Filling Gaps and Building Bridges


 

TRIP supports its RAs in creating their own original work. Donovan, for instance, published an article on the TRIP blog last semester highlighting some considerations researchers should take when gathering and interpreting scholars’ perspectives. 

https://blog.valdosta.edu/coe/2014/04/25/open-access-textbooks/ 

With majors ranging from French & Francophone Studies to Economics and Middle Eastern Studies, Aidan Donovan ’21, Maggie Manson ’22, and Mary Trimble ’23 have diverse academic backgrounds. But the three are united by a common interest: bridging the gap between policymakers and those who study policy. At GRI’s Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project, these undergraduate Research Assistants (RAs) are able to help address this gap with their colleagues and project leaders, gaining valuable research skills and insights to policy along the way.

https://www.pattiannbengen.citymax.com/board/board_topic/5802956/5578417.htm 

Some primary responsibilities of TRIP RAs involve helping to create and distribute surveys to journalists, policy scholars, or non-governmental organizations, analyzing survey results, and coding international relations journals.

https://www.pattiannbengen.citymax.com/board/board_topic/5802956/5569266.htm 

Because of TRIPs comprehensive approach to policy, the researchers have also been able to incorporate their own interests into their roles. For instance, Manson—an International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies double major—is working on developing her own addition to one of TRIP’s surveys that concentrates on teaching and research focused on the Middle East.

https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/ltm/?p=582 

“There’s a lot of room for you to grow in your own research while you’re at TRIP,” Manson said. “It’s not just giving the contact collection and the kind of nitty gritty stuff. It’s really important to have your operations, but also to be expanding on your own research interests as well.”

https://neuroptresidency.kaiserpermanente.org/lena-6-15-17/ 

Trimble published a piece in the Monitor looking at how the CIA used a vaccine program to plot to kill Osama bin Laden, which resulted in a blurred line between warfighting and humanitarianism. Although this work was not done through TRIP, the team supported her in her own research along the way, underscoring the team’s commitment to the ethos of research.

https://wmblogs.wm.edu/globalresearch/the-pips-process-finding-a-voice-through-research/ 

“The support when it came out from the TRIP team was just unbelievable,” Trimble said.


Along with other TRIP colleagues, Trimble and Donovan also worked as RAs over the summer. During this time, they helped read and review chapters of the TRIP Project’s new book, Bridging the Theory-Practice Divide in International Relations. This book uses TRIP data gathered over 15 years to look at the gap regarding how academics influences policy.

https://blogs.depaul.edu/tcorwin/2017/07/07/the-drinking-culture-on-a-college-campus/ 

“I think all of that is super interesting and important in terms of understanding how we can better get academic knowledge into the hands of policymakers so that it can impact their day to day decisions,” Manson said.


At the start of the pandemic, the TRIP team had to transition from in-person to online work—a difficulty since GRI emphasizes mentorship and connection among student researchers and project leaders. But the team made the most of its circumstances.

https://www.pattiannbengen.citymax.com/board/board_topic/5802956/5578426.htm


“We all had a really strong relationship with each other and a really strong working relationship with each other,” Trimble said. “I really looked forward to our [virtual] staff meetings every week because it was something that felt kind of normal.”

https://www.pattiannbengen.citymax.com/board/board_topic/5802956/5578425.htm 

Although they are currently working remotely, Donovan, Manson, Trimble, and their colleagues have continued to promote TRIP’s mission of bridging the gap between policymakers and those who study policy. Doing so—whether online or in-person—has helped the student researchers gain skills they will use throughout their careers.

https://neuroptresidency.kaiserpermanente.org/multibillion-dollar-class-action-lawsuit-is-faced-5/ 

“[TRIP has] given me the opportunity to conduct some independent work and has really helped me form some qualitative and quantitative research skills,” Manson said. “These are all things that TRIP has facilitated for me, and I think that all of this research training is really going to help in my own academic pursuits moving forward.” 

https://blogs.depaul.edu/tcorwin/2017/06/15/the-growing-importance-to-monitor-mental-health-in-teens/ 

Some 550 to 500 million years ago, in what would become central Virginia, a suite of sediments was deposited in the newly formed Iapetus Ocean whose waters washed onto the southeastern shore of ancestral North America (aka Laurentia). Geologically speaking, ocean basins don’t last forever as tectonic collision and subduction lead to orogenies, mountain building events. In a series of major tectonic episodes that’s collectively known as the Appalachian orogeny, these Iapetan sediments were deformed and metamorphosed in the culmination of colliding tectonic plates and microplates.

https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/ltm/?p=768 

My senior research is focused on quantifying the strain recorded by Iapetan quartzites that are now exposed in central Virginia. Both the amount of strain and the 3D orientation of deformation features provide insight as to the kinematics (the motion and flow of earth materials) back in the day during ancient Appalachian mountain building. 

https://neuroptresidency.kaiserpermanente.org/faculties-of-effective-respected-and-liked-chief/ 

This blog post focuses on information obtained from one sample, in particular; we refer to the rock as ‘Baby Blue’ out of admiration for its distinctive blue-gray quartz clasts that comprise much of the rock. ‘Baby Blue’ was first discovered by the Gladstone Gladiators as part of their summer research campaign, way back in the pre-COVID world of 2019. ‘Baby Blue’ formed a small outcrop (~1 m wide by 30 cm tall) at the edge of an eroded-out roadbed off an old logging trail.

https://wmblogs.wm.edu/sustainability/counting-carbon-for-campus-sustainability/ 

I first visited the ‘Baby Blue’ outcrop while conducting fieldwork on a muggy July day. At the outcrop we measured the orientation of geological structures and collected an oriented chunk of the pebbly quartzite to bring back to Williamsburg. However, ‘Baby Blue’ is not just eye-candy. Its preserved primary and secondary structures provide us with an opportunity to learn more about the depositional environment and later deformation. In metamorphosed and deformed rocks, primary structures are commonly obliterated, but ‘Baby Blue’ is special. 

https://blog.valdosta.edu/coe/2014/04/11/students-fear-of-writing/

The primary structures include 1) bedding along a wavy contact between a conglomerate and sandstone, 2) cross bedding in the sandstone, and 3) weak grading in the conglomerate. Cross beds indicate that the sand grains were both transported and deposited by flowing water. 

https://www.pattiannbengen.citymax.com/board/board_topic/5802956/5578433.htm 

A close look at the coarser quartz pebbles indicates they have a preferred orientation with their long axes aligned. Does this mean they were deposited in this orientation? Sometimes pebbles can be imbricated during deposition, but these are distinctly elongate pebbles- this implies that the grains’ shape was distorted by deformation long after the sediment was deposited. My research task is to determine just how much deformation these pebbles and granules underwent related to the orogenic events that occurred after their deposition.

https://www.pattiannbengen.citymax.com/board/board_topic/5802956/5549968.htm 

Sediment is typically deposited one layer at a time with the younger layers above (overlying) older layers. By this “Law of Superposition” it would follow that the sandstone in ‘Baby Blue’ is younger than the conglomerate but upon closer examination of the layers’ relation to one another, we see something that suggests otherwise.

http://zhouw.hosted.uark.edu/index.php/en/component/k2/item/6-test-blog?limit=10&start=2030 

Some of the sedimentary layers cross-cut other layers, resulting in the older layers being truncated by the younger features. But in the ‘Baby Blue’ outcrop some of the cross beds are truncated at the bottom which suggests the rock at the bottom of the outcrop is actually a younger layer than the layer at the top! Below, I’ve rotated the image 180˚to better illustrate the original orientation of these strata before they were overturned. 

https://blogs.depaul.edu/tcorwin/2017/06/19/how-anxiety-and-drugs-can-go-hand-in-hand/ 

By looking at these primary structures, we can see that these layers were overturned in such a way that the entire stratigraphy is inverted from its original depositional position – what some in the W&M Structural Geology & Tectonic Research Group might call- “tectonic monkey business.”

https://www.pattiannbengen.citymax.com/board/board_topic/5802956/5578432.htm 

But how much strain did ‘Baby Blue’ enjoy?

https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/ltm/?p=369

Deformed pebbles are excellent strain markers. Sediment grains deposited in lake, river, or marine environments are typically nearly spherical in shape due to the rolling motion that occurs by long-distance transports in water. 

https://blog.valdosta.edu/coe/2014/05/05/new-book-by-dr-obiakor/ 

I estimated two-dimensional strain using the Rf/phi method which required that I trace many of the pebbles and measure the aspect ratio and orientation of individual grains for the entire grain population. Based on the data for that population I can estimate the strain ratio (Rs) and its orientation for a given section or rock face.

https://userblogs.fu-berlin.de/testblog1234/2014/08/20/software/ 

On the slab below, you can observe the numerous well-aligned and elongate bluish quartz pebbles.  Some of these grains have an aspect ratio of >5:1 (that means they are 5 times longer than they are wide). Typically, pebbles that occur in a stream or along a beach are much closer to being equant in shape, yet these pebbles are strongly elliptical in shape. 

https://blog.valdosta.edu/coe/2014/04/18/video-made-easy-for-livetext-upload/ 

Based on the population of grains, I estimate a strain ratio (Rs) of 3.6:1 for this particular section. An originally circular passive marker (the dashed white circle) would have been transformed into an ellipse with an aspect ratio of 3.6 (the red strain ellipse) which requires an elongation of the rock by ~90% (with an equivalent amount of shortening in the opposite direction). That’s some significant strain!

https://wmblogs.wm.edu/admiss/wm-common-app-is-live/

I measured strain on multiple two-dimensional surfaces and combined those data into a 3D estimate of the strain ellipsoid. The strain recorded by ‘Baby Blue’ is that of a moderately prolate ellipsoid – imagine an elongate egg.

https://wmblogs.wm.edu/sgtresearch/slip-slidin-away-veins-faults-in-virginia-soapstone/ 

But what does this say about the bigger picture? The map below illustrates the maximum strain ratios for multiple samples with the red strain ellipses plotted in their correct geographic orientation. Note that the long axes of the individual strain ellipses are oriented northeast-southwest, approximately parallel to the different rock units in the region. 

https://neuroptresidency.kaiserpermanente.org/pension-sales-ifrs-gaap-2/ 

I transferred to William & Mary as a junior with the intention of being a geology major, but not fully understanding my reasoning as to why I’d study geology. Soon after my arrival I found my research advisor and picked a structural research problem in the Lofoten Islands of northern Norway for my thesis study. The pandemic changed my research plans, and now I am studying the geology a bit closer to home than originally planned! 

https://students.olblogs.tru.ca/tchernokojeva/activity-8-2/ 

I was bummed about not going to Norway, but I got to spend my time at William & Mary studying two different (and complex) structural geology phenomena. The research into these topics has made it clear as to why I am in geology – the analysis of small structures can shed light on the big picture events from the past, and I find that pretty amazing! I never considered doing my own scientific research before coming to William & Mary, but I am so thankful for that opportunity and I have loved the challenge. 

https://www.pattiannbengen.citymax.com/board/board_topic/5802956/5578419.htm 

As for ‘Baby Blue’, that chunk of quartzite now resides on campus in the Geology Rock Garden where it’s baby blue quartz clasts and awesome geological structures can be appreciated by all who visit. Next time you find yourself at the west end of the Sunken Garden, venture just a bit further and check out the Rock Garden. 



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