Category: Excellence Award Winners

Jennifer Salerno – 2022 Mentoring Excellence Award Recipient

Dr. Salerno’s Nomination

I have known Jen since 2016, as we are both currently Assistant Professors in the Environmental Science and Policy department. From our initial conversations, it was clear that Jen is dedicated to communicating science to undergraduate and graduate students through coursework and field experiences. Jen has an amazing, bubbly personality, which students naturally gravitate towards. She consistently receives high praise from students at the end of each semester, and throughout the semester, on her courses and her effectiveness as a teacher. I cannot think of a more deserving recipient of this award, and I hope to demonstrate that to the committee in this letter.

Throughout her coursework, Jen also strives to make science relatable and relevant to students by using different media (e.g., art, literature, music, technology) to look at science through a transdisciplinary lens (e.g., social sciences, economics, policy). From thinking about “big data” and the code behind their favorite apps to getting them excited about the diversity of microbes used to create colorful mosaics in the annual agar art contest – this approach enables students to appreciate the endless ways in which science and technology intersect their everyday lives and how it can truly be creative and fun. She also makes an effort to engage students in conversations about current events in science and what it means to them personally – whether it is the newest smart phone release, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, or SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development. These types of conversations are important for students to understand that while science leads us toward progress, it does not operate in a vacuum and cannot be used alone to solve the world’s problems. They must consider other parts of the equation: community wants/needs, economics, and often politics. If students can make tangible connections with science to their own lives, perhaps they will be inspired to pursue it further, to take an upper-level genetics course, or to innovatively tackle a challenging research question.

While classroom teaching is one aspect of effectiveness, Jen is also a capable mentor to many undergraduate and graduate students. She currently advises one Ph.D. student and three Masters students, and serves on the committees of five Ph.D. students and six Masters students in ESP. She has mentored eight undergraduate students (five current) and four high school students (two current) in her laboratory through the OSCAR (3), URSP (1), and ASSIP (3) programs at Mason, as well as bringing them on as volunteer research assistants and/or wage workers. One of the reasons students are drawn to working with Jen is her passion and talent for being able to translate her research effectively. Jen is an incredible supervisor for her students; she understands the line between being overbearing and letting the students have too much freedom, all the while making enough time to manage and concurrently supervise multiple students at a time. After observing her with students in the field, she is patient, dependable, organized, an overall a joy to work with, and the students respect and admire her. Jen’s mentoring has obviously left a lasting impression on these students as many of them continued on as research assistants in labs, either voluntarily, or paid positions, and/or moved on to applying to graduate programs, internships, and fellowships with great success.

Jen’s classroom extends beyond the traditional borders of a college campus. She has worked with students underwater, at remote field stations, and aboard research vessels at sea. Like many field ecologists, some of her favorite moments are teaching in the field, where students get to truly experience all of the things that can go wrong when you are trying to execute an experiment with limited resources in an unpredictable environment. It is during this time that students are forced to come up with creative solutions to problems. However, she would also say that she similarly enjoys teaching students in a climate-controlled laboratory, where every microliter counts and aseptic technique is paramount to success. The students start out nervous under a watchful eye, but after time and practice, get comfortable enough to begin innovating their own styles of working in the lab. It has been especially inspiring to see Jen’s students innovate new approaches to research during the pandemic when access to the field and laboratory has been very limited.

In short, Jen is a wonderful teacher, mentor, and collaborator, and she is deserving of an OSCAR Mentoring Excellence Award. She is incredibly generous of her time to students, collaborators, and fellow faculty members and still makes time to complete outstanding research of the highest caliber.

Excellence Award Winners

Samaine Lockwood – 2022 Mentoring Excellence Award Recipient

Dr. Lockwood’s Nomination

I would like to nominate Dr. Aditya Johri for the OSCAR Mentoring Excellence Award. Dr. Johri has been a staunch supporter of my own research throughout my time at GMU and has made my transition into my academic program comfortable through the trying times of the COVID pandemic. It is a nerve-wracking experience to move across the country to an entirely new state and start a new program, but Dr. Johri has been the difference-maker throughout.Samaine has helped guide me since the beginning of last fall. Without her help, I would have never heard of the URSP program and many of the available opportunities at Mason. She is dedicated to her field and knowledgeable on its functions, passing on this information to students. I appreciate the hard work that she has put into being my mentor. I believe her assistance has helped foster a community of scholars; I saw this in my class last semester. Many of my fellow classmates were able to put together an archive of information for literary works. This helped develop the portfolio and future careers of the English majors in that class.

Excellence Award Winners

Sydney Foss – 2022 Student Excellence Award Recipient

Sydney’s Nomination

Sydney has been a volunteer researcher in my laboratory for over two years, and has been completing a research project with OSCAR funding since September of 2021. As a researcher, she is dedicated, enthusiastic, inquisitive, thoughtful, and diligent. She has been deeply involved in her project at all stages: conceptualization, design, planning, and now implementation/data collection. She is currently testing 4- to 5-year-old children in the Developing Minds lab, assessing their logical abilities in playful and serious contexts. Her research activities have culminated in a presentation at a National Conference–Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, to be held in May, 2022. She also went above and beyond and made a highly creative video to describe her research project for the OSCAR celebration. She will graduate this year so this is her last chance to be considered for this award. She has committed to seeing her project through to completion this summer, and will play a significant role in data analysis and manuscript preparation. As a member of the Developing Minds Lab, she has never wavered in been positive, collaborative, open to constructive feedback, and supportive of other lab members’ learning. In short, she has made outstanding research and creative contributions as a student scholar and I unreservedly nominate her for this award.

Excellence Award Winners

Tulane Simpson – 2022 Student Excellence Award Recipient

Tulane’s Nomination

Tulane Simpson is an exemplary writer and scholar. In the brief time I’ve known them, Tulane has masterfully and repeatedly proved their skills at academic synthesis, planning and organisation, critical thinking, providing feedback, and analysing sources. In record-breaking time, Tulane has won my respect.

Tulane’s topic is one of their own invention: ecoandrogyny, a concise term aimed to deconstruct a gender binary inherent to environmentalism and environmentalist media. This binary is depictions of ‘destructive’ masculinity versus depictions of ‘constructive’ femininity; for example, the Earth-polluting antagonists are usually male and the protagonists always have a ‘Mother Earth’ figure on their team. However, this kind of imagery fails to account for the fact that both men AND women pollute the Earth, and ‘masculine’ traits like aggression and assertiveness are actually essential for the environmental movement. Thus, Tulane coined the term ‘ecoandrogyny’ and created a framework for finding ecoandrogynous art to prove that a gender neutral approach to environmentalism is present and deserves attention. They are analysing children’s media that supports ecoandrogynous thinking as an alternative to conventional environmental children’s media (think Captain Planet or FernGully).

Tulane saw a niche in environmentalist media, found a slew of scholarly and lay sources that corroborated their ideas, then applied an academic framework to create a cross-cultural synthesis. Their work is exceptional. While their project may be ambitious, I can testify that Tulane has been more than up to the task thus far, always coming to class prepared and always communicating their thesis with precision and clarity. I am often astounded by how professional and scholarly they are just in class discussions. Tulane finds the right questions to ask every time, and they always have a thorough response when posed with a question.

Tulane correctly postulates that narratives focusing on black and white, male and female, good and evil binaries are limiting to our understanding of environmentalism, and they endeavour to synthesise a new paradigm for both media and environmental studies. Because of their original ideas, phenomenal dedication, and consummate scholarship, I cannot think of a better candidate for this award.

Excellence Award Winners

Tom Lopez – 2022 Student Excellence Award Recipient

Tom’s Nomination

Thomas is an amazing undergraduate researcher! I first became impressed with Thomas’ proposal, which was written completely on his own. I only met him after he had written the proposal and was looking for a mentor who would guide his work. While I was initially hesitant to serve as his mentor because I am not an expert in the exact species of fish he wanted to study, I couldn’t take the risk that he wouldn’t find someone to take him under their wing. His passion and expertise was obvious right from the start and I didn’t want his enthusiasm to be stifled by not being able to find a mentor. His ability to convey the importance of his work and the clarity of his intended research design were really impressive. In addition to having excellent scientific communication skills, he also has the temperament and perseverance to carry out his research project. His project suffered several delays that were beyond his control throughout the Fall 2021 semester, but he never lost his desire to set up his project and move forward. While he waited for his intended OSCAR project to finally start, Thomas very willingly took on a small side project to help me optimize the raising of our zebrafish embryos in the aquatic facility. He went above and beyond analyzing our protocol and troubleshooting aspects of it that he felt were inadequate for raising fish to adulthood. Thanks to his meticulous work, we now have a path forward to raising what I hope will be generations of healthy and productive zebrafish in our facility. In fact, the fish he raised in October have already matured and spawned healthy embryos we used in our BIOL323 Developmental biology lab this semester! Overall, I think Thomas is a fantastic undergraduate student and hope to continue to call him my colleague for many years to come. For all of these reasons, I nominate Thomas Lopez.

Excellence Award Winners

Grace Loonam – 2022 Student Excellence Award Recipient

Grace’s Nomination

Grace is currently a senior at George Mason University (GMU), earning a degree in Environmental Science. She is one of the best undergraduates I have ever had in my research lab, which includes ~20 other undergrads over the past six years. I have known Grace since May 2019, and she has been an OSCAR research student in my lab each summer since 2019. She is such an exceptional student that I have continued to mentor her and encouraged her to write a proposal for a GMU undergraduate research scholarship for last summer, which was accepted, and funded her to do research at the Shoals Marine Laboratory on an island off the coast of Maine. We have two papers in revision at peer-reviewed journals (Aquatic Invasions and Freshwater Biology), and she has already presented her research five times. She is additionally presenting her work from this past summer at the International Benthic Ecology Meeting in Portsmouth, NH in March 2022.

Grace applied as a freshman to be part of a team undergraduate summer research project at GMU in 2019. She immediately struck me as a determined student, and I later learned she was in the top 1% of students in the freshman class and was awarded a University Scholarship (full ride). Over the course of the summer, Grace came into the Potomac Science Center (a satellite campus for GMU) every day to crack snails with hammers and examine their tissues under a microscope, looking for parasites. Grace was interested in knowing if native species of snails had higher parasite loads than invasive snails. To do this required many hours of staring under a microscope, measuring and cracking hundreds of snails, and identifying trematode parasites. Grace did all of this, and more, with a smile on her face and determination to see the project through. The majority of my summer was spent in the field, away from the lab, but Grace worked independently and completed all of her samples with little supervision from me. Grace was the most frequently encountered student in my lab during the summer, coming in every day, and her exceptional data set is a testament to her hard work. After an initial project design period that we agreed on together, Grace led the majority of this project, including field and data collection and writing. We currently have two manuscripts in revision, with Grace as the second author, from this work.

After that first summer, Grace was again chosen for a team undergraduate summer research project that was slated to be in-person but pivoted to online due to the pandemic. The students worked together to download water quality and microplastics datasets from freshwater systems to uncover if there were any water quality metrics that were correlated with microplastic distribution and abundance. Given the complexities of working in a group on a summer project during the pandemic, the entire student group did very well. Our mentor team met with the students every Mon, Wed, and Fri to track process or offer a personal or professional development class. At the end of the summer, they presented a combined poster that showcased their work. Throughout our collaboration, I have been impressed with Grace’s organization and writing skills as well as her willingness to learn new and relevant skills. For this particular project, she learned the basics of the free coding program R.

Most recently, Grace had her own summer OSCAR research project funded that covered her travel to and from the Shoals Marine Laboratory to study a very interesting host-parasite relationship. Shoals is located on an island off the coast of Maine; the only thing to do is science – there are no TVs, no vehicles, no shops or stores, and the very basic of living conditions for up to 100 students, scientists, and staff. And Grace loved every minute of it. Because I had worked with her so closely and knew that she was goal-oriented and dependable, I had no qualms about leaving her on the island to complete research without me. Because of the pandemic, she was unable to stay on the island continuously, so made two separate trips, each lasting about three weeks. While on island, she and another undergraduate researcher from Emory University worked together to examine some basic biological questions about the host-parasite relationship in question. While she was back at GMU, she spent every day examining the number of parasite clones released from the host under different temperature regimes to determine if increasing temperatures could lead to higher parasite transmission rates. We are currently working through those data sets, and preparing two manuscripts for submission. Grace will also give an oral presentation on her summer work at an international meeting next month.

In addition to leading her own major research project, Grace is an effective and experienced communicator. In the past three years, she has presented her research at five different conferences (GMU Undergraduate Research Colloquium, Virginia Undergraduate Research Conference, Shoals Marine Laboratory Colloquium, and GMU Honors College Research Colloquium), and she will be presenting her work from last summer at the International Benthic Ecology Meeting in Portsmouth, NH next month.

Grace is very strong student, and is on track to graduate this semester summa cum laude. I have only had Grace in two of my classes, both this academic year. Last semester, she took Freshwater Ecology with me and was the third highest grade in the course out of 16 students (A+ at 98.6%). Grace is currently in my Marine Ecology class, and is excelling. Having been both in the field and lab with Grace, I would not hesitate to have her join me in any aspect of science again or recommend her to my closest colleagues. She is intellectually curious about all things and is extremely mature and self aware. Her humility, work ethic, honesty, drive, and earnestness is beyond reproach. She is generous with her time and often helps other students in the lab complete tasks that have nothing to do with her project. She is such a nice person, respectful of others and sets a wonderful example in terms of enthusiasm and work ethic. I cannot think of a time when her presence was not positive.

While most of my connections to Grace have been through my research laboratory, she is an active member in championing environmental causes both on and off the GMU campus. For spring break 2019, Grace participated in a week-long field experience along Florida’s coastal, marine salt marsh systems. Her team worked on eradicating invasive plants and also placed substrate to help naturally recruit oysters into the area. Due to her enthusiasm and drive, Grace was planning on returning to the project spring break 2020 as a trip co-leader. She has taken on the responsibility of developing and coordinating the week-long experience, adding several new projects, and following up with participants during the weeks after the project. Unfortunately, the program was canceled due to the pandemic. During winter break 2019-2020, Grace traveled to the Amazon rainforest during a study abroad program. One large aspect of the trip was to understand the intersection between preserving the culture of the native people and the biodiversity of the region. Working with all stakeholders (i.e., faculty, students, native peoples), they sought to cultivate sustainable development projects. Along this same vein, Grace worked last year as an Assistant Researcher under a collaborative effort at GMU. Grace completed a literature search under the tutelage of several professors from different GMU colleges to collect historical United States indigenous knowledge about sustainable water usage and how indigenous peoples viewed western settlement.

Overall, I would rate Grace among the top 1% of undergraduate students in lecture/labs/research, taking into account intellect, abilities, and dedication. I have never had an undergraduate student in my lab that was as goal-oriented or self-motivated as Grace. In fact, I have a hard time comparing her to any of the other undergraduates that I know in my department. I think a better comparison is to Masters students. Because of Grace’s work ethic, ability to juggle multiple commitments, desire to volunteer her time to community efforts, commitment and experience leading her own project, performing various field and laboratory methodologies, developing and answering research questions, and demonstrating the ability to learn new techniques, Grace is truly the epitome of an excellent student. All of these characteristics will be valuable as she continues to work towards a career addressing environmental issues at different scales. Grace would eventually like to become a college professor, after obtaining her PhD and more experience as a postdoc. I fully recommend her for an OSCAR Student Excellence Award without any reservation. Please do not hesitate to contact me about this recommendation. I would be happy to talk to anyone on the review committee.