China has spent the better part of the past seven
years readying itself for the world stage. As
the host country for the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, China,
and the city of Beijing, needed to build
new facilities, modernize some old ones, update
infrastructure and otherwise lay down the welcome
mat.
The nation didn't stop at bricks and mortar, however.
It also wanted to bring its citizenry up-
to-date. How do you modernize a population? Sophie Lu
wanted to find out, and she did, thanks to a
four-year Woodrow Wilson fellowship award she received her
freshman year.
Lu, a senior
international studies major whose parents were born in
China, set out two years ago
to examine China's Olympic Education Program, a massive
project aimed at transforming the Chinese
populace. Her original Woodrow Wilson research topic
involved U.S.-China economic relations, and she
had spent the better part of her freshman and sophomore
years exploring the subject. The fellowship
does not discourage students from switching their research
focus, however. In fact, its designers
anticipated that many, like Lu, would do just that.
Since 1999, the Woodrow Wilson fellowship awards have
allowed undergraduates in the Krieger
School of Arts and Sciences the opportunity to pursue an
independent research project over the
course of his or her college career. Lu is one of 16
seniors who on Friday, April 11, will display and
discuss the results of their research at a poster session,
sponsored by the school's Second Decade
Society, to be held from 3 to 5:30 p.m. in Homewood's Glass
Pavilion.
Lu said that China's elite and political leaders,
driven by a desire to validate the nation's
newfound status as an economic and political superpower,
wanted to use the Olympic Games to project
a model image of Chinese citizenship. The campaign preaches
a sort of 21st-century ideal, with an
emphasis on modern living, cosmopolitan lifestyle,
environmental friendliness, animal rights and an
overall better quality of life. The campaign's messages and
branding appear everywhere: in schools,
television programs, commercials and even street signs.
"This is an overt effort on the part of the Chinese
government to modernize its citizenry and
make them more worldly," said Lu, whose project adviser was
Joel Andreas, an assistant professor of
sociology. "They are very mindful of what the world will
see when [the country] opens up its doors."
Lu used her analysis of the Olympic Education Program
as a case study for the relationship
between social inequality and citizenship identity among
contemporary Chinese youth. In the winter
and summer of 2007, she traveled to China to conduct the
study through interviews and observations
of students, teachers and administrators from three public
high schools with varied economic profiles.
Her analysis compared and contrasted the responses of
students from different socioeconomic
backgrounds in their engagement and reaction to the
campaign. In general, students from the elite
school felt they have always been "Olympic citizens," she
said, and therefore needed no help or
direction to "civilize themselves." Those from mid-level
economic backgrounds felt they had the
resources to make themselves better and aspired to the
ideal.
"And those at the very bottom see Olympic citizenry as
something to aspire to, but they are not
as engaged in the campaign as they feel they can't do
anything about changing their situation," she
said. "They view the campaign as something external to
their world, something to admire and watch
from afar."
Lu said that while the goals and effects of this
campaign seem benign, a deeper analysis reveals
that it puts forth an intrinsically hierarchical form of
sociocultural citizenship that devalues the
identity of the nonelite.
Somewhat surprisingly, she said, there has been little
backlash from the population.
"I would say that they have completely absorbed this
message and it has become the norm," she
said. "They all want to be good citizens and fulfill the
message, even though some feel it's beyond
them."
Lu said that her research experience has been the
highlight of her Johns Hopkins career.
"When I came in as a freshman, I had no real concept
of what real research meant. This has
been one of the most amazing experiences in my life,
actually," she said. "I'm so grateful for having
this opportunity. If I had the chance to do it over again,
I certainly would."
The annual Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research
Fellowship Program allows students to
delve into unconstrained research during their
undergraduate experience, mentored by a faculty
member. Each Wilson fellow receives a grant of up to
$10,000 to be distributed over four years to
support research expenses, including costs associated with
travel, equipment and use of archives.
The fellowships are given to incoming freshmen of
outstanding merit and promise and also to
rising sophomores, who receive up to $7,500 for three
years. For high school seniors, a Woodrow
Wilson brochure is included in the application packets
mailed out by the Office of Undergraduate
Admissions. Current freshmen, however, must submit a
two-to-three-page proposal, a resume, a
second-semester transcript and a letter of recommendation
from a JHU faculty member who would
become the student's mentor.
The award is named after the former U.S. president,
who received his doctorate from Johns
Hopkins. The program was developed for the School of Arts
and Sciences by Herbert Kessler, then
dean of the school and now a professor of art history;
Steven David, vice dean for centers and
programs; and university trustee J. Barclay Knapp, who
funded the fellowships through the school's
James B. Knapp Deanship, named for his late father.
Recipients have gone on to win Rhodes, Marshall,
Fulbright and Truman scholarships.
The individual research projects are designed by the
fellows, and each student has the choice
of focusing on a single long-term project, exploring
several aspects of a particular discipline or
working on various short-term undertakings in an array of
fields. Students can opt to pursue research
in their own major or, if they wish, branch off into a
totally unrelated discipline.
Neuroscience major Virginia
Pearson's subjects typed strings of numbers on a computer
to test how wakefulness and sleep impacted their procedural
memory.
Photo by Will Kirk / HIPS
|
Neuroscience major Virginia Pearson used her Wilson
fellowship to conduct a study of how
wakefulness and sleep impact "procedural memory," which
deals with an acquired or unconscious
knowledge of actions, such as playing the piano, riding a
bike or typing.
Pearson wanted to build on work done at Harvard
Medical School that shows sleep helps to
consolidate and stabilize procedural memories.
Specifically, she wanted to determine how much sleep
is necessary to optimize such memory. Her adviser was
Richard P. Allen, co-director of the Johns
Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center of Medicine and
Physiology.
With a lure of $50 each, financed by her fellowship,
she convinced 60 Johns Hopkins students
to be test subjects. The students were required to wear an
activity monitor for one week before the
three-day testing period began to ensure that they were on
a normal sleep schedule. During the
testing days, they had to go to sleep by 12:30 a.m. and
avoid caffeine, alcohol and naps--a tall task for
college-age students, Pearson quipped.
Pearson divided the students into one of six test
groups. For the first two testing sessions, all
the students were taught a procedural memory process--how
to type a specific string of numbers on a
keyboard. They were given an interference task--learning a
different sequence of numbers--
immediately afterward to provide disruption of the
memory.
During the third session, students were assigned to
different times for retesting. Some were
retested immediately. Others were retested 24 hours later,
after a full night's sleep. Still others
were awakened at 4 a.m. and retested after three hours of
sleep, disrupting REM sleep patterns.
Pearson hypothesized that the amount of REM sleep
would play a significant role in the speed
and accuracy at which these procedural actions were
performed. Her results surprised her.
"[REM] sleep did not have as much impact as I thought
it would," she said. "Those with 12 hours
of wakefulness had the best score, but no other group did
significantly worse. Not surprisingly, those
who were awakened at 4 a.m. did the poorest."
Pearson said the relatively small sampling of subjects
and unpredictable variables, such as
whether or not students were getting the expected hours of
sleep, likely played a role in her findings.
She said the experience was still rewarding and
valuable.
"This was the first research project I've ever
undertaken on my own. It was very interesting
dealing with and running a subject group," she said. "I got
to meet a lot of great people, and I
definitely learned a lot from the experience."
Subjects of other Woodrow Wilson projects on display
at the Friday poster session include the
effects of classical Indian dance on Down syndrome
children, the economics of independent film,
urban homelessness and secondary education in Pakistan.
For current freshmen, the deadline for fellowship
applications is May 16. For more information,
go to
www.jhu.edu/woodrowwilson.
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