Graduate School Community Scholars to share their projects at March 27 showcase
The 2025 Graduate School Community Scholars will showcase their work at a spotlight event from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, March 27, in the Graduate Life Center Multipurpose Room.
The annual event is hosted by the Graduate School Office of Student Services, Inclusion, and Strategic Partnerships. Lunch will be provided.
Chrishma Dharshani Perera, Summer Stevens, and Yuhang Zheng developed projects to advocate for awareness, knowledge, and skills associated with Virginia Tech’s Principles of Community across the university and in the surrounding communities. Past projects have included film festivals, student support groups, research presentations, finding ways to make curricula more inclusive, and more.
Climate change and its impacts
Perera is a master’s degree student in the Department of Geography. Her research focuses on Indigenous communities, health risks, and climate change. Perera earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Her community project aimed to produce an event highlighting inclusive research and to launch an inclusive research circle at the university. Perera said her research on climate change and its impact on Indigenous communities and the sources with which she worked “underscored the importance and necessity of fostering respect, inclusivity, and a sense of value and belonging in research.”
Crochet kits and science outreach
Stevens is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Engineering Education in the College of Engineering and also is earning a master’s degree in transportation engineering. Her current research interests include engineering students' mental health, feminine understandings of engineering, parental rights in STEM fields, engineering and educational policy, and active transportation safety. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah. She hopes to become a professor of civil engineering or engineering education.
Her project is centered around presenting feminine understandings of engineering to middle and high school students in rural Virginia, using small crochet kits on visits to math, science, and fine arts courses at high schools. The intervention would involve a short presentation about engineering and how it relates to fiber arts and sewing, followed by a semi-structured time where students could dig into their crochet kits. These kits would be built in a way that students could take them home to finish their projects, and they would also include resource recommendations to find out more about engineering, crafting, and fiber arts.
Names and identity
Zheng is a master’s degree student in computer science specializing in human-computer interaction. Yuhang aims to empower marginalized voices, foster inclusive dialogue, and drive positive change at Virginia Tech by collaborating across departments and leveraging his interdisciplinary expertise. He earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University, Shanghai.
His project focused on how names are connected to identity. The Say My Name initiative aimed to empower individuals who have faced negative encounters regarding their names, raise awareness and foster appreciation for diverse names and the identities they reflect, and promote inclusion on campus and the surrounding community through education. The project includes workshops, events, surveys, and flyers posted in buildings across the university.