Ashley Plaster, a senior majoring in neuroscience and minoring in public health and biology, has been selected for OSCAR’s Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) for fall 2016. Her project is “The Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors of George Mason Students in Relation to Zika Virus.”
As Plaster hopes to pursue graduate school in public health with a concentration in epidemiology, she has spent several months working with Department of Global and Community Health professors Julia Painter and Kathryn Jacobsen to explore how Mason undergraduate students perceive the Zika virus. Painter and Jacobsen will continue to serve as Plaster’s mentors through her URSP project.
With the support of the URSP, Plaster will write and submit an abstract for the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, and will also assist her mentors in preparing a manuscript for submission to a peer-reviewed journal.
“I hope that this study may assist George Mason faculty with instituting educational programs to increase knowledge and reduce the risk of Zika virus. Findings may then be generalized to help other universities reduce and prevent Zika virus in their institutions,” Plaster said. “Dr. Julia Painter and Dr. Kathryn Jacobsen have been amazing mentors, and I have gained such a great experience thus far. I have no doubt that this program, along with their mentorship, will continue to enlighten me, as well as help me in my future endeavors related to public health.”