The now-21-year-old doesn’t have the proclivity for strong drink ...]]> When Jacob Federman, a junior sports management major, went out to celebrate his 21st birthday last weekend, it wasn’t at some dimly lit dive bar or at a glitzed-out, neon tourist trap. He went to the George Mason University Relay For Life.

The now-21-year-old doesn’t have the proclivity for strong drink or smoke that characterizes many people during their college years. He doesn’t want to subject his body to that after twice beating Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Relay For Life was held in Federman’s honor two years ago, when he was mired in his second fight against cancer. Federman first beat Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a cancer of the lymph tissue — when he was in high school. After chemotherapy treatments and radiation knocked out the cancer, his doctors told him that if it were to return, it would come back within a year. 

Three and a half years later, Federman, then a freshman at Mason, was back home in New York for spring break. He went in for his routine visit, and that’s when the doctors found something during their checkup. They said they would be in touch when they knew what it was.

“I went back to Fairfax the next morning and saw my friends who already knew what happened the first time around,” Federman said. “I said, ‘Hey, there’s a good chance that this is my last week at Mason.’”

Shortly thereafter, his mother left a voicemail he heard when he got out of class. The cancer had returned.

The First Bout

When Federman was 15, he accompanied other teens on a six-and-a-half-week tour of the United States. As soon as the trip began, Federman felt like he had a cold — there was coughing that doctors in Seattle and Los Angeles attributed to his asthma — but when his mother picked him up at the end of the trip, she knew something was wrong, and it was time to see another doctor.

“They thought it was asthma that could have been out of control,” said Marci Greenberg, Federman’s mother. “I figured it must have been pneumonia, but I wanted a chest X-ray.”

Before Greenberg and Federman even arrived home, Greenberg received a phone call.

“We did see something,” the pulmonologist said of the X-ray. Next came a CT scan on the Friday of that week, before they went to visit Greenberg’s parents. It was Friday afternoon that Greenberg received the call from the pulmonologist confirming the prognosis: stage 2 Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Greenberg and Federman went ahead with the visit to her parents, and Greenberg didn’t tell Federman about the cancer until Sunday night, hours before returning to Columbia University Medical Center to begin planning treatment.

“I kept the secret because I didn’t want to ruin anything,” Greenberg said. “How do you explain to your teenager that he’s probably going to have chemo, radiation, lose his hair, feel horrible? How do you do that?”

Greenberg said she told Federman that there would be sick kids at the hospital and not to be unduly worried. It was there that Federman asked Greenberg if he was going to die.

“I said, ‘No, you’re not, Jake. Don’t even ask me that. It’s not going to happen for a long, long time,’” Greenberg said. “He never looked back after that. He never questioned it. He never got depressed. He never cried.”

Federman said it was daunting to receive the news.

“I was 15, so the only thing I knew about cancer was ‘OK, you have it. Now you’re going to die,’” Federman said. “I was in disbelief.”

While Federman’s friends from the cross-country trip were enjoying their summer, Federman spent long hours in doctors’ offices prepping for biopsies and a run of outpatient chemotherapy treatment cycles that stretched from Aug to Nov of his soph. year of high school. After over 40 clinic visits, Federman’s results impressed his doctors.

“They were so impressed with the way my body responded that they presented my case to the board of oncologists,” Federman said. Though he was tired from long days at the clinic, he hadn’t experienced some of the more adverse effects of the drugs and chemotherapy.

Next came a radiation treatment that lasted from the beginning of December to Christmas. Though the doctors believed the cancer was gone, they said a precautionary radiation treatment was a good final step in ensuring the cancer had been eradicated.

Then, right around Christmas, came the news Federman and his family had been waiting for: The cancer was gone. The residual scarring from the biopsies would go away over time. The hair he lost from the treatment would return.

The Second Time

Federman is now the president of fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, which he joined during his freshman year after some of the brothers helped him move into the dorms and then invited him to a barbeque.

When Federman received the voicemail from Greenberg confirming the cancer was back, he turned to the fraternity brothers for support.

“I remember sending out a mass email to all the brothers saying, ‘As most of you know, I had cancer. Turns out I just got it again,’” Federman said.

Though he returned to New York for treatment almost immediately after receiving the prognosis, he was able to return to Mason once during the semester to attend the fraternity formal in May, an end-of-the-year event where the brothers get dressed up and go out to a nice dinner.

The treatment for the second bout of cancer was much more aggressive than the first, as Federman’s doctors didn’t want to take any chances. He went in for surgery so the doctors could insert a catheter to pump the chemotherapy treatment into his bloodstream.

Instead of four outpatient chemotherapy cycles of treatment like the first time, Federman was assigned to inpatient status where he was constantly connected to a 24-hour drip containing multiple chemotherapy drugs. His doctors prescribed two aggressive inpatient sessions followed by a rescan to check not only the status of the cancer but for long-term side effects that result from such aggressive treatment.

“They said, ‘If there is still a trace of the cancer, [we’re] going to go back and nuke [your] system,’” Federman said. “If that’s what had to happen, there was a good likelihood I wouldn’t be able to return to Mason in August. I needed to get back to Mason. That’s really what kept me going, wanting to come back here. I needed to be back so badly.”

The “system nuke” would have consisted of a stem cell transplant called a “rescue” in the medical field. The stem cell transplant works by replacing damaged stem cells with healthy stem cells harvested from the person’s body. Though the actual transplant is quick, it leaves the patient in a weakened state and confined to a hospital room for a month while the body recovers from losing its white blood cells. After the monthlong stay in a hospital comes a yearlong recovery at home.

“After the first two treatment cycles, we were looking for the cancer to be 75 percent clear,” Greenberg said. “If he’s not 75 percent, we would have had to do the stem cell transplant.”

Fortunately for Federman, the oncologist had good news: The cancer was 100 percent gone. After two more rounds of less-intense chemotherapy and a month off, Federman received a month of outpatient radiation to ensure that the cancer was gone.

The summer months were consumed with the radiation, with more blood exams, more CT scans and more cardiology work. After that, Federman worked to get his life back on track. So when he woke up with a fever after spending the night at a friend’s house near the end of the treatment, he knew something was wrong.

Federman learned the surgically inserted catheter had caused an infection, which meant another week in the hospital.

“I had a joke with friends and family that ‘If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do everything,’” Federman said. “People consider me to be a funny guy, and my humor never really changed.”

The last bump in the road came when rashes broke out across his body. He had shingles, and that meant more treatment. But after that, he was done and has enjoyed good health during his sophomore and junior year.

Relay For Life

Federman has organized his fraternity’s participation in Relay For Life during the past two years. The event had been an important reminder of Mason during his second fight with cancer; the event was organized in his honor, and he received an outpouring of support from his fellow students.

“I remember getting a giant box of handmade cards from fraternities, sororities, faculty members, a lot of people I didn’t even know,” Federman said. “I remember sitting there for hours reading every card.”

Federman was able to partiipate in the Relay For Life events that fell during his sophomore and junior years.

“Last year was special since I was able to be at Relay For Life,” Federman said. “They have a survivor’s lap, so everyone who has had or is currently fighting cancer walks hand-in-hand on the first lap while everyone applauds.”

According to Alexandra Walker, president of the Mu Omega chapter, March of Dimes aims ...]]> The Mu Omega chapter of the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority is raising money for March of Dimes. The sorority will collect change at its kiosk in the Johnson Center every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until May 4.

According to Alexandra Walker, president of the Mu Omega chapter, March of Dimes aims to raise money for research regarding premature babies and prenatal care.

Sigma Gamma Rho’s longstanding partnership with March of Dimes at the national level falls under the sorority’s H3 initiative.

“[The H3 initiative comprises] healthy living, health choices and healthy generations. March of Dimes falls under healthy generations,” Walker said.

The George Mason University community has responded enthusiastically to the sorority’s efforts to benefit March of Dimes.

“We’ve gotten a lot of people to come up without knowing anything about us and give us change,” Walker said. “Also a professor came up and gave us dollar bills for donation.” According to Elizabeth McDougal, vice-president of the Mu Omega chapter, other Greek organizations contribute to the change drive as well.

The Mu Omega chapter’s fundraising efforts are not limited to change collection on campus. The chapter recently won first place in a stroll competition at the University of Maryland, earning $300 for their cause.

A team from Sigma Gamma Rho named “MQ Poodles & Friends” will also take part in the Fairfax walk for March of Dimes on May 6.

Members of the community should register for the upcoming walk and donate money, Walker said.

“It’s great to walk and show support, but they also need the money for research and things of that sort,” Walker said.

According to Ebony Chambers, historian of the Mu Omega chapter, members of the Mason community should do their own research into what March of Dimes actually does.

“They do a lot of things for mothers who have premature babies and they do a lot of work for prenatal care. And that is so important for having a healthy baby,” Chambers said.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Mu Omega chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho on the Mason campus.

“Not many ...]]> The 16th Annual Victims’ Rights Run & Walk in Collaboration with the Aimee Willard Endowed Scholarship Fund will be held Friday at noon to raise awareness of victims’ rights and to honor the memory of Aimee Willard, a George Mason University student-athlete who was raped and murdered in 1996.

“Not many people are aware of the fact that victims have rights,” said Rachel Lindsey, outreach coordinator of Sexual Assault Services.

Beginning in 1999, the Mason Department of Intercollegiate Athletics held the annual five-kilometer fun run to honor Willard and to raise money for a scholarship fund in her memory. Meanwhile, Sexual Assault Services had been organizing a separate walk/run to promote awareness of victims’ rights. In 2005, however, Mason Athletics and Sexual Assault Services merged the two events.

“We decided that since [the events] tended to happen around the same time and had such similar motivations and purposes, it made a lot of sense for us to join our efforts,” Lindsey said. “The goal is to highlight that victims have rights and to focus very specifically on a member of our community who was made a victim.”

In an effort to increase Mason students’ participation in the event, the fun run’s organizers have waived registration fees for participants able to present a valid student identification card.

Brianna Kennedy, a junior communication major involved in public relations for the fun run, encourages individual students to form their own teams as well. Mason President Alan Merten will give a welcome speech to kick off the event. Merten’s remarks will be followed by an address from Billie Sims, a former teammate of Willard’s, who regularly attends the walk/runs in her honor. The ROTC color guard will then give a presentation, and the race will commence.

According to Lindsey, the walking course is slightly different than the running course.

“It’s basically Braddock to 123 to University Drive to Patriot Circle,” Lindsey said.

After the race is over, prizes will be awarded in categories such as largest student team, fastest student runner, fastest runner and most spirited team.

“It’s a really nice, meaningful event that gives people a real chance to be exposed to some important issues [and it] helps raise important funds for some important activities,” Lindsey said.

Online registration for the event, which closes at midnight tonight, can be completed at vrrw.gmu.edu.  The online registration fees for community members is $20. Faculty and staff must pay $15 if participating as individuals or $10 if signing up as a member of a team.

Race-day registration, which costs $25 for non-students, and check-in for the walk/run begins at 10:30 a.m. at the Center for the Performing Arts on the Fairfax campus.

He stumbled back, then caught himself.

“My ...]]> He threw the pitch and watched it sail toward home. His team was down, and he had been brought in as a relief pitcher. The first batter had struck out. The second got a hit. Now what? Where was the ball? What was going on?

He stumbled back, then caught himself.

“My first baseman was at my side and asking if I was okay. I said, ‘I don’t know what happened.’ I was still looking for the ball,” said Kevin Lingerman, senior pitcher for the George Mason University baseball team.  

The next time he looked up there was blood everywhere. Lingerman sank to his knees, then to all fours as he tried to piece together what was going on.

Lingerman was still looking for the ball. Trouble was, the ball had found him first.

The batter had hit Lingerman’s pitch and returned it at 100 mph into his face.

His face was broken in five places, completely smashing his nose, orbital bone and the top of his jaw.

“The day it happened we were getting beat pretty good,” said Mick Foley, the sophomore first baseman who was first to Lingerman’s side. “It was already silent in the park because we were getting killed. Then Lingerman got hit it and it was a whole different kind of silence.”

Foley had watched the ball fly straight towards Lingerman and heard a loud snap he thought was the ball making contact with the pitcher’s glove.

But then he saw the ball rolling off the field and towards the third base dugout and noticed that the batter had slowed to a crawl in his dash to first base, and he realized that the loud snap  had actually been the crack of Lingerman’s skull.

Foley ran to Lingerman’s side as he lay sprawled on his back.

“There was blood all over,” Foley said. “I couldn’t really see if his nose was broken. All I saw was blood.”

A lifelong sports fan, Foley had seen baseball players on television take line drives to the face before, but this was the first time that he or anyone else on the team had seen it in real life.

He knew that such an injury could result in blindness or brain swelling, even death.

He also knew that the metal bats used in college games made the situation all the more dangerous.

An article published in 2008 by Northeast Booster eerily foreshadowed Lingerman’s run-in with the baseball.

According to the article, “Lingerman, who plays third base, shortstop and pitcher, also will have to face hitters with lively metal bats. That shouldn't be too much of a problem. He was 20-0 in four years on the mound at Calvert Hall.”

For twenty minutes, the players, coaches and fans were consumed by anxiety as the trainers mopped up the blood from Lingerman’s wounds while they waited for an ambulance. He had lost nearly a pint of blood by the time he got to the hospital.

“The pain was excruciating. It was terrible,” Lingerman said. “My trainer was like, ‘It’s okay. You can cry.’”

But he didn’t. Throughout the whole ordeal, he didn’t cry or pass out, despite the crippling pain.

“The only thing I can really say is that he is a remarkable young man. Trust me when I tell you I don’t say this lightly. Not only is he my hero, he is the biggest reason that keeps me moving everyday,” said Patty Lingerman, Kevin’s mother. “If it wasn’t for him and his positive attitude, I would’ve been like, ‘To hell with this.’ People talk about miracles, but all I can say is that you don’t know my son’s story.”

As the wailing sirens pulled up, Lingerman rose to his feet and walked off the field toward the ambulance, a hopeful sign for everyone on the field.

In Baltimore, Lingerman’s father had been watching a live stream of the game and had lost volume on the screen just after Lingerman got hit.

He turned to his wife and told her something bad had happened.

Suddenly the volume returned on the computer to announce that a relief pitcher was coming in for Lingerman.

Then the phone rang.

“I just remember [the caller] saying ‘I have Kevin at the hospital.’ I could hear Kevin in the background saying, ‘Watch out, she’s going to get upset. Don’t tell her too much,’” Mrs. Lingerman said.

“When they came in, I had a pad over my face,” Lingerman said. “When they took it off, my mom cried and my dad just stared at me in shock.”

For the next two weeks, progress was slow. If the ball had hit him just one or two inches to the left or right, Lingerman would’ve been killed. The doctors decided not to operate on his face and let the bones reset themselves like twigs.

Plastic surgeons had to reconstruct his nose, which had been completely destroyed by the ball.

“My sinuses were completely filled with blood. I couldn’t breathe for a few weeks,” Lingerman said.

However, the worst damage was to his right eye, which was nearly sealed shut with swelling. When he finally was able to open it, Lingerman had no vision.

After two days in the hospital, Lingerman returned to his dorm room with his mother there to take care of him.

On the third day, he woke up and opened his eyes in relief. He had regained sight in his right eye.

Even though he was able to see again, the pressure behind his eye was still high, and he was put on bed rest.

The possibility of blindness was still a threat.

“The week after it happened was the worst,” Lingerman said.

Lingerman has retained his sight but suffers from permanent damage to his iris and cornea.

A few weeks after he was injured, the batter who hit the ball that crushed Lingerman’s face sent him a message on Facebook and apologized.

“I told him it was no problem. He didn’t do it on purpose,” Lingerman said. “He told me that when he hit the ball, he started walking toward the mound. He thought he killed me. They had to take him out of the game.”

With his face crushed, Lingerman was down, but he wasn’t out for the count. Baseball is, and always had been, his sustaining life force.

His father, Nemo Lingerman, played in the Minnesota Twins’ minor league system and instilled a love of baseball in his son at an early age.

Getting hit in the face with a line drive wasn’t the first hurdle in Lingerman’s career. His trainer, Debbie Coronado ,often tells him that he’s the luckiest for being the unluckiest in the world.

He has certainly beaten the odds.

“This is one in millions,” Lingerman said. “The odds of this happening are less than winning the lottery. When the ball comes back, it’s like blink of the eye. Reflexes take over.”

Lingerman has been struggling against the odds since he was 6 years old, when he was first diagnosed with a rare case of bone cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma that affects only 250 children in the United States per year.

“As a parent, I can’t begin to tell you how devastating that is.,” Mrs. Lingerman said. “The doctors did not give us good news. They didn’t expect him to make it.”

But Lingerman wasn’t about to give up.

“He took his little hands and put them on my face and said, ‘It’s okay, Mommy. I’m not going to die.’ That’s the part that you can’t explain to people. It’s devastating,” Mrs. Lingerman said.

Lingerman underwent chemotherapy treatments for a year, pumping poisons through his young body to rid him of the cancerous tumors.

Ewing’s sarcoma usually strikes pubescent children in the long bones in their legs and arms, but Lingerman’s tumors were intertwined in his ribs.

To combat the cancer, doctors removed part of Lingerman’s lung and parts of his fourth, fifth and sixth rib bones.

For a few years, he returned to health and lived his life as a normal little boy, falling even deeper in love with America’s favorite pastime.

But his struggles were far from over.

When he was 11, the cancer returned. After six months of chemo he lost his hair, but he didn’t lose his drive and continued to play baseball  throughout the sixth grade.

“I stayed in shape and stayed off the couch,”Lingerman said. “I’d get sick on the field from the chemo, but the other boys were too young to understand.”

But this time, Lingerman understood. In his second battle with cancer, he became more self-aware and angry, not understanding why he was being singled out.

“That’s the part that’s hard to explain to people,” Mrs. Lingerman said. “He’s been through hell and back, and psychologically, it’s made an impact. When he gets down, only the family sees that. He won’t let anybody on the outside know he’s down.”

Eventually, the doctors elected to remove the rest of the three ribs on his right side and a quarter of his lung.

It took two years for Lingerman to return to playing full time. He had always played third, but he liked to pitch more.

Once again, the odds were stacked against him.

At 5 feet 11 inches, he is below average height for a pitcher, and with three of his ribs and a piece of his lung missing, the odds of him being able to throw with speed and precision were not promising.

“I threw 90 mph my first time during my senior year of high school. No one had any idea how it was possible,” Lingerman said.

Had the doctors’ predictions been true, Lingerman would’ve been crippled by scoliosis, if not dead after his bouts with cancer.

Without his ribs for support, the doctors couldn’t understand how his decelerator muscles, which are imperative for pitchers, were strong enough to throw the ball at such high speeds.

Decelerator muscles allow the fast-moving body parts, like a pitcher’s arm, to slow, similar to brakes on a car.

Lingerman’s medical woes had not yet ended. Once again, despite the odds, Lingerman excelled.

He was slowed once again after a spinal herniation in high school required surgery.

After being recruited by Mason, Lingerman pitched successfully his freshman year, but by sophomore year, trouble was back again. Like many other pitchers, his arm was wearing, and he had to have Tommy John surgery to repair his ulnar collateral ligament.

Nerve damage, possibly from the years of chemo, combined with faulty surgery resulted in two unsuccessful surgiers.

After coming off not one but three Tommy John surgeries, Lingerman was finally returning to full health and playing ball.

He pitched his first return game successfully at NC State and was getting back into the swing of things as he stepped onto the mound on March 3 to try and recover some runs from Bryant.

“He had finally gotten velocity and speed back up and said to me, ‘Mom, this has gotta be my year.’ Then he gets hit in the face,” Mrs. Lingerman said.

A month and a half after this harrowng incident, Lingerman has only a faint scar that stretches from the inner corner of his eye to right above his eyebrow. Shocking the doctors once again, he’s returned to full health and is now training to play in a game in the next few weeks.

“I still want to play,” Lingerman said. “When I get back out on the mound, I might be a little shaky, but baseball is what’s gotten me here. It’s gotten me through a lot of stuff. I’m one of the first people in my family to go to college. Baseball has allowed me to do things that I never would’ve been able to.”

His mother is terrified for Lingerman to step up on the mound again but knows that, while baseball has been the cause of many of his injuries, it’s also been the driving force that has motivated him through his difficult life.

“He’s very upbeat. I’m very angry. Not just that he’s gonethrough cancer twice. He’s had back surgery, Tommy John, and then to get hit in the face like that. He just can’t catch a break. I don’t want him to get back on a mound, even though at the same time I do. But that’s Kevin,” Mrs. Lingerman said.

Lingerman speaks easily about his injuries, without a trace of bitterness about beating cancer twice, spending countless hours in the hospital or battling through eight surgeries. He even grins as he recounts the ridiculous series of events he’s suffered through.

A red-shirt senior, Lingerman still has another year left of school before he’s out in the real world, but he’s already dreaming of getting drafted to the big leagues.

If that falls through, he has plans to coach in Division I. But if history repeats itself, luck just may be on his side.

Changwoo Ahn, a wetlands ecologist and associate professor with the department of Environmental Science and Policy, developed the Wetland Mesocosm Compound in 2007 with the intent ...]]> Students are helping to develop a model wetland to research the effects of wetland erosion and the benefits of expanding wetland to the Earth’s soil.

Changwoo Ahn, a wetlands ecologist and associate professor with the department of Environmental Science and Policy, developed the Wetland Mesocosm Compound in 2007 with the intent of bringing outdoor environmental study to George Mason University.

by Stephen Kline

“Four years ago, I built [the Wetland Mesocosm Compound] purely with my experience and my idea that the school would need an outdoor teaching and research facility,” Ahn said. “Many big research-oriented schools have this kind of facility, [like] schools that I used to work at before I came to George Mason University, so I had a vision to build this kind of facility before.”

Ahn’s vision for an outdoor research center came to fruition in 2007 with the support of a Sustainability Office grant, the Office of the Provost, ESP, and Long Fence, an area fencing company that donated $20,000 worth of chain link fencing to enclose the compound. The site is located behind Intramural Field I near the West Campus parking lot.

Inside the compound, Ahn and his students are working on developing mesocosms, or medium-sized, contained wetland models.

However, unlike microcosms or Petri dish colonies, mesocosms are in large rubber tubs and are exposed to all the natural elements of the environment, such as sunlight and weather.

One benefit of using mesocosms for research comes from manipulation of water levels in the tubs so that observers can see the effects of rising water levels on a small, contained wetland environment.

According to Ahn, this is important so researchers can better understand how rising water levels affect erosion in coastal wetland environments.

Another important aspect of Ahn’s course is teaching his students how to effectively conduct experiments and gather, graph and interpret the data.

“At the end of this semester, and it’s already drawing to an end, [the students] are actually participating in setting up these new experiments as part of their learning in the semester curriculum in the Ecological Sustainability course,” Ahn said. “In the summertime, we are going to continue to monitor the growing of the plants and the hydration of the mesocosms and all those environmental barriers throughout.”

Ahn sees incorporating undergraduate research as a fundamental aspect of his course. Junior biology major Alex Sessums has been learning about wetland restoration in Ahn’s class all semester and is enthusiastic to be able to help build a model that will aid work in wetland restoration.

“I’ve learned a lot about how research goes down, wetland science and ecology,” Sessums said. “It’s good to get involved and get to work.”

In addition to his work with Mason, Ahn is working with members of surrounding communities to get them more involved with the work that he and his students are doing at the compound.

“I’m trying to reach out to the other communities, not only on campus but off campus, to let them know that we have these facilities,” Ahn said. “This year we’re going to have three high school students doing a small project here over the summer.”

In about three years, after Ahn and his students have completed their experimentation and data collection, their findings will be gathered, analyzed and put in a paper, which will be submitted for publication in a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal.

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 ...]]> 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.

According to Mike Fletcher, Mason’s manager of Computing Services, all classrooms and labs on the Prince William and the Arlington campuses already have the Windows 7 upgrade.  ...]]> George Mason University is upgrading all of its computer labs and classrooms by fall 2012 with Windows 7, the latest operating system from Microsoft.

According to Mike Fletcher, Mason’s manager of Computing Services, all classrooms and labs on the Prince William and the Arlington campuses already have the Windows 7 upgrade.  In Fairfax, the Innovation 301 lab is the only room on campus in which Windows 7 is in use.

Although the upgrade will only apply to the university’s labs, Fletcher said, “Some colleges run and maintain departmental classrooms, and many of these departments have already made the upgrade to Windows 7.”

“We want to be a cutting edge university, and here we’re running an operating system that was originally released in 2001,”Fletcher said in reference to Windows XP.

Mason currently runs Windows XP, but the software lacks certain compatibilities because its regular support with Microsoft expired in 2009. The operating system is running on extended support with Microsoft.  Having Windows XP is problematic, Fletcher said, because Microsoft seems reluctant to help users if technical difficulties arise since they are mainly focused on the current software.

According to Fletcher, Windows 7 will provide a greater experience because Mason will be able to provide a higher level of support.  Most of Mason’s software programs are designed to operate adequately with Windows 7.

According to Fletcher, the upgrade is going to be free because Mason is automatically covered under a university agreement it has with Microsoft.

There is wide speculation that the new Windows 8 upgrade is to be released in October 2012.  When asked why Mason could not wait roughly six more months for the possible new release instead, Fletcher said he felt it was best to get the current system updated quickly and contend with future improvements at a later time.

The process of the upgrade is going to be completely invisible to the users, Fletcher said.  Starting fall 2012, however, students will be the ultimate judges of whether Windows 7 improves the classroom experience.

“We must maintain a very generic system to meet all types of classes from math and science to English and philosophy,” Fletcher said.