Ashley’s Nomination
In the many years I have known her, Ms. Rodriguez has pursued and excelled in a diverse set of research experiences. In Fall 2020, she completed a CRIM 498 “Independent Research Practicum” with me, studying racial differences in pretrial supervision outcomes. In the same academic year, she completed the honors seminar sequence in Criminology, Law and Society, earning her honors distinction in our Department. In Summer 2021, she applied to and was accepted into a National Science Foundation-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of South Carolina. Through this project, she gained experience conducting qualitative observations of virtual court hearings. During the same summer, she competed as part of the National Institute of Justice’s “Forecasting Recidivism Challenge” with a team of researchers (myself, Dr. David Wilson, and Dr. Peter Phalen) to apply machine learning methods to predict parolees’ likelihood of recidivism following release. Through this competition, Ms. Rodriguez helped her team earn several ranked finishes and $18,000 in prize money. Most recently, Ms. Rodriguez received a $1,000 grant from the OSCAR Undergraduate Research Scholars Program to study the effects of the presentation of pretrial risk probabilities on pretrial release decisions. She successfully navigated putting together materials for this vignette study, secured institutional review board approval, and is in the process of data collection. Through these activities, Ms. Rodriguez has produced seven conference presentations (four as first author), three research reports, and one book chapter.
Remarkably, Ms. Rodriguez has accomplished all of this while maintaining part-time employment outside of Mason and a paid research assistantship in my lab. She is an exceptional emerging scholar and has already earned herself three fully funded offers to doctoral programs in criminology. She is an outstanding ambassador for Mason, for OSCAR, and for the Department of Criminology, Law and Society. I give her my highest recommendation for this award.
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