Mason Media Blog

Susan Shields

Mason dance professor Susan Shields was featured in a great article in the Washington Post. In the article, she talks about her successful career as one of only a handful of female freelance choreographers in the industry.

Shields has created works for some of the best contemporary ballet companies, including Washington Ballet, Boston Ballet II, and most recently, Ballet West. Her work on Ballet West, “Grand Synthesis,” we be presented on Tuesday, Aug. 23, at 8:30 p.m. at the Filene Center at Wolf Trap. Shields’s piece will be among other works by renowned choreographers George Balanchine and Jiri Kylian.

Before becoming a professor in Mason’s School of Dance, Shields enjoyed a long performance career with Lar Lubovitch Dance Company. When she came to Mason in 1997, Shields tried her hand at choreography – in between touring with dance legend Mikhail Baryshnikov’s company, White Oak Dance Project.

Some of her earliest pieces were first staged on Mason dancers. Since then, her career as a choreographer has taken off, and as the article notes, she has created her own “style that fuses formal balletic technique with modern shapes and movement.”

Suzanne E. Smith

Associate  professor of history Suzanne E. Smith‘s book, “To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death” is one of three finalists for the nonfiction award in the 2011 Library of Virginia Literary Awards.

The Library of Virginia Literary Awards are given to outstanding Virginia authors in the areas of poetry, fiction, nonfiction (and, in the case of nonfiction, also by any author about a Virginia subject), and literary lifetime achievement. These are juried awards and winners in each category receive a cash prize and an engraved crystal book. Past winners include Barbara Kingsolver, Annette Gordon-Reed, Debra Nystrom, Lisa Spaar, Carrie Brown, Helon Habila, Deborah Eisenberg, Wesley Hogan, Scott Nelson, Melvin Ely, James I. Robertson Jr., Charles Wright, Constance Merritt, and R. T. Smith.

Smith’s book explores African American funeral directors’ reputations as both community leaders and con artists and how these two images created a tension that worked to create a legendary, sometimes notorious, status for funeral directors in African American culture.

Smith’s research interests include the relationship of popular culture, music and art to social protest; the study of film and collective memory; and the history of death in America. Her first book, “Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit,” examined Motown and its relationship to the black community of Detroit and the civil rights movement.

Smith has also contributed to various public history projects, including the film “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring” for the American Experience series on PBS, and the series, “I’ll Make Me A World: African American Arts in the Twentieth Century,” from Blackside Productions. She has a PhD in American Studies from Yale University.

The 14th Annual Literary Awards Celebration will be held the evening of Saturday, October 15, 2011. All finalists for the awards series, as well as a complete list of nominees, is available here.

Take a trip to a winery for grape harvest and “crush” (think Lucille Ball). Learn about beer from a home brewer and historian on German brewing. Figure out how to sound smart at beer- and wine-tasting parties. Oh, and earn class credit.

A new class this year, Global Health Perspectives on Alcohol, will accomplish all of these goals and more. Housed in the College of Health and Human Service’s newly formed Department of Nutrition and Food Studies, the course will “investigate the impact of beer and wine in health and society from a global perspective,” according to the catalog.

In addition to a planned visit to the King Family Winery in Crozet, Va., other field trips will also be scheduled. They hope to hold many of the classes in downtown Fairfax, where the department is leasing the location of the old Metro Silver Diner.

“There will be a wine-tasting component and a beer-tasting component—we’ll try to understand the processes from a chemical point of view,” says Gabriella Petrick, associate professor in Nutrition and Food Studies. “In other words, what goes on in a winery or brewery?”

Associate professor Gabriella Petrick

And that’s just the half of it. Students will also learn the trends of beer and wine consumption and production in the Western world from a historical perspective, including studying Prohibition. Other areas of the world will also be covered, like alcohol consumption in Australia or the making of banana beer in Africa. Some readings will focus on the archaeological and early historical evidence of wine and beer production.

From a global health standpoint, students will investigate the issue of alcohol abuse and explore different cultural attitudes toward wine and beer consumption. But students will also evaluate research on the possible health benefits of wine and beer.

“People actually drank more 50 to 100 years ago in the United States,” says Petrick. “So we will be looking at the so-called ‘taboo’ of alcohol in this country.”

Interested in brushing up on your booze knowledge? Spots are still available for the fall semester. Contact Petrick here for more information. Prerequisites include that students must be at least 21 years old and have taken basic chemistry and/or microbiology.

Mason pre-service teacher Jeness Vignoe works with elementary students at the Math Carnival. Photo by Courtney Baker

What’s your average on the Popcorn Drop contest? How does an artist, architect or ice cream shop owner use math daily?

These are just some of the questions that were explored during E=MC²: Enrichment in Mathematics Computing and Creativity, a two-week summer math camp for elementary students that took place in late July.

Throughout the program, students from Annandale Terrace Elementary School in Annandale, Va., and Westlawn Elementary School in Falls Church, Va., had the opportunity to learn about mathematics, technology and problem solving in a creative environment.

A unique aspect of the camp is that it allowed pre-service teachers from Mason to work collaboratively with mentor teachers at Mason’s Professional Development Partnership Schools. The pre-service teachers participated in professional development programs to learn more about teaching mathematics to a diverse population of students.

With their mentor teachers, the pre-service teachers planned daily lessons, gained valuable teaching experience and observed the techniques of the elementary teachers.

“There is a lot of controversy on how to best prepare our teachers for diverse classrooms,” says Jennifer Suh, assistant professor of mathematics education in Mason’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD).

“I believe that this type of partnership between the university and local schools that weaves course work into clinical experiences puts Mason at the cutting-edge of demonstrating best practices in enriching mathematics education to diverse learners.”

Mason pre-service teachers Deanna Andrews and AnneMarie Thomas play a mathematics game with students. Photo by Courtney Baker

The camp culminated with a Math Carnival and Kidz Biz Expo. During the Math Carnival, the elementary students invited their family and friends and taught them mathematics games that involved probability and number sense.

The Kidz Biz Expo gave students an opportunity to learn about financial literacy, such as starting a business with a loan, making a profit and building mathematical power.

The camp was jointly supported by CEHD’s Elementary Education program and the Math Science Partnership (MSP) Center at Mason. The MSP Center, which was established by Suh and Padmanabhan Seshaiyer, associate professor of mathematical sciences in Mason’s College of Science, supports student learning in grades K-8 and professional development for math teachers. The MSP Center is funded by a grant from the Virginia Department of Education.

***Media Advisory***

Members of George Mason University’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program (ASSIP) invite you to join them for a poster session and luncheon at the Hylton Performing Arts Center on Mason’s Prince William Campus on Monday, August 15, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

A student completes lab work under the direction of a Mason faculty mentor as part of the Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program.

Now concluding its fifth year, ASSIP provides the opportunity for high school juniors, seniors and college undergraduates interested in exploring science and medicine to gain hands-on research experience. This summer, the 48 local high school and undergraduate students put in eight 40-hour weeks at Mason’s Prince William and Fairfax Campuses as they worked alongside their dedicated faculty mentors—33 in all—from disciplines such as chemistry, biochemistry, proteomics, genomics, neuroscience, biodefense, bioinformatics, computer science, nanotechnology, physics and environmental science.

Through regularly scheduled meetings with their mentors, as well as program-wide lab safety training, career workshops and guest speaker seminars, students receive exposure to levels of science that many aspiring researchers will not see until they enter the workforce. Investigations this summer include global challenges such as cancer, HIV, tuberculosis, biothreat agents and Alzheimer’s disease. Learn more about the program here.

The poster session will highlight the students’ work with their faculty mentors. Featured speakers include Alan Merten, president of George Mason University; Dr. Lance Liotta, co-director, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine at Mason; and Annalise Schoonmaker, a three-time participant in the Aspiring Scientists program.

When: Monday, August 15, 2011
Poster Session: 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Awards Ceremony and Lunch: 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Where: Hylton Performing Arts Center
10960 George Mason Circle
Manassas, VA 20110

More: This event is open to media. For more information and to RSVP, please
contact Leah Fogarty at 703-993-8781 or email her at lfogart1@gmu.edu.