12 minute read
On Campus
SPRING/SUMMER 2021 • VOLUME 45 • NO. 1
Lisa Jamison Bowling ’89
Vice President for Advancement and University Relations
Anna B. Billingsley
Associate Vice President for University Relations
Neva S. Trenis ’00
Laura Moyer
Associate Editor
AJ Newell
Art Director
Liz Clark Kuvinka ’96 Maria Schultz, M.Ed. ’11
Graphic Designers
Jill Graziano Laiacona ’04 Lisa Chinn Marvashti ’92 Angela Zosel McCormick ’00 Lee Ann Reaser ’98, MBA ’09 Cynthia L. Snyder ’75 Mark Thaden ’02
Contributors
University of Mary Washington Magazine is published by the Office of University Relations for the alumni, friends, faculty, and staff of the University of Mary Washington. The magazine staff welcomes your comments. Email: magazine@umw.edu Mail: UMW Magazine 1301 College Ave. Fredericksburg, VA 22401-5300 Call: 540-654-1055.
Please help us find you: Email address changes to alumni@umw.edu; mail changes to University of Mary Washington Office of Alumni Relations, 1119 Hanover St., Fredericksburg, VA 22401-5412; call with changes to 540-654-1011. University of Mary Washington Magazine is printed with nonstate funds and is made possible through private support. Read and comment on University of Mary Washington Magazine online at magazine.umw.edu.
ALUMNA REAPPOINTED TO BOV
Gov. Ralph S. Northam has reappointed Princess R. Moss ’83 to the UMW Board of Visitors. Moss, who served on the BOV from 2007 to 2011, is vice president of the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest professional teaching organization.
Moss succeeds Sharon Bulova in a fouryear term that expires June 30, 2024.
With an undergraduate degree in music education, Moss taught elementary school for 21 years. She was elected NEA vice president in August 2020 with the stated goal of providing safe learning spaces for all students and addressing public school inequities that were exposed by the pandemic.
Moss, who earned a master’s degree in secondary administration and supervision from the University of Virginia, served two terms as president of the Virginia Education Association (VEA) and more than a decade on the boards of directors for NEA and VEA.
UMW LISTED GREEN
UMW has earned a listing among the nation’s most environmentally conscious schools. The ranking appears in the 2021 edition of The Princeton Review’s Guide to Green Colleges. It profiled 416 U.S. schools demonstrating a commitment to sustainability, based on student academic offerings and career preparation, campus policies, initiatives, and activities.
“We strongly recommend the University of Mary Washington to students who want to study and live at a green college,” said Rob Franek, Princeton Review editor-in-chief.
By summer, the University of Mary Washington plans to employ a full-time sustainability coordinator.
The pollinator garden blooms near the Anderson Center.
EAGLES’ BEST FRIENDS
To celebrate Giving Day, April 13, the Alumni Association provided bandannas for more than 200 UMW fur babies and asked alumni to tag social media posts of four-legged family members with #MaryWashDay and #UMWAlumni. Besides immense cuteness, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter were filled with animal lovers showing their support for their alma mater!
Read more about Giving Day on the back cover.
Brianna Reaves
NAACP RECOGNIZES STUDENT LEADER
Brianna Simone Reaves ’22 was named a “Captain of the Community” by the NAACP Culpeper Branch in January.
The Rev. Uzziah A. Harris, branch president, said Reaves is an exceptional advocate for racial justice, according to the group’s website. He noted that the Culpeper native co-organized a 2020 march there protesting police brutality across the nation. The peaceful event drew more than 800 people.
“Brianna has a voice that cannot be quieted,” Harris said.
Reaves worked with others to establish the first NAACP UMW branch in hopes that the group could help students connect campus and national issues. She was elected president of the Student Government Association for 2021-22.
The sociology major and social justice minor is passionate about the James Farmer Multicultural Center, where she works as a diversity peer educator. She served as vice president of the NAACP Virginia State Conference Youth and College Division and is a member of UMW Mortar Board.
SENIOR WINS NATIONAL RESEARCH AWARD
Henry Mills
William “Henry” Mills ’22 was selected as a 2021 Barry Goldwater Scholar. The physics and math major is among 410 scholars selected from more than 1,250 applicants in natural science, engineering, and mathematics. He will receive as much as $7,500 for his senior year.
The Richmond native has been conducting research with his advisor, Assistant Professor of Physics Varun Makhija, since fall 2019. Chemistry professors Kelli Slunt ’91 and Leanna Giancarlo recommended that Mills apply for the highly regarded, selective scholarship.
Mills, who plans to pursue a Ph.D., worked with scientists at Stanford University, Stony Brook University, and the National Research Council to take a freeze-frame photograph of a water molecule, Makhija said.
“The water molecules in your glass of water are in vigorous, random motion. To take a still photograph of this molecule, we need a really short flash of laser light. So short that the molecule’s motion is imperceptible during the flash,” Makhija said.
The scholarship program named for late Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in STEM areas. It is the preeminent undergraduate award of its type in these fields.
FELLOWSHIP SENDS ALUM TO GRAD SCHOOL
Nehemia Abel ’20 secured a highly competitive Payne Fellowship, sponsored by USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development. Only 15 of the fellowships, which cover most of the cost of graduate school, were awarded for 2021.
The fellowship seeks outstanding individuals interested in careers in the foreign service of USAID. It enables them to work “on the front lines of some of the most pressing global challenges of our times,” according to the fellowship website.
Abel left the east African nation of Burundi with help from USAID, and he wants to return the gift. “I would like to give back by assisting others living in crisis situations globally,” he said.
The UMW marketing graduate will pursue a master’s degree in international development from Georgetown University, which he chose after also being accepted by Columbia, Johns Hopkins, George Washington, Howard, and American universities. The Payne Fellowship provides up to $96,000 in benefits over two years for graduate school, internships, and professional development activities.
At Mary Washington, Abel received the Citizenship Award for Diversity Leadership and worked closely with multicultural organizations to promote diversity and inclusion. He received the 2020 Grace Mann Launch Award that honors a late student leader and social justice activist.
Abel collaborated with Habitat for Humanity and Micah Ecumenical Ministries to serve homeless in the Fredericksburg area. He and his older brother co-founded an organization that serves Burundian refugees in the area, helping them pursue higher education and preparing them for the workplace.
Abel is also a Fulbright semifinalist.
FULBRIGHT RECIPIENTS FORGE AHEAD
Mary Washington had two Fulbright recipients this year – Hannah Rothwell ’19, who is teaching in Uzbekistan, and Lauren Closs ’20, whose research in Norway was put on hold by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rothwell, an economics and international affairs graduate, had applied for a Fulbright but was listed as a backup. Disappointed, she moved on to an internship in D.C. She was in a meeting there last winter when she received an unexpected text: Call the U.S. embassy in Uzbekistan immediately. She was needed at the Ferghana State University as soon as possible, she learned, to teach English through the Fulbright program.
Rothwell had to test negative for COVID before leaving the U.S., undergo another test in Uzbekistan, and then quarantine in a hotel before beginning her assignment at the university’s English Pedagogical Department.
Biology graduate Closs had planned to fly to Norway late last summer, but the country’s strict no-visitor rules delayed her entry. It was to be her second research-related trip to Oslo, where she worked in 2019 with UMW Professor of Biology Dianne Baker on wild fish stock restoration and aquaculture at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
Closs’s Fulbright has been deferred until August, when she will begin her work in Norway, Baker said. Baker and Professor of History Nabil Al-Tikriti co-chair the UMW Fulbright evaluation committee, which helps students submit Fulbright applications.
Hannah Rothwell
Lauren Closs
POMP IN UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES
Like most everything else during the pandemic, commencement looked different this year. Instead of one ceremony on Ball Circle, UMW hosted nine ceremonies May 6 to 9 on the fenced campus recreation field adjacent to U.S. 1.
The platform typically is packed with faculty, administrators, Board of Visitors members, and an honored speaker, but this year only seven people took the stage: President Troy D. Paino, Provost Nina Mikhalevsky, one student, one faculty member, a representative of the alumni association, a board member, and the official reader of names.
There was plenty of pageantry despite the social distancing. Candidates processed to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance recorded by the UMW Philharmonic Orchestra and recessed to the steady tones of one or two members of the Eagle Pipe Band.
Each touch-free ceremony – no handshakes or exchange of diplomas – was limited to 150 graduates. The field’s 111,000 square feet were precisely measured and marked to accommodate graduates and their “pods” of well-wishers.
The 1,200-member Class of 2021 participated in six ceremonies May 8 and 9. President Paino addressed every commencement gathering and stood by as each gowned and masked graduate walked across the platform. The 1,300 members of the Class of 2020, whose commencement was postponed last spring, were invited to return for three processions, May 6 and 7. Three hundred accepted.
President Paino welcomed them back, telling them that it was one of the most emotional commencements he’d attended, including those of his daughters.
Masks and socially distant seating helped make UMW’s multiple-commencement approach a success.
He acknowledged all the difficulties that the pandemic had put the graduates through, and what their families and the members of the UMW community had done to help them. “This commencement, while unusual, will be among the most meaningful,” he said.
Suzanne Carr Rossi ’00
GRAD’S AUTISM RESEARCH GETS ATTENTION
Physics graduate
Shannon Brindle ’21
devoted her undergraduate research to developing an imaging analysis technique for faster diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. And Physics, an online magazine from the American Physical Society, took notice.
She and Clark Saben ’24 worked with Rasha Makkia, UMW visiting assistant professor of physics. Brindle aspires to develop a “computational technique that can simultaneously extract multiple structures from 3D magnetic resonance imaging brain scans, something not possible with other methods,” the magazine reported after Brindle presented her findings at the March meeting of the American Physical Society.
If successful, Brindle’s image analysis technique could allow clinicians to start therapies more quickly than is currently possible.
As an undergraduate, Brindle didn’t have access to unlimited scans, so she tested her method on images of three 8-year-old boys, two diagnosed with autism and one not. While it’s too early to say if her observations have clinical significance, the measurements she made appear to be meaningful.
Brindle hopes to continue this research in graduate school as she works toward becoming a medical physicist. The honors graduate is president of the UMW Optical Society and a member of Mortar Board, Sigma Pi Sigma physics honor society, and Chi Beta Phi science honor society.
TRIO’S COLD BREW HAS A HOT KICK
A former physics major, a biochemistry student, and a chemistry professor are teaming up to brew the world’s spiciest beer. Ray Parrish ’91, co-owner of Maltese Brewing Company, was obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records as a kid, so he decided to look up the world record for spiciest beer. When he found none, he contacted Guinness about establishing one.
Parrish asked UMW for help and connected with Sarah Smith ’12, UMW visiting assistant professor of chemistry. Smith thought biochemistry student Valerie Ebenki ’22 might be willing to join in the pursuit of record-breaking beer. The UMW-centric trio set out to determine the heat content of Maltese’s Signal One 2.0, a pineapple IPA infused with 500 Carolina Reaper chilies, the world’s hottest pepper.
Smith and Ebenki are using the Scoville heat index, which calculates chili spiciness, to determine the concentration of heat-making chemicals in the brew. They’re working in the Jepson Science Center labs, Ebenki said, using a ventilator hood and protective wear to guard against the powerful irritants capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin, the chemicals that add spice to peppers. Ebenki doesn’t drink beer, so she’s analyzed, not sampled, the brew.
Parrish estimates the new 2.0 version of his Signal One is roughly 70 percent hotter than its predecessor, which was never officially tested. Despite the pandemic, this past year has been Maltese’s most successful in its six-year history. Many loyal customers have attempted the Signal One 2.0 challenge – down 10 ounces in 10 minutes – but few have succeeded.
Regardless of outcome, Parrish planned to toast their efforts at the end of the spring semester.
Read more at umw.edu/spicybeer.
– Jill Graziano Laiacona ’04
Biochemistry major Valerie Ebenki, left, assesses chili spiciness with Sarah Smith, a professor and alumna. Abby Moghtader is 2021 Coast to Coast Athletic Conference Player of the Year.
EAGLES TENNIS TEAMS EXCEL ALL SEASON
It was a great spring for Eagles tennis, with the women’s team winning the Coast to Coast (C2C) Athletic Conference tournament held May 6-8, 2021, and both men’s and women’s teams ranking in the Top 20 all season long.
The C2C is the successor to the Capital Athletic Conference, in which Mary Washington had competed since 1989. The name change became official in late 2020.
With the Eagles women’s C2C win, they advanced to the NCAA Division III tournament for the 22nd straight season. They advanced to the quarterfinals but did not continue to the semifinals.
Individually, women’s standouts Abby Moghtader ’23 and Claire Coleman ’22 received NCAA tournament singles bids, and Moghtader and Lauren Quinn ’22 were to compete in doubles. The NCAA singles and doubles tournaments were to be held after press time.
Moghtader also was named the C2C women’s tennis athlete of the year; head coach Todd Helbling took top coaching honors.
Eagles men also scorched through their regular tennis season but fell in the C2C finals. Moses Hutchison ’21 earned a spot in the NCAA men’s singles tournament and teamed with Andrew Watson ’23 in the NCAA doubles contest, both held after press time.
Overall, spring athletes persevered with good grace amid COVID-19 protocols that required constant testing, canceled some events, and limited spectatorship at home games.
Clint Often
