Welcome to our monthly compilation of good news, gathered from the college's faculty and staff! Would you like to include your own news or a colleague's? Send us your details on the CHSS Brag Points form (which also collects information we can share with George Mason's Office of University Branding).
A shout out to Sylvia Schreiner, associate professor in the Department of English, for receiving a microgrant of $3,000 through the Stearns Center Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for her proposal, “Hands-On Community Linguistics for Linguistics Students.” This grant will provide funds for students in a syntax course to work with a speaker of a threatened variety of Kurdish to better document and understand the language.
Yijue Liang, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, published the paper "Shelters from the Storm: A Daily Investigation of Customer Sexual Harassment and Organizational Resources as Moderators" in the Journal of Managerial Psychology. Liang’s paper investigates gender disparities, daily repercussions, and organizational implications related to customer sexual harassment (CSH) of service workers. Through her research, she found that women encountered significantly more instances of daily CSH, which eroded their daily job satisfaction and work engagement. While perceived organizational support and effective customer-service training mitigated the within-person relationship between CSH and job satisfaction, it did not improve work engagement. Congratulations Professor Liang for this recognition of your important work.
Congratulations to Asha Rudrabhatla, graduate research assistant in the Department of Psychology, on being selected as a 2025 Commonwealth of Virginia Engineering and Science (COVES) Policy Fellow! The COVES Policy Fellowship program aims to strengthen ties between the scientific community and state government in the Commonwealth of Virginia while encouraging and equipping more scientists and engineers to be effective advisors for public policy in the state of Virginia. Through this fellowship program of the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows will receive science policy and communication training and serve as science advisors to host offices during the summer of 2025.
Congratulations to Chrystal George Mwangi, associate professor in the Higher Education Program, on her new book, Hidden in Blackness, Being Black and Being an Immigrant in U.S. Schools and Colleges, which analyzes the experiences, perspectives, and development of Black immigrant students. Read more about Mwangi’s book, which will be published and available for purchase on February 28.
A shout out to Leeya Mehta, director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center, who received funding to help international writers and their translators participate in a series of events in 2024-2025 around the theme: The Politics of Language/The Language of Politics. Mehta received $5000 from the Virginia Commission for the Arts via an NEA grant for this award, which is matched by the Cheuse Center. Multiple events are planned for 2025; see the Cheuse Center events page for more info.
February 11, 2025