URSP Student Tabatha Donley Researches the Struggles for West Papuan Merdeka from Indonesia

My name is Tabatha Donley and I am a senior majoring in Global Affairs, with a concentration in International Development and minors in Social Justice and Conflict Analysis/Resolution. With the support of OSCAR, I am studying the struggle for West Papuan merdeka (freedom) from its occupying force, Indonesia. I first learned about West Papua through a CULT 320 course, with my interest in the Melanesian region heightening after meeting GMU’s Visiting Scholar and West Papuan activist Herman Wainggai (huge thanks to Professor John Dale, my current mentor, for the introduction). Together, Mr. Wainggai and I coordinated several campus events where he shared his experience and perspective as a displaced Papuan. My interactions with Mr. Wainggai left me wanting to learn and contribute more towards the movement for Papuan Merdeka; thus, began my OSCAR research.

Drawing upon interviews with Mr. Wainggai, as well as anthropological and sociological literature, my study serves to highlight the importance of establishing localized human rights discourses within an indigenous sovereignty movement, thereby increasing understanding of how indigenous communities can best mobilize and achieve self-determination without compromising their collective cultures and identities. My research also explores indigenous leadership, burnout, and intellectual property rights (IPR) within the context of Papuan merdeka. Unlike STEM research, I spend no time in labs or with vast amounts of quantitative data. Instead, my days are spent in the library, analyzing scholarly journals, coding documents, interviewing Mr. Wainggai, or making connections between various global indigenous movements.

As a senior who plans to attend graduate school, this experience has been instrumental in gaining further insight into the world of scholarly research, both its challenges and rewards. Being mentored by Professor Dale has also expanded my understanding of human rights discourse, and guided me into new fields of research methodologies, theories, and movements.

URSP Student Katharine Lai Researches Researches the Perceptions of Behavioral Control Among College-Aged Students

As part of my capstone communication course, I was introduced to OSCAR and the possibility of pursuing a scholarly research project as an undergraduate. Immediately, I thought of my interest in mental health and decided I wanted to explore how to improve access to counseling and psychological services for students of George Mason University. After applying for and receiving a URSP research grant, I was able to follow my curiosity and develop a unique research question, collect data, and analyze results – setting me up for success in future academic and career opportunities. Through my research, I have learned invaluable skills which I can apply to my long-term career goal of creating a non-profit organization designed to give mentally disabled people access to quality health care and community inclusion. I have enhanced my writing, research, and time management abilities, learned about research ethics and protocols, and practiced presentational skills. While completing a research project from start to finish may seem daunting, on a weekly basis my tasks are manageable. I spend a good portion of time finding and reading existing research on the topic of mental health access, specifically looking at perceptions of behavioral control among college-aged students. While not researching, I am designing survey questions on the software program Qualtrics, sending emails asking for survey participants, or analyzing data using the statistical software SPSS. Throughout this semester, I have discovered how much I enjoy researching, synthesizing data, and being able to tangibly contribute to my academic field. OSCAR has given me such a valuable opportunity to expand my knowledge and appreciation of communication research.

URSP Student Stephen Guion Researches to Pursue His Goals

Two experiences inspired me to conduct my current experiment. First, my current mentor Dr. Craig McDonald, taught us about intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells and how they respond to short-wavelength light. With a basic interest in the interaction between humans and modern technology, this topic intrigued me. Later, I saw an advertisement for blue-enriched lights with the branding promising an increase in cognitive efficiency. Having learned of the effects of blue light on arousal, and with an understanding of the top-down modulation of expectation, this advertisement campaign also inspired me to investigate which variable was most responsible for the observed
outcome.

I chose this research question in order to begin the process of chipping away at my long- term goals. With a goal of investigating the effects of modern technology on human behavior, cognition, and physiological adaptation, it may be difficult to narrow down and find a focused research question. This topic, however, provided me with a window, with which I could approach my long-term goals in a scholarly and interdisciplinary fashion.

On a weekly basis, my assignments heavily depend on my participants. I have twenty sessions per week available for participants to request both research credit through SONA, or extra credit through their professors, if applicable. Recently, I have been running ten participants a week in my experiment, which takes about fifteen hours a week. Research acts as somewhat of a part-time job, so the other five to ten hours per week are spent preparing data for final analysis and drafting my thesis for my honors thesis defense scheduled for April 25th, 2017.

This term, I discovered the responsibility involved in independent research. Last semester, I was aiding a PhD student with his dissertation, which sparked my current research question. This semester, however, I have been working alone, with advice from my research mentor, which has taught me the dedication and responsibility that research requires. Also, I have taken on a research assistant (who is a wonderful student entering her first semester of the Honors Psychology Thesis Program), and this has given me further motivation to pursue my goal of becoming a research professor and director of a university thesis program.

URSP Student Selena Chaivaranon Researches Creator Commentary and the Creation Process of the Transformers Franchise

My name is Selena Chaivaranon; I am a senior and Sociology major, and am deeply interested in the ability of the media to influence public agenda and to cultivate the idea of what is considered normative. In my university capstone course, I had previously investigated the ways in which Transformers characters are portrayed on-screen in the original 1984 cartoon, the live-action movies, and the Transformers: Prime cartoon, with respect to how they embodied American cultural values, such as the promotion of patriarchy and freedom, the division of gender into a strict binary system,

the norm of violence, and the division of what is “right” versus what is “wrong.” This semester, I am focusing on how the creators themselves (such as the artists, script writers, directors, voice actors, etc.) discuss the characters and the creation process of the Transformers TV shows, movies, and toys. How deliberate are their decisions? What sorts of stages do these characters go through in their initial design phases, and how are those elements translated into a final product? How are the characters, and the principle values they embody, divided up between their factions? These are but a few of the questions I had wanted to explore in order to gain a better understand the process and degree of intentionality that goes into creating a long-lasting, well-known franchise.

The messages that these creators try to embed in TV shows, which are intended to market material products (toys) to children in part illustrate what is accepted and appreciated in American culture today. I am interested not only in the ways in which children’s media often perpetuates harmful stereotypes of minority groups, but in how it can also promote ideas of equality and acceptance. This has become especially important to me given the recent surge in hate-crime across the USA, and I am thrilled to have been able to gain additional first-hand experience in conducting my own research in this topic.  

I recorded and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data from print materials (such as art concept books and memorabilia collections), web pages, and online videos (such as interviews and panel presentations), and synthesized the data as they corresponded to themes surrounding gender and sexuality, the division of “right” and “wrong,” and violence. At this point in time, I have finished the first draft of my research paper and am currently working on editing a second draft, and putting together a poster presentation. It is my hope to also prepare a version of my paper for publication, so that I may add to the existing body of literature surrounding not only the Transformers franchise but of American media and pop-culture. 

URSP Student Clare Yordy Researches How Bisexuality is Portrayed in Film and Television

My name is Clare Yordy, and I am a freshman studying Government and International Politics. I am conducting research on how bisexuality is portrayed in film and television, which I began working on in my Honors 110 class last semester. I’ve always had a passion to learn more about sexuality and gender, so I thought it would be interesting to look into a sexuality that gets very little positive attention: bisexuality. Because bisexuality rarely appears in any form of mass media, I wanted to find out how it’s represented and how it affects society as a whole. After completing the class, I realized how much work there was to do on this topic, and was inspired to pursue it further. Eventually, I came to realize that I will also want to research how portrayals of bisexuality affect bisexual individuals and societal views of bisexuality. However, for the sake of time this semester, I am only focusing on mediated portrayals of bisexuality.

On a weekly basis I watch movies and television from 2000 to the present that contain bisexual characters. I have a running list of shows and movies to watch and take careful notes on what the characters are saying, what other characters are saying abo
ut them, and their actions. I then take these notes and try to find common themes and patterns among these characters. These notes will be used to perform a rhetorical analysis on my chosen characters.

This semester I’ve discovered how much there is to learn about bisexuality, particularly in mass media. Although I was concerned about the lack of evidence on this topic, conducting this research has shown me that there are definite patterns among bisexual characters and that most representations of bisexuality in mass media are extremely negative. Additionally, exploring bisexual characters in film and television has given me insight on societal views of bisexuality, how sexuality as a whole is constructed in mass media, and how heteronormativity is consistently upheld in mass media.