Big Man on Campus Leading by example and dreaming big led Kevin Loker to being Senior of the Year. Read more inside. STYLE • Page 5
Butts Dives to Success Senior diver Derrick Butts has outstanding Mason career leading to NCAA qualification. SPORTS • Page 10
Fly That Flag Why won’t the Kurdish Flag be flown in the Johnson Center during International Week? Find out inside. NEWS• Page 2
George Mason University’s Student Newspaper www.broadsideonline.com
April 16, 2012
Volume 88 Issue 21
Domestic Violence Speech Part of New Flash Lecture Series Lecture Series Designed to Inform Students in Informal Setting dents can expect flash lectures to occur once or twice a week between Tuesday and Thursday, “Let’s talk about domestic but each lecture is only anviolence,” shouted Angie Hat- nounced on the Student Governtery, director of the women and ment website and Twitter feed gender studies department, out- (@MasonStudentGov) 15 to 30 side Fenwick Library on the minutes before its start. During quad. Students walking by had the lectures, attendees are encouraged to tweet with the hashno idea what was going on. For 15 minutes, Hattery tag #gmuinaflash. “My senspoke on the efior thesis projfect that domes“I was actually really ect involves tic violence has analyzing data on families. The nervous, because I from social talk was given as didn’t know what to media, specifipart of a flash expect. I’m glad I did cally Twitter,” lecture series Cook said in organized by it. it was so relaxed an email. “I'm Student Govand informal that it kind of all ernment this provided a warm wrapped up in semester. social media “I think I've environment” these days and seen things out was very interhere [on the -Cortney Hughes, ested to see quad], but I ashow announcassociate professor in the sumed it was for ing an event a class,” said Department of Sociology strictly via sosenior anthrocial media pology major would go at Mason.” Sarah Elliot. While flash lectures are new In the same spot, Cortney Hughes, associate professor in to Mason, other institutions such the Department of Sociology as the University of Virginia and and Anthropology, gave her own Duke University have hosted flash lecture on Tuesday, April 3. them as well. Flash lectures will continue Hughes discussed her field work in Morocco, which examined the throughout the rest of the serelationship between Islam and mester. Student hip-hop group its views on contraception and Urbanknowlogy, English professor Mark Sample and an untechnology. “I was actually really nerv- named presenter on the topic of ous because I didn’t know what zombies are among the list of to expect,” Hughes said. “I’m glad scheduled flash lecturers. “If I have an interest, I have I did it. It was so relaxed and informal that it provided a warm that opportunity to get a little 10minute snippet and learn someatmosphere.” Student Government Secre- thing,” Hughes said. “That’s a retary Leslie Cook said she began ally cool thing.” C2M Managing Editor organizing the flash lecture series last fall by reaching out to Adam Sylvain contributed to this professors by email to guage in- story. terest in lecturing for 15 to 20 minutes on different topics. Story taken from Cook said the goal of the lectures Connect2Mason is to provide students with the opportunity to learn about different topics in an informal setting. According to Cook, stu-
Helena Okolicsanyi Connect2Mason
Photos Courtesy of Craig Bisacre
An all-day cricket tournament was held Sunday on the intramural fields as one of the first events of International Week. The rest of the week will include events such as a soccer tournament and dance competitions.
Pause, Play and Learn: International Week
Students Celebrate International Culture at Mason
International Week, an annual event enabling the George Mason University community to experience various cultures from around the world, is taking place on the Fairfax campus Monday through Saturday. Other than the International Dinner Dance, most events are free. The theme of the 32nd International Week is “Pause … and View the World Around You! Play … and Explore the World Around You!” The idea is for students to recognize, interact with and experience diversity on campus. InternationalWeek comprises numerous events such as the Dance Competition, Cultural Workshop Series and International Dinner Dance. These events would not be possible without the
collaboration between the Office of International Programs and Services and the Office of Student Involvement. Research is a vital component of preparations for International Week, said Saraschandra Arveti, a graduate assistant at the Office of International Programs and Services and the Office of Diversity Inclusion and Multicultural Education. “There are three F’s [in any event] — fun, food and fiesta,” Arveti said. “But in international events, there’s an additional F, which is fact.” Much of Arveti’s research into food, music and culture has proven directly applicable to the International Week events.
See I-WEEK Page 7
Undergraduate Research Fund Grants Money, Promotes Student Research Program Also Develops Student-Faculty Relationships Michael Lagana Staff Writer A new undergraduate research program has been formed to promote student research and foster student-faculty relationships. The Undergraduate Research Scholars Program — formerly the Undergraduate Apprenticeship Program — was created as part of the Quality Enhancement Plan of 2011. According to Rebecca Jones, assistant director of the Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities and Research, the objectives of the URSP are to encourage undergraduate research and to develop lasting student-faculty relationships. “The goals of the URSP are really to help support undergraduate mentor-mentee relationships in pursuing an individual, independent-research, scholarly or creative project,” Jones said. The URSP pairs undergraduate students with graduate students or faculty members to work collaboratively on a research project. The program gives undergraduate participants flexibility in deciding what project to pursue and with which faculty member or graduate student to be paired. According to Jones, participants can choose between a part-time project, which requires a 10-hour per week time commitment, and a full-time project, which requires a 40-hour per week commitment. Participants also receive a monetary award that varies depending on the full-time or part-time status of the project. Mentors receive a portion of each award as compensation for
their time. URSP guidelines do not limit projects to any specific discipline or field of study and are designed to provide opportunities for undergraduates to gain research experience that might otherwise be unavailable to them. “It is designed to support all sorts of different projects — in the humanities, as well as in the sciences, social sciences, government, history all different areas like that,” Jones said. “Everybody does scholarly work, and the body of knowledge of those disciplines is being added to by faculty and other researchers. So what we want to see is undergraduates coming alongside faculty and contributing to that.” Senior individualized study major and URSP participant Jordan Higgins, who is researching a psychological phenomenon for his final project, can attest to the benefits of the program. “My faculty adviser encouraged me to apply for the scholarship program in order to work in the lab. I ended up changing my work schedule so I could get in and get real lab experience, which both as an undergraduate and as a non-traditional student, is an incredible opportunity,” Higgins said. The program is open to all Mason undergraduates. For his URSP project, freshman government and international politics major Daniel Bond is conducting a comparative analysis of same-sex and interracial marriages from both a legal and historical standpoint. Bond expects to present his findings in three weeks. “I think that this is something that I am definitely going to continue on here and try and find
other professors to partner with and find other new ideas to pursue,” Bond said. Junior psychology and conflict analysis and resolution double major Krystal Thomas is another URSP participant. She is researching attitudes about the “stereotypical black person” to prove that there is no such thing. “When I heard of research, I thought it was just that you were in a lab coat [and] that you were in a lab working with chemicals,” Thomas said. “But the whole idea with research is about trying to find knowledge and increase knowledge and just having a question and wanting to find an answer.” After student researchers and their mentors have completed a project, their work is published in GMReview magazine, which is an annual cross-disciplinary undergraduate journal. According to Jones, students have other opportunities to present the results of their final projects to the academic community such as in academic journals and at university-wide events celebrating student scholarship. “There’s lots of opportunity for presentations as well, and that’s kind of the other side of disseminating the results [of a project],” Jones said. “There’s the college-level celebrations of scholarship, and there’s going to be a new celebration of student scholarship this spring, which will be a university-wide event.” Prospective URSP participants can learn more about the program through the OSCAR website, oscar.gmu.edu, on Facebook at Student as Scholars at Mason or on Twitter @Mason_OSCAR.
Graphic courtesy of Stephen Kline