined IPN when it was created in 2016 and was the first teaching-focused faculty member dedicated solely to the program. She has served as the undergraduate coordinator for IPN since 2018, overseeing the program’s growth and expansion and playing a lead role in the development of the program’s curriculum.

Lewis has helped position the neuroscience program as a leader in innovative course design by promoting the development of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs). In Lewis’s research course, the Zebrafish Neurodevelopment Laboratory, students design and carry out novel research projects to investigate the nervous system in zebrafish and present their work at internal and external symposiums. Through this course, which is part of the Mason Impact+ program and Research and Scholarship Intensive, Lewis has increased the access and availability of undergraduate research experiences, mentoring more than 100 students on dozens of research projects since 2017.

Wooten

Courtney Adams Wooten is associate chair for writing program administration and an assistant professor in the English Department in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS). She joined Mason in 2018 and regularly teaches general education composition courses as well as graduate courses in composition pedagogy.

Wooten has worked on projects such as a linguistic justice and contract grading working groups. She has also collaborated with other faculty members on various projects that received two Mason Curriculum Impact Grants, a Stearns Center Anti-Racist and Inclusive Teaching (ARIT) Grant, and a national Conference on College Composition and Communication Research Initiative Grant.

Wooten served on the Council of Writing Program Administrators Executive Board, and has edited many books and collections, in addition to publishing articles and book chapters about writing program administration and writing pedagogy. She has also served on the Mason Core Committee and the Faculty Senate Task Force on Reimagining Faculty Roles and Rewards.

Faculty Excellence in Research

Ascoli

The Beck Family Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Research: Giorgio A. Ascoli is a University Professor in the Bioengineering Department in the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) and Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience (IPN) in the College of Science. He joined the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at Mason in 1997 and is also founder and director of the Center for Neural Informatics, Structures, and Plasticity, a transdisciplinary research group.

Ascoli is founding editor of the journal Neuroinformatics and has contributed to the establishment of the fields of computational neuroanatomy and neuroinformatics. His laboratory investigates brain structure, activity, and function from the cellular to the circuit level. In the long term, Ascoli seeks to create large-scale, anatomically plausible neural networks to model entire portions of a mammalian brain.

Ascoli received the 2012 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. He was elected an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow in 2022 and won the National Institutes of Health and Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology DataWorks!Challenge Distinguished Achievement Award in 2023. His 2015 book Trees of the Brain, Roots of the Mind was published by MIT Press.

Gest

Justin Gest is an associate professor of policy and government at the Schar School of Policy and Government. He studies immigration and the politics of demographic change. He is the author of six books and a coeditor of the Oxford University Press book series, Oxford Studies in Migration and Citizenship.

Gest has written peer-reviewed articles in a variety of journals and has provided reporting or commentary for ABC, BBC, CBC, CNN, the Guardian, Los Angeles Times, NPR, the New York Times, Politico, Reuters, Vox, and the Washington Post.

In 2013, Gest received the Star Family Prize for Student Advising and, in 2014, he received the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize. These awards are Harvard University’s highest for student advising and faculty teaching, respectively. He has also earned the 2020 ��AV Teaching Excellence Award. He has served as a consultant to various government agencies and civil society organizations.

Lowder

Evan Marie Lowder, an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society in CHSS, researches strategies to reduce justice system contact and improve behavioral health outcomes among adults in the justice system or at risk of justice system involvement. Her work seeks to elevate decarceral strategies that promote individuals’ risk management and their connections to needed services in the community. She is also interested in understanding what drives disparate outcomes in the legal system, particularly for Black individuals.

Since joining Mason in 2019, Lowder has received more than $1 million in funding from local, state, and national organizations to study early intervention strategies that connect justice-involved individuals to community-based treatment, facilitate release from pretrial detention, and improve community outcomes. Her research routinely involves collaboration with professionals in local community organizations, jails, pretrial services, courts, and community corrections. At Mason, she directs the Early Justice Strategies Lab, which trains undergraduate and graduate students in applied research methods.

Yan

Zhisheng Yan, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology in CEC and a member of Mason’s Center for Secure Information Systems, develops immersive multimedia systems such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) for use in everyday life. Yan has launched a research program that replaces smartphones with smart headwear to enable immersive computing at scale. For this innovative research, he has received both the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award and Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiation Initiative Award.

Yan has chaired the Technical Program Committee for four international conferences and codirected the Review Committee of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Multimedia Communications Technical Committee. His services and leadership have been recognized with an IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Outstanding Reviewer Award, an IEEE SmartWorld Congress Outstanding Service Award, and an IEEE Cybermatics Congress Outstanding Leadership Award.

Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion

Craig

United Bank Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion: Richard T. Craig, an associate professor in Department of Communication and director of the MA in Communication Program in CHSS, began his career at Mason as a Preparing Future Faculty Fellow in 2009. Upon receiving his PhD from Howard University in 2011, he was appointed to a tenure-track position. He earned tenure and promotion to associate professor in 2017 and has served as the director of the Communication MA Program since that time.

In 2020–21, Craig was part of the faculty leadership team that planned the scale-up of the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) course that was approved to meet both Global Understanding and Social and Behavioral Sciences requirements for the Mason Core.

He has served as a member of the Just Society Task Force that worked with a subset of the Mason Core Committee and also served on the Quality Enhancement Plan Development Committee, which created the Transformative Education through Anti-Racist Community Engagement plan.

Currently, Craig is working to establish the Pop Culture Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access studies (IDEAs) Lab promoting and encouraging scholarship with a range of interest in pop culture.

Auerbach

Jonathan Auerbach is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics within CEC. His research covers topics at the intersection of statistics and public policy, including urban analytics, open data, and the collection, evaluation, and communication of official statistics.

The 2016 Public Understanding of Statistics Fellow and the 2020 Science Policy Fellow at the American Statistical Association, Auerbach has published research on pressing societal issues, such as the rise in middle-age mortality, the persistent gender gap in STEM, the security and accessibility of elections, and the quality of the Census. He is the principal investigator on a grant to study disparate health care outcomes arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a coprincipal investigator on a grant to study the state of United States’ data infrastructure.

Auerbach created a class unit in which students investigate the state of diversity and inclusion at Mason, as well as the use of campus water fountains and recycling bins.

Soundararajan

Shvetha Soundararajan is an instructional associate professor in the Department of Computer Science in CEC. At Mason since 2016, she is a strong advocate for women in the fields of computing and engineering. She leads the Break Through Tech DC initiative at Mason, which seeks to increase the number of women graduating with computing degrees and pursuing technology careers. In this role, Soundararajan is primarily involved in curriculum innovations and community building efforts that help increase the number of women studying and majoring in computer science at Mason.

Her research interests include agile transformation, requirements engineering, software architecture, and computer science education. She strives to inspire her students to learn and appreciate computer science, explore new ideas, and articulate their thoughts well. She has taught both introductory and advanced courses in computer science and software engineering.

Faculty Excellence in Social Impact

Jones

Earle C. Williams Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Social Impact: R. Christian Jones is a professor of aquatic ecology in the College of Science’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy, which he cofounded in 2000 and led as its first chair. He is also founder and director of the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center (PEREC) at the Potomac Science Center.

Jones arrived at Mason in the fall of 1980 just as the doctoral program in environmental science and public policy was launched, and he served as the director of the program from 1992 to 1995. In 1984, Jones initiated the long-term ecological study of Gunston Cove. This study, which involves biology and environmental science and policy faculty and is partially funded by Fairfax County, has trained more than 100 graduate and undergraduate students, produced more than 20 PhD dissertations and MS theses, and won U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awards for Environmental Excellence. The study is recognized as one of the nation’s longest-running aquatic ecology monitoring programs.

In the early 1990s, Jones and former Mason professor Don Kelso began their quest for an aquatic ecology lab. Their quest was fulfilled in 2018 when Mason opened the Potomac Science Center and PEREC, which currently houses the largest tidal freshwater research facility in the country.

Koper

Christopher S. Koper is a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society in CHSS and the principal fellow of Mason’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy. He specializes in issues related to policing, firearms policy, program evaluation, and evidence-based policy and practice. Koper has conducted extensive research for the U.S. Department of Justice and worked with many criminal justice practitioners and policymakers locally, nationally, and globally on the development, implementation, and evaluation of policies and programs.

Koper’s studies on firearms policy and policing have been cited extensively by policymakers and the media and used by numerous police agencies in the United States and internationally. Koper is a fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, coeditor of Criminology & Public Policy, coauthor of the award-winning book Evidence-Based Policing: Translating Research into Practice, and a recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Division of Policing of the American Society of Criminology.

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Learn About the Award

Ioulia Rytikova receives 2021 Online Teaching Excellence Award

Martha Bushong — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 12:29:15 +0000

Ioulia Rytikova receives 2021 Online Teaching Excellence Award Martha Bushong Tue, 07/06/2021 - 08:29

In This Story

Ioulia Rytikova

Congratulations to associate professor Ioulia Rytikova from the Department of Information Sciences and Technology for receiving the 2021 Stearns Center Digital Learning Online Teaching Excellence Award (OTEA). The OTEA is open to all instructional faculty at Mason (adjuncts, term, tenure-track, and tenured faculty) who have taught at least one fully online course during the past academic year and have at least four semesters completed of teaching fully online courses at ��AV.

This award acknowledges faculty who have displayed growth and development as online educators, demonstrated online student and learner engagement, and shown effective online teaching and impact.

The award letter says, “Dr. Rytikova designed and developed multiple interdisciplinary programs, concentrations, and courses in the emerging areas of data sciences and big data analytics, computer and information technologies, health information technologies, and statistical analysis.” During her fifteen years of teaching, she has applied all her efforts towards creating the kind of environment that encourages students’ growth both intellectually and emotionally. She successfully demonstrated her effectiveness through student and learner achievement for these efforts and contributions throughout the academic school year.

Rytikova is the first winner from the College of Engineering and Computing to receive this award. As part of OTEA’s recognition of achievement, she was honored at the 2021 Celebration of Teaching Excellence, on Friday, May 7.

The OTEA selection committee is comprised of Mason faculty who review teaching portfolios. The teaching portfolios provide each nominee an opportunity to share evidence for what is unique about their online teaching, concerning their discipline, best teaching practices, and student learning engagement

Rytikova says, “Preparing my Online Teaching Award portfolio has given me the important opportunity to look beyond daily tasks to consider larger educational issues, to assess my own strengths and weaknesses as a teacher, and to better understand the kinds of values I’d like my students to develop in class.”

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Mason professors promote technology-based coaching method for special education teachers

Colleen Rich — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 17:26:17 +0000

Mason professors promote technology-based coaching method for special education teachers Colleen Rich Mon, 03/29/2021 - 13:26

Photo by Getty Images

In the past few years, ��AV professors Margaret Weiss and Kelley Regan have become experts in a technology-based coaching method aimed specifically at helping special education teachers get feedback in real time.

The practice, called Bug-in-Ear (BIE) or eCoaching, allows a coach to observe special education teachers or teachers-in-training as they work with students, then give real-time feedback through a Bluetooth earpiece. The earpiece is synced with a device, such as a laptop or phone, and the coach can watch remotely, from home or an office, for example. While relatively simple technology-wise, BIE coaching is not widely used in teacher preparation programs, said Regan, academic program coordinator for Special Education in Mason’s College of Education and Human Development.

“It’s more powerful to have someone coaching you while you are in practice, rather than talking about it later,” said Regan. “Coaching a special education teacher while teaching in real-time allows that person to get immediate feedback and change what they are doing right away. It can also mean providing them with positive feedback right away or helping them think of an alternative way to approach their students.”

Another benefit to the BIE coaching is that a classroom situation isn’t interrupted by someone new coming into the classroom to observe, said Weiss.

“It’s intrusive to have someone new in the classroom, and this way the coach can be sitting remotely, observing through a screen,” said Weiss, an associate professor in special education. “And post-COVID, it may also be a benefit to have fewer people in a classroom.”

Mason has used BIE coaching in observing its students during their teaching internships. Each wireless earpiece costs between $15 and $35, and Mason has about 25 devices in stock for its student teachers. Student teachers are coached one at a time. They can be coached multiple times using the BIE method during a semester.

In addition, Regan and Weiss have worked with Loudoun County Public Schools to train their specialized reading coaches on the technology. In turn, they have been using the technology to guide their reading teachers.

Weiss and Regan suggest using BIE coaching to focus on one instructional area targeted for improvement at a time so as not to overload the teacher with too much feedback.

BIE coaching makes “the instructional improvement process more efficient and more focused,” said Jennifer Sassano, a supervisor in Loudoun County Public Schools Office of Special Education and an adjunct education professor at Mason.

In February, Weiss and Regan were invited to present BIE coaching best practices during a virtual conference for the Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability, and Reform Center (CEEDAR). The presentation, said Regan, allowed them to reach special education teachers and school leaders across the country to promote BIE coaching as a useful tool to improve teaching.

“We were thrilled to present the technology and to tell them about the lessons we’ve learned using it. We have seen the results and are very passionate about this work. We want to share it with as many people as possible,” said Regan.

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Mason faculty use innovative courses to help students understand coronavirus pandemic

Colleen Rich — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 14:00:32 +0000

Mason faculty use innovative courses to help students understand coronavirus pandemic Colleen Rich Tue, 02/23/2021 - 09:00

Rosemarie Zagarri, a ��AV professor, specializes in early American history. Last spring, when it became clear to her that the coronavirus pandemic would be “with us for a while,” she designed an Honors 240 class on pandemics in American history.

A poster from the 1918 pandemic. Photo provided

“I thought that by studying prior pandemics in this country, students would gain a larger perspective on what’s happening right now and better understand patterns of social response,” said Zagarri, a University Professor and Professor of History who teaches through the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Honors College.

Zagarri’s class is one of a handful of courses at Mason focusing on understanding the current pandemic by putting it into an academic context. Faculty teaching pandemic-related classes say that students are particularly engaged in learning because their classes help them better understand the world into which they have been thrust.

“It’s a great way to learn history because what they are studying is immediately relevant,” said Zagarri.

Davis Kuykendall, an assistant philosophy professor, is teaching Honors 131 Misinformation in Science and Honors 360 Scientific Controversies, two classes drawing from the philosophy of science, history of science and cognitive psychology to address misinformation. Both classes will look at the various ways that society has responded to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are examining how science works, how people look at and understand science, and how we communicate information relating to science effectively,” said Kuykendall. “The current pandemic provides a good example of misinformation relating to science, backlash against scientists and understanding why we need to listen to experts and get other people to listen to them.”

Karen Akerlof, an assistant professor in the College of Science’s Environmental Science and Policy Department, is having her EVPP 336 Human Dimensions of the Environment students conduct research on how other Mason students are experiencing the pandemic through questions related to sustainability.

“Students are studying and conducting research on socioecological systems and how social change occurs,” said Akerlof. “Through online surveys of Mason students, they have the opportunity to see how the pandemic is affecting the way their fellow students relate to the environment. Are they spending more or less time in green spaces? Are there changes in the amount of waste that they generate, or the way they think about social and environmental issues?”

The 25 students in Zagarri’s class are learning about past pandemics, including smallpox, cholera, polio and AIDS. Students study the medical, government, religious and community responses to the medical issues and treatments, along with the differential impact of pandemics on particular groups in society.

“We look at the way race, religion and science can be weaponized and affect how people respond to a mass pandemic,” said Zagarri.

Honors College sophomore Richard Szal said that he generally isn’t as invested in history as some of the other subjects he studies, but Zagarri’s class has made history interesting to him.

“It’s interesting to see and analyze the parallels between then and now,” said Szal, a medical laboratory science major. “It’s also helpful to know that there was hopelessness and fear then, much like there has been here. It puts it into perspective to know that this kind of devastation has happened before.”

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Danielle Catona Receives Grant for Redesigning Online Assessments

dhawkin — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 21:37:51 +0000

Danielle Catona Receives Grant for Redesigning Online Assessments dhawkin Thu, 01/28/2021 - 16:37

Congratulations to Dr. Danielle Catona, Assistant Professor in the Department of Global and Community Health, for recently receiving a Stearns Center grant for implementing alternative assessment strategies. The grant will allow Catona to conduct research on alternative assessment strategies for GCH 380: Public Health Research Methods. GCH 380 is an important aspect of the college’s accredited MPH program, and Catona’s research will provide valuable insight on improving it.

In her proposal, Redesigning Online Assessments, Catona identified the need to explore alternative assessments that allow students to engage with the complex topics of GCH 380 beyond simple memorization. During the course’s pilot semester, she intends to implement alternatives to exam-based assessments such as weekly online discussions and an original research proposal and presentation to foster student applications of course concepts and collaboration.

The Stearns Center, in collaboration with 4-VA at Mason, is piloting a program to provide up to ten (10) $4,000 grants and 1:1 instructional design support for faculty interested in implementing alternative assessment strategies into their online course. Catona’s grant is part of this program and is designed to support assessment strategies that help bolster student engagement, encourage academic integrity, and reduce tendencies toward academic outsourcing.