Women and Gender Studies Faculty Brown Bags give students a chance to get an intimate look at the amazing research that is being done by faculty members of Mason. Usually taking place in the afternoon over lunch, faculty members give short, informal presentations about their work and the social justice issues that they are passionate about. Unlike larger,more formal presentations, they allow for casual discussion afterward and give participants the opportunity to make connections with faculty members naturally.
The most recent Faculty Brown Bag took place on Wednesday, October 18th which included sharing the highly inspiring work from Dr. Earle Reybold and Dr. Erin Peters Burton.
Dr. Reybold is a professor of qualitative methods and her presentation was titled “Knowing Our Place’ in the Academy: The Other/Ed Journey to Ithaca”. Using the poem Journey to Ithaca by C. P. Cavafy as a parallel and reference point, she shared her longitudinal work with faculty as they have made their personal and professional journeys, sharing some of her own journey as well. While discussing her work and her life, Dr. Reybold reminded those present the importance of remembering that wisdom is not something you “get” through a degree or other cultural markers of achievement, but the stuff that comes with the journey itself. In Dr. Angie Hattery’s words, the presentation was “profound” and provided “an excellent frame” for many different areas of study.
Dr. Peters Burton’s presentation, titled “Empowering Underrepresented students in STEM Education” was also highly inspiring. Dr. Peters Burton is a professor of science education and educational psychology, and she began her talk with a quote from Albert Einstein that read, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” The quote was an appropriate prime for her work as a whole. Dr. Peters Burton talked about some pitfalls of the way STEM topics have traditionally been taught in the past, and her work highlights the benefits of teaching students how to use metacognition, self-regulation, and expression of their ideas in a variety of ways. At the end of her presentation, she stated, “we must do something different to support learners.”
Women and Gender Studies looks forward to hearing more about both faculty members’ research in the future.
October 27, 2017
