Hi there! My
name is Jayme Murray and I am a senior from Alexandria, Virginia. I am
currently pursuing two degrees, one in Economics with a concentration in
managerial economics, and the other in Global and Environmental Change. With
the support of OSCAR and my mentor, Aaron Mulhollen, a PhD candidate in the
Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science (GGS), I was able to analyze
whether or not a local economic dependence on a college/university influences
the prevalence of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sanctions for
Division 1 football and men’s basketball programs.
I first heard
about this research after taking a class with Professor Rice in the Department
of GGS. This past spring I finished up a four-year career where I played on the
intercollegiate baseball team here at Mason, which is where a lot of my
interest in this project stemmed from. In combination with my experience as a
student-athlete at the Division 1 level and as an economics major, I was
confident that my mentor and I would be able to put the OSCAR grant to good use
and produce high quality research.
A typical day
for me, especially in the early stages of our research process, was dedicated
primarily to gathering and organizing data from a public database provided by
the NCAA. Although this was one of the first stages of our research process it
was also one of the most important because the data collected in this stage
would be used throughout the rest of our research. As we progressed through our
research I began to switch my focus from data collection to data application
and writing literature reviews.
The results that
Aaron and I have gathered so far support our hypothesis, however we aren’t done
there as we look to continuing to expand our research this upcoming fall. The
long-term goal of our project is to become published in an academic journal,
and thanks to the OSCAR grant, we are well on our way to achieving this goal.
As a senior who
aspires to attend graduate school, this experience has proven to be invaluable
as I continue to progress towards my long-term goals, among them is earning a
PhD in Economics. Working with Aaron has been beyond anything I could’ve
imagined, I learn something new from him every step of the way. One of the
greatest lessons I’ve learned from this experience is that many great
discoveries in today’s society don’t happen overnight, however through
persistence and a process-driven mindset we are able to achieve much more than
first imagined.
