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Dr. Mark Gabriele (center) in the lab with Sean Gay and Isabel Lamb-Echegaray

It's much too early to say whether their research will someday lead to better treatments for people who suffer from sensory processing disorders such as ringing in the ears, but two undergraduates are happy to be getting the laboratory experience this summer and seeing where it leads.

Sean Gay, who graduated with a degree in biology on May 5, and Isabel Lamb-Echegaray, a senior majoring in biology, say it's exciting to be getting in on the ground floor of research that has potential to help people.

The National Institutes of Health is excited as well, to the tune of $427,773.

The grant, awarded in April to Dr. Mark Gabriele, a professor of biology, and Dr. Lincoln Gray, a professor of communication sciences and disorders, will fund the research through March 2020, and comes on the heels of a $320,000 NIH grant they received in 2012 to do research in a related part of the brain.

Gabriele said the 2012 grant involved study of a midbrain structure, the inferior colliculus, and a subregion that processes sound. The new grant is funding research in an adjacent area of the inferior colliculus that processes touch and visual cues in addition to auditory information. And unlike the focus of the earlier research, where much is already known, very little is known about this neighboring multisensory center.

"This is what was most exciting to me in writing the grant," Gabriele said. "I was learning as I was going. This was the first grant where I got interested in an area that I knew little about and had to really school myself."

The NIH is interested because the research could help understand some underlying causes for sensory processing disorders such as tinnitus, commonly called ringing in the ears, and eventually lead to better interventions that are noninvasive and available to a larger population than what is now available.

Gay and Lamb-Echegaray look at images of a brain sample from a confocal microscope.

"There are millions of Americans who suffer from hearing disorders, and then when you bring in somatosensation and pain, chronic pain, phantom limb, that number escalates," Gabriele said. "There is a lot of cutting edge neuroscience in these areas, but many interventions involve intricate preparations that are highly invasive, leaving only a small fraction of the people who suffer from these disorders who actually benefit from them."

There is some evidence, Gabriele said, that sensory processing disorders may be caused in part due to negative brain adaptation or plasticity. For many tinnitus sufferers, including military veterans exposed to blasts, the symptoms begin after they have been exposed to damaging sound levels.  Such exposure can cause unwanted changes in brain circuitry and thus Gabriele hopes to find ways to train the brain to go back to its original configuration.

Gabriele said Gray's part of the research involves physiological and behavioral testing of the neural circuits of interest and their specific roles in processing multisensory information. The work will involve undergraduate and graduate students in communication sciences and disorders and is concentrated in year three of the grant.

Gay, who has worked in Gabriele's lab the past three years, plans to stick with the project through next school year and then apply to graduate school to pursue a doctorate. "In the past year I have been learning all the techniques so now I can use those and get some good research done," he said. Gay said he is interested in both neurology and immunology.

Dr. Thomas Moran, left, and Dr. Mark Gabriele become the latest winners of the Outstanding Faculty Award from JMU.

Dr. Mark Gabriele, a professor of biology, and Dr. Thomas Moran, a professor of kinesiology, are among 12 recipients of the Outstanding Faculty Award presented by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and Dominion Resources.

The Outstanding Faulty Awards recognize superior accomplishments in teaching, research and public service at Virginia’s institutions of higher learning. Nominees are selected by the institutions, reviewed by a panel of peers and chosen by a committee of leaders from the public and private sectors. In all, 83 nominations were received this year. This group was narrowed to a field of 27 finalists and then to the 12 recipients.

Gabriele, who has taught at JMU since 2001, and Moran, a JMU faculty member since 2008, are the 14th and 15th award winners from JMU since the award was first presented in 1987. Math professor Caroline Lubert and marketing professor Theresa Clarke received the award last year.

Gabriele said the award "is truly a reflection of the hard work of so many amazing students I've had the pleasure of mentoring, the openness and collaborative spirit of my colleagues, and the ongoing support of our leadership that encourages faculty to blend traditional boundaries of our teaching, research and service activities."

Moran said, "I have been blessed to work with awesome colleagues, students, and individuals of all ability levels in the community who challenge me to grow as a person and a professional every day.  I dedicate this award to all those past and present who have given me numerous opportunities to be part of something special at JMU."

A ceremony honoring the recipients will be held March 1 at The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond. Each recipient will receive an engraved award and $5,000 underwritten by the Dominion Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Dominion Resources. The Outstanding Faculty Award program is administered by SCHEV and funded by a grant from the Dominion Foundation, which has fully supported the OFA program since 2005.

SCHEV is the Commonwealth’s coordinating and planning body for postsecondary education. The agency provides policy guidance and budget recommendations to the governor and General Assembly, and creates the statewide strategic plan, The Virginia Plan for Higher Education. SCHEV has administered the Outstanding Faculty Awards since the program’s creation by the legislature in 1986.

The Dominion Foundation is dedicated to improving the physical, social and economic well-being of the communities served by Dominion companies. Dominion and the Foundation support nonprofit causes that meet basic human needs, protect the environment, support education and promote community vitality. For more information about Dominion (NYSE: D), headquartered in Richmond and one of the nation’s largest producers and transporters of energy, visit www.dom.com.

Grant fuels project pairing students with former inmates

The idea of working with formerly incarcerated individuals who are adjusting to life outside prison was, at first, a little intimidating.

But Lily Gates, a sophomore majoring in public policy, is finding the experience truly rewarding. "I look forward to this every week," she said recently after finishing a session helping men put their life stories to music.

Gates, a classically trained violinist who also plays a number of other instruments and who started at JMU as a social work major, is one of seven students working with the men who take part in programs at Gemeinschaft Home, a residential, transitional facility for individuals who have been released or diverted from incarceration and who may have a probation obligation with the Virginia Department of Corrections.

Music professors David Stringham and Jesse Rathgeber started the program this fall along with social work professor Cindy Hunter after getting a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to study the impact of an interdisciplinary, arts-based project on formerly incarcerated persons, pre-service professionals and community members. The goal is to use music and storytelling as therapeutic outlets, not only for the men who are participating, but in the spring for members of the community who attend a concert where the men may choose to be involved in performing what they have created. Stringham said focus groups will be organized following the concert to gauge whether experiencing these performances changes people's perceptions about formerly incarcerated individuals. Those perceptions will be compared to results from a survey being done this year in collaboration with faculty and students in the Institute for Constructive Advocacy and Dialogue.

Gracie Cuevas, a senior majoring in social work and Spanish, said she has been surprised by how the men have opened up and discussed their lives, breaking the stereotype of the macho male who keeps everything inside.

Maggie Rabe, a senior majoring in music education, also has been surprised by the openness of the men. And while some have been more hesitant than others at venturing into singing and playing instruments, she thinks they are coming around. "Making music is for everybody," she said. "It's not for an elite group of trained individuals. I think everyone has more music making skills than they give themselves credit for."

Hunter said the social work students "are building social work and music education skills by bringing their classroom education into planning and facilitating groups at Gemeinschaft. They have conducted literature reviews to inform their understanding of the population, strengths and challenges these men bring and the potential for the arts to influence successful reintegration. It is a perfect example of engaged learning."

Sydney Seed, a junior who is studying music education and doing a family studies minor in social work, said the experience has opened her eyes to what she will be able to do as a music teacher. "I started the family studies minor because I wanted to be a better K-12 teacher," she said. "I want to reach children through music and I thought if I could better understand family systems and better understand problems at home and how that impacts children, I can more effectively use music as a tool to help them. Never had I ever considered that I could use this curriculum for something like this project. So just opening my mind to the endless possibilities that exist for social work and music and all of the lives that I could help through that knowledge has changed my life."

The project involves a series of seven-week classes where the Gemeinschaft residents first talk with students about their life experiences to come up with ideas for lyrics. After coming up with ideas they start learning to write lyrics and then move into learning how to play instruments and sing. Most of the NEA grant was used to purchase instruments and recording equipment that will remain at Gemeinschaft after the program ends.

Two more seven-week classes are scheduled for the spring semester before the final performance, which will be held in the Forbes Center Concert Hall.

Stringham said the project is addressing a gray area between often discretely-defined disciplines of music education and music therapy. "What we're going out there to do is not what some may see as mainstream music education. We're not primarily concerned with these guys developing a sense of tonality or a sense of meter. Will they develop their musicianship through doing this? Sure. Will they probably also experience some sort of non-musical benefit from processing their story through these arts-based lenses? Absolutely."

Student teams take a crack at solving exceedingly complex issue

What's the best way to provide health insurance to 400,000 Virginians who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to purchase their own insurance?

That was the challenge facing about 200 JMU students from multiple majors in the College of Health and Behavioral Studies and the College of Business on Monday during the fourth annual Health Policy Summit. While state lawmakers have been grappling with the dilemma for years, the students were tasked with developing solutions in 45 minutes. And since Virginia has repeatedly voted against expanding Medicaid to cover the gap, the students were barred from using Medicaid expansion as an option.

In the end, three of more than 30 teams were selected for having the best solutions, which they then pitched to a panel consisting of two current state lawmakers — Del. Tony Wilt, a Republican representing the 26th House District, and Sen. Creigh Deeds, a Democrat representing the 25th Senate District — and Brent Finnegan, a Democrat who is challenging Wilt in this year's General Assembly election.

All three panelists had nice words for the teams, whose solutions included: A bus, funded by a combination of state taxes and donations, and manned by volunteers, that would travel the state and offer health services to those in the gap; a state-run insurance program where customers could choose from a list of services they needed and could afford; new regulations on how much hospitals and insurance companies could charge and redistributing the savings created by the new regulations to help cover those in the gap.

Wilt told the students they should have had a semester to work on the problem and "hats off to you" for what was accomplished in the short time frame. He also applauded the students for some out-of-the-box thinking and noted he always gets ideas from attending the sessions. Wilt suggested the students also consider competition and a free market, which "often creates the best services for the best price."

Deeds and Finnegan, both proponents of expanding Medicaid, also lauded the students for their creativity and said the work they did was important.

Laura Trull, an assistant professor of social work and an organizer of the summit, said the exercise has numerous benefits for the students, who "are challenged to work on one of the most pressing problems in Virginia and to utilize the different skills and knowledge they bring to the table to craft a potential solution."

Professor's book offers tips on happy, meaningful vacations

From the rigors of travel to handling relationship tensions to unplugging from work, vacations can be surprisingly stressful.

Jaime Kurtz has first-hand knowledge of the struggles and might be able to help — via some tips in her new book. Published in late May by Oxford University Press, "The Happy Traveler: Unpacking the Secrets of Better Vacations" offers tips for making vacations more fun, meaningful and engaging.

An associate professor of psychology who teaches positive psychology, Kurtz said writing the book involved combing the research on happiness, meaning and decision-making; and also talking to friends and people in the travel industry. It is also inspired by her own experiences. After finishing graduate school and finally having some time and money for travel, Kurtz realized traveling wasn't as much fun as she thought it would be. "And if I, a happiness researcher, can't have fun on vacation, which is a time especially set aside for fun and happiness, maybe there's something inherently difficult about it," she said.

The book is intended for a general audience and is organized to address planning travel, the time spent traveling and the return home.  Kurtz also writes about how to enjoy time spent at home during "staycations."

While canceled flights and lost luggage are certainly concerns for travelers, the book focuses more on topics such as picking the right destination to meet the travelers' needs, getting along with other people, unplugging from work and relaxing, and savoring the present instead of thinking about what’s happening next — "That's one of my big challenges," Kurtz said.

"There are all these reasons why traveling isn't as easy as we think it is," she said. "I have some friends who can't stop checking e-mail while they're on vacation. They say, 'If I don't check it now, I'm going to come back and have a thousand e-mails.' So even though they're on vacation, their mind is still at work. I address many of these challenges in the book.”