Every year George Mason University awards several Curriculum Impact Grants through the Office of the Provost to help faculty revise and develop new curricula that deepen student development and enhances Mason Impact, an initiative created as a commitment to offer every student a transformative learning experience.
Here are the 2018-2019 projects and grantees:
Asian American Pacific Islander studies minor
As of fall 2017, more than 6,000 students who identify as Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) are enrolled at Mason, making this population the largest subset of all students of color at the university. In addition to the creation of two interdisciplinary courses, this grant will provide professional training for those who wish to attend AAPI workshops.
The grantees are Shelley Wong, Ellen Rodgers, Maryam Saroughi and Rita Chi-Ying Chung from the College of Education and Human Development; Jannevince Melody Quijada and Kylie Stammfrom University Life; Carol Cleaveland and Emily Ihara from the College of Health and Human Services and Nancy Xiong from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Bringing space to hands-on engineering education using ThinSat
This effort will bring undergraduate senior design students into a single multidisciplinary team focused on satellite design, development and launch. The long-term goal of this initiative is to launch a series of Mason satellites every year.
The grantees are Peter Pachowicz, Lance Sherry and Robert Gallo from the Volgenau School of Engineering.
Civic engagement in Mason writing
Two undergraduate courses at Mason, ENGH 101 Composition and 302 Advanced Composition, will be revised to focus on civic engagement and service learning. These classes serve approximately 20 percent of Mason’s undergraduate student population each semester. During the pilot, students will generate more than 2,000 volunteer hours at area organizations. Mason students will have the opportunity to provide valuable community service while learning how to engage in civic processes in a guided way.
The grantees are Courtney Wooten and Jessica Matthews from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Civic engagement, critical thinking and experiential learning through escape rooms
In teams, students will explore, apply and create an “escape room” in BUS 303 Develop Professional Skils II: Advanced Elements, which will be shared for students from BUS 103 Develop Professional Skills I: Foundational Elements to explore. This program will create an alternative learning experience to both complicate and deepen the knowledge and application of professional skills. The final products will also be shared with the community through an escape room exhibition.
The grantees are Jackie Brown and Cameron Harris from the School of Business, Seth Hudson from the College of Visual and Performing Arts and Douglas Eyman from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Engineering modules for undergraduate zebrafish laboratories
Zebrafish are rapidly emerging as a popular experimental model system used to investigate questions in multiple. The grant will support the creation of engineering modules for a two-course zebrafish neurobiology sequence that will be available to upper-level undergraduates in biology and neuroscience.
The grantees are Gwendolyn Lewis and Valerie Olmo from the College of Science and Nathalia Peixoto from the Volgenau School of Engineering.
Expanding the professional writing curriculum to enhance global and civic engagement
The grant will support revision of the professional writing minor to increase high-impact experiential learning practices, provide multidisciplinary course options, develop a capstone experience and improve focus on global and civic engagement in core courses.
The grantees are Heidi Lawrence, Isidore Dorpenyo and Douglas Eyman from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
First-year Impact seminars
The grant will support the creation of a new course for the spring 2020 semester that will focus on applying information students learn in UNIV 100 Introduction to Mason to engage in focus areas of Mason Impact and ultimately develop a proposal to pursue specific Mason Impact experiences. The grant will also be used to mentor fall 2018 UNIV 100 students around Mason Impact themes and engage key stakeholders in modifying the current course to incorporate the skills learned in UNIV 100.
The grantees are Kimberly Holmes, Jacquelyn Nash, Melitta Igwe, Jodi Ross and Kayla Vaughan from the Center for Academic Advising, Retention and Transition.
Graduate programs in computing, engineering and science education
The goal for this program is to lay the groundwork for developing certificate and master of science-level cross-disciplinary programs in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education. Faculty from across the university are working together to understand the market for such programs, study models for similar cross-disciplinary programs at other institutions and identify elements unique to Mason that the proposed programs can leverage. The project team aims to create a professional master’s degree in computing, engineering and technology education and a graduate certificate in STEM college teaching.
The grantees are Jill Nelson and Aditya Johri from the Volgenau School of Engineering; Nancy Holincheck, Margret Hjalmarson and Rebecca Fox from the College of Education and Human Development; Jessica Rosenberg and Rebecca Jones from the College of Science; Laura Lukes from the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning and Jaime Lester from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Honors college civic engagement
Supports the development of four new civic engagement impact courses to enhance the Honors College’s curricular redesign efforts. The proposed HNRS 260 and 360 courses are inquiry-based and situated in a traditional classroom environment, while the proposed HNRS 261 and 361 courses are conducted in a problem-based learning setting where students work collaboratively to answer a question about civic engagement.
The grantees are Jan Allbeck, Dana Dolan, Blake Silver and Kevin Stoy from the Honors College; Anthony Hoefer, John Woolsey, Jennifer Ashley, Lauren Cattaneo and Thomas Wood from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Maoria Kirker from University Libraries.
Music theory curriculum redesign
The funds from this grant would be used to redesign the current core curriculum for music majors at Mason. The primary goals are threefold: one, to move from a strict sequence to a more open-ended modular design, giving students more agency and choice in their educational trajectory; two, to make the connections between theory and practice more explicit by incorporating hands-on experiences on students’ own instruments directly into the theory classroom and three, to better scaffold the existing capstone course for music majors through the music theory curriculum.
The grantees are Megan Lavengood, June Huang, Tom Owens and Elaine Rendler from the College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Policy communication
The grant will support a new two-course module in policy communications, a sequence of experiential learning that instructs students in communicating complicated findings from social science and policy reports across various media. The module and academic programs fill a critical void in policy studies, but also in the public sector, where the status of research, science and intelligence is fraught with controversy in the eyes of a public disoriented by the publication of “fake news,” “alternative facts” and “faux science.”
The grantees are Justin Gest from the Schar School of Policy and Government and Katherine Rowan from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Undergraduate degree in global biodiversity conservation
The grant will support the redesign of INTS 211 Introduction to Conservation Studies, which explores historical conservation literature and global perspectives about biodiversity, for approval as a Mason Core literature course. Additionally, the grantees propose to develop a capstone course in conservation that leverages Mason’s interdisciplinary network to create a unique experience for students.
The grantees are Elizabeth Freeman and Kelly Dunne from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; David Luther from the College of Science and Stephanie Lessard-Pilon, James McNeil and Cody Edwards from the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation.
For more information about the programs, visit Undergraduate Education.