Diversity and Inclusive Learning

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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Toy-building event at Mason's MIX marks marvelous start to Innovation Week

Tama Moni — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 21:43:42 +0000

Toy-building event at Mason's MIX marks marvelous start to Innovation Week Tama Moni Fri, 02/24/2023 - 16:43

In 1951, the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) founded Engineers Week—a week-long event held every February that highlights the influence of STEM education and practice. During Engineers Week, NSPE advocates for diversity and inclusion in the engineering workforce by supporting outreach to children and young adults hoping to inspire the next generation of engineers. The College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) at ��AV joined this event by hosting Innovation Week. This year’s theme, ‘Creating the Future: Innovating in Solidarity,’ aims to match these NSPE goals by presenting activities that show how engineers and computing professionals can improve the world.

Kicking off the week, the CEC’s Office of Diversity, Outreach, and Inclusive Learning (DOIL) partnered with the Mason Innovation Exchange (MIX) by inviting the community to build toys that will be donated to the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project. Mercadi Crawford, a diversity associate at DOIL, said her team formed a committee with CEC faculty and staff to create this event.

“We wanted to make sure that we were helping the community in some way. So, we reached out to the playtime nonprofit organization, which is an organization that provides recess and play spaces for unhoused youth,” Mercadi Crawford, diversity associate, College of Engineering and Computing

CEC Maker Space Day at the MIX - students and faculty design, build, and create custom toys in the MIX for the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Creative Services

This event was free, interactive, and publicly accessible, and offered participants a chance to make a difference in the community. Yuta Sugiyama, a senior computational data science major in the College of Science, works at the MIX and came up with the idea for the toy project.

“Part of my job at the MIX is to assist or get on board with projects from other departments and students by offering my skills and talents. Knowing that the cause was homeless children, I wanted to assist by designing a toy that would inspire homeless children to become engineers and hopefully get them out of their situation," Sugiyama said.

Tim Nielsen, the manager for the MIX, said Sugiyama suggested the idea of building interactive toys that the children would play with. He said he wanted to transform the toy into Mr. Potato Head to add an “element of play” to the toy. “We wanted something that was designed from scratch. We wanted it to be something that’s good,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen explained how the MIX provides a creative outlet for students, organizations, and the public.

“I want the folks who are here to not just be doing an activity, but doing an activity that is engaging with the space so they kinda see what’s available here,” he said.

Students built the toys using multiple pre-made laser-cut wood pieces, pipettes, and googly eyes. They bonded the pieces together with glue. This interactive activity resembled building a puzzle, with participants using mathematical perspective and creativity to make art.

Brittany Johnson-Matthews, assistant professor in the computer science department, served on the event’s organizing committee. “These types of activities I find to be important to kind of bring balance to STEM education and STEM training. As well as to make people realize that it can be fun to do technical and stimulating things," she said.

To generate interest in the event, flyers, and social media posts were distributed on the CEC digital and print platforms. Perhaps the best way was word of mouth, as Theo Zamani, a junior mechanical engineering major, learned about it. Zamani, the president of the Mason American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) chapter, promoted the event with ASME members.

“I took this project on and promoted it to help the cause. It was the first time this was done, and this was a great way for people to give back to the community.”

She said having fellow students participate in activities like this can be beneficial in many ways. “It’s a great way to give back. It’s also nice as a hands-on activity. I hope we have events like this in the future.”

About the MIX
The MIX which is located on the ground floor of Horizon Hall on the Mason Fairfax Campus. This collaborative space hosts workshops, competitions, and accelerator programs for the public and provides opportunities for them to build creative projects.

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DOIL's second annual BLAST Off Week highlights resources, progress

Tama Moni — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 17:55:15 +0000

DOIL's second annual BLAST Off Week highlights resources, progress Tama Moni Mon, 10/03/2022 - 13:55

Each day of the second annual BLAST Off Week, hosted by the College of Engineering and Computing’s Office of Diversity, Outreach, and Inclusive Learning (CEC DOIL), focused on a different theme: Belonging, Leadership, Access, Success, and Trailblazing. The week’s events featured resources available to CEC students.

DOIL Diversity Associate Mercadi Crawford notes one change from last year: “’T’ last year stood for ‘transformation,’ and so that was us just starting the office; that was us trying to figure out what we wanted CEDRIC to look like [and] what we wanted BLAST Off events to look like. This year, we did ‘trailblazing,’ because we couldn’t have done any of that [transformation] without a certain amount of people that helped us. We wanted to make sure that they received the award.”

CEDRIC, the Computing and Engineering Diversity Resource Information Center, has a new location on the second floor of the Nguyen building, Office ENGR 2800, and was the location of the inaugural Trailblazers Awards ceremony.

Chris Carr, Associate Dean for Diversity, Outreach, and Inclusive learning serves food to students at the Career Prep Simulation Lab. Photo by Ron Aira/Creative Services/��AV

Crawford adds the awardees were “people who were with us when we only had one staff member when it was only Dr. Carr [CEC’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Outreach, and Inclusive Learning & Chief Diversity Officer] trying to do events and do things for all the students here in the building.” Even now, after the addition of Crawford and Christi Wilcox to DOIL, Crawford says, “These [awardees] are still people that we reach out to: we had faculty...willing to help us get our curriculum together; we had staff...willing to help us get our spaces...and reach out to our students. We thought that it was very important for them to be recognized because they could see our vision back when we couldn't see it. They really did set the trail for what we are going to become.”

For CEC students at large, BLAST Off Week culminated in Thursday’s career preparation event, which featured professional hair and makeup services, free professional clothing, and resume and application workshops. This year’s BLAST Off Week events took place from September 19 to September 23. There was a noticeably bigger crowd this year, which Crawford attributes not only to reduced Covid-19—related fears but also to the participation of partner sponsor CACI and to greater marketing efforts prior to the event.

“We were just excited about how many students were excited about it,” says Crawford.

BLAST Off week’s events were as follows:

BELONGING
At an ice cream social on Monday, hosted by DOIL in partnership with Undergraduate Student Services, students could chat with representatives from student and university organizations, who promoted their mission, values, and resources at tables on the lawn.

LEADERSHIP
On Tuesday, students learned how to navigate their academic journey and transition to the workplace at a CACI Leadership Panel in the Johnson Center.

ACCESS
Resource fairs on Wednesday for students and staff highlighted where students could find support when applying to fellowships, graduate schools, research funding, and chances to study abroad.

SUCCESS
Thursday featured career prep resources, including barbers, professional makeup artists, and a professional attire closet in addition to career workshops on building resumes, creating professional correspondences, establishing a professional profile, and applying for jobs.

TRAILBLAZING
Eight people and two corporate partners of DOIL received Trailblazers Awards, which recognize those who have demonstrated excellence in maintaining a socially conscious STEM environment. Award recipients include Assistant Professor of Statistics Jonathan Auerbach, PhD Candidate in Information Technology Dominique Calder, undergraduate software engineering student Natnael Haile, Information Technology Specialist Larry Jackson, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering Leigh McCue, Director of Teaching Excellence with the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning E. Shelly Reid, CEC Operations Manager Joyce Rose, Executive Director of Mason’s Institute for Digital InnovAtion Kamaljeet Sanghera, Bechtel, and CACI.

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Announcing the recipients of the 2023 Presidential Faculty Excellence Awards

Faculty Excellence in Teaching

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Faculty Excellence in Social Impact

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Toy-building event at Mason's MIX marks marvelous start to Innovation Week

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DOIL's second annual BLAST Off Week highlights resources, progress

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