Transfer student prepares for teaching career through Randolph classes, research project

After attending a community college for one year, Dominique Rose ’14 was looking for a small college that could help him in his quest to become a teacher. After he learned about the education program at Randolph—which would allow him to finish his bachelor’s degree and quickly earn a master’s degree in teaching—the decision was easy.

Studying at Randolph also gave Rose a unique opportunity to study teaching. This year, he participated in a Summer Research project that explored the attributes and characteristics teachers need and measured the success of Randolph’s education program.

“Subject matter knowledge doesn’t make you a good teacher,” Rose said. “You have to be able to communicate and understand your students. You need to be well versed in teaching, able to reach students with different learning styles.”

Dominique Rose ’14 explains his Summer Research project to Randolph professors
Tatiana Gilstrap and Holly Tatum during a Summer Research Symposium on Sept. 1.

Rose grew up in Amherst County, just across the James River from Randolph College. After graduating from high school, he attended Central Virginia Community College. He transferred to Randolph after attending an open house and deciding the education program was the right fit.

In his first semester at Randolph, Rose’s largest class had only 20 students—which is large compared to many classes at Randolph, but small compared to classes at other colleges Rose had considered. He enjoys being able to work closely with faculty. “The professors here are so friendly, they’re able to build relationships with students,” Rose said. “I can email my professors and they usually email me back within a few hours. That is so convenient.”

During one of Rose’s classes, his work caught the attention of education professor Roberta Parker. “I was very impressed by his tenacity and work ethic,” Parker said. “He is a conscientious student—always willing to go above and beyond to accomplish any task set before him.”

Parker invited Rose to join her and another education professor, Peggy Schimmoeller, for a project in Randolph’s Summer Research Program. They were assessing how well Randolph’s curriculum helps students gain the knowledge and attributes of good teachers.

Rose spent the summer reading current research about effective teaching practices and interviewing Randolph graduates who are now teachers. He asked them about the professional attributes and teaching skills that they developed at Randolph and how they are applying those skills in the classroom. He recently presented his findings in a symposium for the Summer Research Program.

Rose is pursuing certifications for special education, elementary education, and physical education. After finishing his undergraduate studies, he plans to enroll in Randolph’s one-year Master of Arts in Teaching program.

Outside of his studies, Rose is engaged in extracurricular activities. He is a student government senator for his residence hall, and he is a leader in Campus Outreach, a Christian fellowship ministry for students.

He said transfer students who look for opportunities can find many ways to integrate with campus life. “People here are so friendly, and they enjoy making new friends and carrying on good conversations,” Rose said.

Physics research on roller coasters

Tim Slesinger ’14 boarded Dominator, a popular roller coaster at King’s Dominion that reaches nearly 70 miles per hour. Like other riders, he was seeking thrills from the speed, twists, turns, and dives.

Unlike others, he was seeking scientific data.

This year, Slesinger joined an ongoing research project on the physics of roller coasters. Several years ago, Peter Sheldon, a Randolph physics professor, and Kacey Meaker ’08 set out to use scientific equipment to measure the speed, acceleration, and other forces experienced by roller coaster riders. They have been working on a book that uses roller coasters to explain physics to a mass audience.

How does riding a roller coaster connect with scientific
research? Watch this video to learn how a Randolph professor,
student, and graduate explore the physics of roller coasters.

“The project started because I really like roller coasters,” said Meaker, now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Berkley.

As Dominator shot forward, Slesinger raised his hands in the air and cheered along with other riders. Meanwhile, an iPod Touch in his pocket recorded measurements from its accelerometer, an internal device that detects orientation and motion.

He said that his goal was to find out if the accelerometer could be used to perform inertial navigation—like a four-dimensional GPS that doesn’t need satellites.

Sheldon explained that airplanes and large boats use inertial navigation regularly with the help of expensive equipment that tracks exactly where they are—including latitude, longitude, and elevation—at any given point in time. But that equipment is so expensive that inertial navigation is out of reach for educational applications.

“Physics teachers have, for years, taken their students to ride roller coasters, but they really can’t do a lot of useful measurements,” Sheldon said. “We’re trying to develop a way to do inertial navigation on a small, less expensive scale. We’re trying to develop methods that would allow people to do this in the classroom.”

This summer, the research team rode roller coasters while carrying iPod Touches and gyroscopes as well as real inertial navigation equipment. Slesinger then compared readings from devices to determine whether the data from the accelerometer and gyroscope could map the same travel path recorded by the expensive equipment.

“Mostly, we want to be able to know that we can do inertial navigation with these devices,” Meaker said. Slesinger added that inertial navigation could have many applications in high school and college physics classes if it can be performed with affordable equipment.

The calculations showed that accelerometer data can map out an accurate path with enough computation, but this fall, the project will be continued in hopes of more detailed findings.

The Summer Research project was a good opportunity to learn more about the research process and practice computer programming, Slesinger said. It also strengthened his appreciation for the educational environment at Randolph College. “You really get to know professors here on a personal level,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like college, but it feels like family when you’re learning.”

Meaker agreed with that sentiment. “Every summer I’m lucky enough to get to come back,” she said. “It’s like I’m coming home.”

Summer research yields new online English test, insight into college writing preparedness

A rite of passage for most first-year college English students is the traditional test to assess the student’s skills with the language. At the beginning of the semester, students taking the test might read over a collection of sentences and indicate whether each sentence is grammatically correct.

This summer, a Randolph professor and student set out to make a better test for those purposes.

Bunny Goodjohn, director of the writing program, said that the College has been using an online English skills assessment test that was free and worked well—when it worked at all.

“The idea was brilliant, but the execution was patchy,” Goodjohn said. Often, the website that hosted the test stopped working. “So I wanted to see if I could come up with an equivalent that would give us the same results but that would be more reliable, and something that we could tailor to our own needs.”

Goodjohn and Lauren Dowdle ’13 decided to work on the idea during the Summer Research Program.

As part of their research, Dowdle studied trends in students’ preparation for college-level English courses. She collected journal articles about the topic, and she also analyzed statistics about SAT scores.

Average SAT scores have usually risen in recent years, but Dowdle discovered that a high SAT verbal score does not always mean someone can write at the college level. Through further research, including more than 30 interviews, she learned that many students feel like high school writing courses did not prepare them for what college courses required. “Many students aren’t prepared for the expectations of their professors,” she said. “In high school, grammar is not covered as much. I heard that a lot in my interviews.”

Goodjohn said that Dowdle’s research shows a disconnect between what high schools prepare students for and what college professors expect.

Goodjohn focused her research on finding a way to recreate an online English assessment test. With help from Randolph College Information Technology, she found a way to administer the test online with SurveyMonkey.com. That platform has proven more reliable, she said.

Several Randolph English professors plan to start using Goodjohn’s assessment test this fall. Currently, the test uses the same questions as the free test formerly used by the College, but Goodjohn plans to rewrite them so that each sentence related to Randolph College, reflecting the College’s culture, history, and traditions.

Grass and free-range chicken diets: Students lead research with organic garden chickens

Two Randolph students are leading a study to help determine the best practices for raising healthy chickens that produce high-quality eggs.

Laura Word ’13 and Michael Taylor ’13 are conducting this research with chickens in the Randolph College Organic Garden. They placed one group of chickens in an area without grass, and another in an area with grass. Then they started tracking the health and egg quality of hens from each group.

Getting chickens to sit in a bucket long enough to be weighed
isn't always easy, but it is an important part of the research
Laura Word ’13 and Michael Taylor ’13 are conducting.

Word, who wants to become a veterinarian, thought of the research idea because she was interested in seeing how a grassy habitat would affect chickens. “You would think that if they have grass, they would be much better; but being a scientist, I can’t just trust my gut.”

Word and Taylor each received a grant from the Randolph Innovative Student Experience (RISE) program, which provides grants to help students pay for research and other scholarly endeavors. Word also received a Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges summer fellowship to fund the project.

After putting the chickens in different environments, they provided an identical corn and pellet ration to each group. They weighed the chickens, checked them for parasites and bacteria, and analyzed their eggs.

The researchers were surprised to find that the chickens among the grass gained weight more slowly than the other chickens. They produced fewer eggs, but the eggs had higher quality according to several measures.

Word plans to continue this research project in the fall to try answering other questions. For example, is the lower egg production caused by the age of the hens? Or could Einstein (the sometimes overprotective rooster who watches over the forage group) be causing them stress?

Adam Houlihan, a Randolph biology professor working on the research with the students, said this project gives context to the poultry industry’s free-range practices. “Free range, by definition, simply means that the birds have been given some period of time outdoors,” he said. “It doesn’t define the quality of the outdoor space, and it doesn’t define the period of time.” Some free range chickens are given an outdoor field of dirt or gravel, although some farmers are pushing for raising chickens with grass.

“This tiny little experiment with 28 birds has the potential to change some of the ways that the industry conducts business,” Houlihan said.

Student pushes through programming challenges to create mobile app for medical research

Thawda Aung ’13, left, worked with Katrin Schenk, a physics professor, to program cell phones to track and encourage exercise. Yong Jun “Jim” Kwon ’14, not pictured, worked on the project in Nebraska.

Thawda Aung ’13 hopes a mobile phone app that he wrote this summer could help improve and extend the lives of people with Alzheimer’s, depression, diabetes, or other illnesses. That’s one reason why hitting a quagmire in the middle of thousands of lines of code was so challenging.

He wanted the app, part of a Summer Research project connected to a major medical study, to automatically upload data that it collected so doctors could analyze it. This was not as automatic as he had hoped.

“I’m not the kind of guy who would give up something really easily, but I was about to give up after four nights of not sleeping,” he said. “I was pretty much a zombie.”

Finally, he decided to walk away and focus on other things for a day. He slept, he went to the gym, he went for a run. While he was running, his mind caught hold of an idea. Back at the computer, he worked through his problem and got the app working correctly.

Aung is working with Randolph College Professor Katrin Schenk, University of Nebraska Medical Center professor Stephen Bonasera, and fellow student Jim Kwon ’14 to develop and test a medical mobile monitoring system using cell phones. This fall, Alzheimer’s patients will be given Android phones that will track their daily activities and help doctors understand how the disease is affecting them, and whether medications are working as intended. The study won a $200,000 grant from the Alzheimer’s Association.

Aung and Kwon have worked on the project for the past two summers. Kwon has focused on developing an algorithm that analyzes a cell phone’s accelerometer data to determine a person’s activity level. This summer, he has worked to refine that algorithm with the help of University of Nebraska students who carry phones with them to gather data. “They’re doing things like going hiking, walking up and down stairs, so that we can look at the accelerometer data, and Jim is working on analysis,” Schenk said.

Kwon is also writing a paper about using mobile monitoring to understand a person’s activity level.

Last year, Aung created the monitoring app on a Nokia phone. But Nokia has discontinued the operating system the program was written for, so this summer he converted the code to run on Android phones.

The app is now ready to collect data for the Alzheimer’s study, but Aung plans to continue developing its capabilities and testing it until it is ready to be published in an app store. He said it has features that will set it apart from other apps that track people’s motions.

“People have made pedometers, and people have made GPS tracking apps. But we are analyzing your movement, your behavior patterns, and how they change,” Aung said. This analysis could help app users recognize when they slip into behavior patterns that could signal depression or other health problems. Recognizing those behavioral changes could help them improve or prompt them to seek help.

Research shows strength of traditional honor codes

A traditional honor system really can make students less likely to cheat, according to research by a Randolph College student and two professors.

For the past year, Megan Hageman ’13 has worked with psychology professors Beth Schwartz and Holly Tatum to study the concept of academic integrity and learn more about how honor codes affect academic behavior.

Schwartz, the Thoresen Professor of Psychology and assistant dean of the College, said this research could help all schools, including colleges, promote honesty in academic behavior. “A lot of us understand what motivates students to cheat. Now it is time to understand what we can do to motivate students to have academic integrity.”

The interest in studying academic integrity developed after Schwartz, Tatum, and Jerry Wells ’12 co-wrote a chapter about the teaching and learning environment at Randolph College, which is guided by a longstanding traditional honor code. Schwartz saw that there was not enough research into the effectiveness of honor systems. During the 2011 Summer Research Program, she asked Megan Hageman to sort through existing research on the subject and choose topics for further study. They decided to study the way different kinds of honor codes affect student honesty.

Like most traditional-style honor codes, the Randolph honor system includes a student-run adjudication board, unproctored exams, and trust that students will report dishonest behavior.  These systems aim to build a culture of personal responsibility and integrity.

Some schools use a modified honor code, which is often run by the school administration or faculty and lacks many of the features, such as a student-run judicial process, emphasized by the traditional honor systems.

Hageman and Schwartz designed a survey to gauge students’ attitudes toward various behaviors that are sometimes encountered in college. They asked students to read a list of questionable behaviors, such as turning in the same paper for two different classes or consulting a smart phone for help on a test, and rate them as honest or dishonest. They were also asked whether they would report the behavior.

More than 750 students at eight private liberal arts colleges took the survey last year. The results showed that students in colleges with traditional honor systems were more likely to view questionable behaviors as dishonest. Students in a school with a modified honor code answered almost identically to the students in schools without any honor code.

“Previous research has demonstrated that modified honor systems are supposed to decrease the occurrence of academically dishonest behaviors, but we found that not to be the case,” Hageman said.

Hageman helped Schwartz and Tatum conduct the survey and analyze the data. During this year’s Summer Research Program, she presented the research at a convention of the Association for Psychological Science. Then, she worked with Schwartz to write an article about the research, which they plan to submit to a scholarly journal later this summer.

The next phase of the research, which will form Hageman’s senior project, will seek to determine why a traditional honor code is more effective. If they can identify specific attributes that make a traditional system more effective, other colleges could adopt those features to decrease cheating, Schwartz said.

Hageman said this project has helped her learn more about the process of research and writing, but also about what can make honor codes more effective. She hopes her research can stimulate conversation about how to strengthen honor systems and increase academic honesty in other colleges and at Randolph. “Without talking about academic integrity no one can understand it and it cannot become fully ingrained in the culture of the campus,” she said.

Students produce play in motel room to study environmental theatre

Even Mother Nature knows that, in theatre, timing is everything.

A severe thunderstorm with powerful winds rolled through Virginia during one of Randolph College’s performances of the play Bug on June 29. The lights were off during a scene transition. When Ashley Peisher ’15 reached out of the bathtub that served as the stage manager’s control room (we’ll explain that soon) and flipped a light switch to begin a new scene, the room remained dark.

Peisher flipped the switch again and again. The storm had cut power to the motel where the play was being performed.

It was as though the power outage was on cue.

“The elements really worked well for us,” said Sonja Cirilo ’15. “The power went out going into a scene where the characters were hunkered down, and they were trying to hide.” The actors played out that final scene with flashlights, which added to the scene’s intensity and made it more real. When a giant clap of thunder accompanied the very end of the show, the audience was convinced, Cirilo said.

“Until I came out at the end of the play, they didn’t know that the power had gone out,” said Mace Archer, director of Bug and a theatre professor at Randolph. “They thought we were just doing our play.”

The production of Bug was part of Randolph College’s 2012 Summer Research Program. Archer, Peisher, Cirilo, and Emily Sirney ’14 were experimenting with environmental theatre, in which a show is performed in a space that is similar to the actual setting. In the case of Bug, it was a motel room.

The play tells the story of Agnes, a woman living in a motel room, who gets pulled into the conspiracy theories and delusions of Peter, a Gulf War veteran. The story includes drug use, violence, nudity, and profanity, and the research team used the performance to examine how the close setting would affect an audience in such an intense play.

Sirney said she wanted to help with the production as soon as she heard about it. “I thought it was a really special opportunity,” she said. “In college theatre, everything is sort of given to you—the stage, the equipment, the costumes. This was something that was all ours, and we had to build it from the ground up.”

Sirney served as company manager, finding and making props such as a fake tooth and scientific equipment. She also learned how to simulate blood in a live theatrical setting.

Peisher stacked pillows in the motel room’s bathtub to make it a comfortable control room. She ran sound on a laptop connected to speakers, and a single light switch in the bathroom controlled all the lighting.

Cirilo handled promotions and ticket sales for the show. She also recorded the reactions of audience members during the performances.

Audiences said the close proximity to the action did make the show more intense, and, at times, intimidating.

“This is such an opportunity for people to get more emotionally involved,” Sirney said. “In a proscenium theatre, you remember you’re watching a show. But almost every audience member we’ve talked to has said that at some point, they forgot they were watching the show. They felt motivated to get involved and comfort Agnes when she was beat by her ex-husband.

“That was good, because it means we’re doing our job well.”

“If you’re in a fifteen-hundred seat theatre, you’re still trying to have that connection, even with the audience member on the back row,” Archer said. Environmental theatre gives actors the opportunity to learn more about how that connection is created.

Archer also said the show allowed the students to obtain real production experience that is harder to come by in a traditional show. “I’ve watched them confront the level of detail that is necessary when you’re actually charge,” he said. “I think they’re in a position to put shows on themselves.”