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.”

Susan Conard

Susan G. Conard, a research professor affiliated with the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science (GGS), the EastFIRE Laboratory and the Mason Center for Climate and Society in the College of Science at George Mason University, has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  Conard and other newly elected fellows are being recognized for their contributions to science and technology at the Fellows Forum on February 19 during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.  Conard is among the honorees from the AAAS Section on Biological Sciences.

Each year the AAAS Council elects members whose “efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished.”  The honor of being elected a Fellow of AAAS began in 1874 and is acknowledged with a certificate and rosette.

Conard is honored for her distinguished contributions to fire ecology, including  serving as president of the International Boreal Forest Research Association and as editor of the International Journal of Wildland Fie.  Prior to joining Mason, Conard served as the national program leader for Fire Ecology Research with the United States Forest Service.

Thousands of Patriots gathered on the evening of Friday, Sept. 3 to break the world record for the largest game of dodgeball. After almost an hour of play, Mason’s 1,257 participants beat the previous world record of 1,198 held by the University of Alberta.

Players were placed on either the Green or Gold team and received a commemorative dodgeball shirt with their team color. More than 100 silver balls were placed in the middle of the court, and when the whistle blew, players battled it out. At the end of the game, the Gold Team took home the esteemed title of  “Winner of the World’s Largest Dodgeball Game.”

The Office of Student Activities hopes to make this event an annual Welcome Week tradition.

According to the new Poets & Writers issue (September/October), George Mason University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program is tied with Purdue University for 36th place in the country. This is the magazine’s second annual rankings of the Top 50 programs in the country. Mason was ranked #37 last year.

Mason’s non-fiction tract is ranked #7 in the country. Its poetry tract is ranked 26th, fiction is at 36th.

Mason’s MFA in Creative Writing program, started in 1980, offers three concentrations. Each concentration—fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—requires 48 semester hours and takes at least three years to complete. Course work blends writing workshops with craft seminars and the study of literature. Each concentration also requires completion of a thesis (a book-length manuscript). Faculty publications total more than 65 books, and alumni and students publish with both small and major presses.

For more information about Mason’s MFA program, visit their web site.

Len Nichols

CHHS’ Len Nichols is scheduled to participate in a health care discussion on C-SPAN at 12:15 pm today which will be hosted by the Alliance for Health Reform.  Health care administrators will give an overview of how states and the federal government will begin implementing provisions of the new health care law President Obama signed on March 23rd. Speakers include representatives from the Health and Human Services Department, insurance companies and the states. The program can be watched live at http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN.aspx

Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs of The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) received one of 12 Google Digital Humanities awards announced this week.

Over the next two years, these awards will help fund research projects that focus on applying quantitative methods to specific fields within the humanities. In the case of CHNM, Cohen and Gibbs submitted the proposal, “Reframing the Victorians,” which will use Google Books and CHNM’s own tools and software to re-examine Victorian literature and determine if the stereotypical description of Victorians as optimists is actually true.

The research team will look at the claims of popular Victorian critic Walter Houghton and his book, “The Victorian Frame of Mind,” in which he states that most Victorians were very optimistic, and therefore in written texts used many more optimistic terms such as “light,” “sunshine,” and “hope.” However, because the author used only a very small group of works to test this theory, scholars have never been able to thoroughly assess this theory in a widespread fashion.

“The vast digital library of Google Books presents for the first time the possibility that we can conduct a comprehensive survey of Victorian writing—not just the well-known authors, but tens of thousands of lesser-known or even forgotten authors—to see if the Victorians truly did use the kinds of words and phrases that Houghton thought were indicative of their character,” says Cohen.

Google has worked to digitize more than 12 million books in more than 400 languages. Digital humanitarians can use text-analytic techniques to analyze massive amounts of literature, like those in the Google Books corpus, and identify trends over selected periods of time, by language, geography and topic.

The Center for History and New Media will also use their own software product, the open source tool Zotero that helps researchers gather and organize resources, and then annotate, organize and share the results of their research. Zotero already integrates well with Google Books, and the research team plans to incorporate both innovative tools in their research proposal to make the work of other scholars even easier.

Read more about the grants and CHNM’s work in the article by Inside Higher Ed.

George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) has made the Consumer Reports GreenerChoices useful links list for Climate and Energy Basics.

The center has made great strides this year with its Six Americas report which surveys and polls Americans on their opinions about climate change. Director Edward Maibach is also working on a National Science Foundation grant related to television weathercasters. He recently conducted the largest and most representative survey of television weathercasters and news directors.

Using this data, Maibach and his research team will next conduct a field test of 30-second, broadcast-quality educational segments that TV weathercasters can use in their daily broadcasts to educate viewers about the link between predicted (or current) extreme weather events in that media market and the changing global climate.

Ultimately, the team hopes to answer key research questions supporting efforts to activate TV meteorologists nationwide as an important source of informal science education about climate change.

At its meeting on March 24, the George Mason University Board of Visitors (BOV) passed a resolution reaffirming its commitment to nondiscrimination  “in any and all contexts.”

The BOV discussed at length the Virginia attorney general’s advice that the university’s policy regarding nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is not supported by state law. The result of the discussion was a resolution affirming the university’s full and continued support of nondiscrimination.

Here is the full text:

Resolution of the Board of Visitors of George Mason University

Whereas, a diverse and inclusive learning environment that respects and enhances the potential of all members of our community is vitally important to the mission of George Mason University to achieve excellence in teaching, research, and service; and

Whereas, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender faculty, students, administrators and staff make outstanding contributions to the accomplishment of the university mission; and

Whereas, the Governor of the Commonwealth has affirmed that discrimination based upon factors such as one’s sexual orientation or parental status violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution; and

Whereas, all employees and students of the Commonwealth deserve statutory protection against discrimination;

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Board of Visitors of George Mason University that it remains deeply committed to equal treatment of all persons in their dealings with the university in any and all contexts.

Mason’s Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics has just launched a new blog that will focus on current issues in health care administration and policy. Written by Len Nichols, professor and director of the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics at George Mason University, and Shuchita Madan, graduate research assistant, the newest posts focus on recently passed health care legislation.

Dr. Nichols, who is an expert in health care policy, has been widely quoted in the media over the last few days. Included below are some highlights of his views on this landmark legislation:

• Los Angeles Times – “Obama’s Healthcare Offers Familiar Bargain — Social Security and Medicare”
• USA Today – “Health Bill Spreads the Pain, Benefits”
• BusinessWeek – “Health-Care Overhaul Fight Moves to States, Agencies”
• Reuters – “Q+A: What Does Healthcare Passage Mean for Obama?”

If you would like to speak to Dr. Nichols for an upcoming story, please contact Marjorie Musick at (703) 993-8781 or at mmusick@gmu.edu.

Allison Macfarlane

Allison Macfarlane, associate professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University, was one of 15 experts chosen by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu for a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. The commission will provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the nation’s used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.

In light of the administration’s decision not to proceed with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, President Obama directed Secretary Chu to establish the commission to conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle.  The commission will provide advice and make recommendations on issues including alternatives for the storage, processing and disposal of civilian and defense spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.

Macfarlane has been studying the issue of nuclear energy policy for more than a decade and is a leading expert on nuclear-waste disposal. She recently sat on a National Research Council committee evaluating the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear-power research and development programs and is chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

The Las Vegas Sun and the New Statesman have been among the media outlets that have covered this story.

Read the full press release here.