fengmei

This is the certificate of my volunteer service for Christmas Cantata, a free drama performance in Washington D.C. In this experience, my partners and I delivered free tickets of performance door to door in Washington D.C., as well as assisting in organizing the performance. Although the work was laborious and exhausting, I felt unparalleled proud when I saw the toughed expression and happy smile of the audiences. Thus, I think this volunteer experience is one of my biggest success.

Plan of Study

1. Introduction about my discipline and graduate program:

My major is called Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, which is the combination of biological analysis and high-performance computing. In this course we should learn to collect, store, analyze and present complex biological data. Through this work, critical contributions are made to disease detection, drug design, forensics, agriculture and environmental sciences.

The graduate degree program requires 31 credits. The program is divided into 5 parts:

• Bioinformatics core courses (12 credits),
• Advanced bioinformatics (3 credits),
• Electives (12 or 9 credits),
• Bioinformatics seminar (1 credit)
• Research component (3 or 6 credits)

 Research Project Credits: 3 or Master’s Thesis Credits: 6

There are some seminar presentations in a variety of areas of bioinformatics and computational biology by COS faculty, staff, advanced PhD students, and professional visitors. Through these opportunities, I can cultivate other aspects of my professional interests.

2. My academic goals:

• Achieve the requirement of pathway program and step into graduate degree program successfully.
• Because my major of bachelor degree is biotechnology, so I have weakness on computer programming, I’ll make up the shortage before the beginning of the courses.
• Determine my specific research and adviser.
• Apply for an internship.

3. Plan of Study:

I want to register for Research Project instead of Master’s Thesis because through this I only need 9 credits for electives. Thus it will be easier for me to finish my graduate degree within two years. My temporary study plan is listed as follow.

Fall 2015

Total credits: 3

Spring 2016

Total credit: 6

There is no Summer Course about Bioinformatics and computational Biology.

Fall 2016

Total credit: 9

Spring 2017

Total credit: 7

Fall 2017

Total credit: 6

No courses are prerequisites for other courses.

4. Academic Adviser:

I have two potential advisers for my program.

• Lance Liotta, Professor. Cancer research to include the process of tumor invasion and metastasis at the molecular level; technologies used to make broad discoveries in genomics, functional genomics and tissue proteomics.
• Don Seto, Professor. Viral genomics and bioinformatics. Adenoviruses are used as a model system to apply genomics and bioinformatics approaches for understanding viruses, particularly pathogens, and for changing paradigms.

There are many times I will need the help from my adviser, such as when I have problem about choosing electives which are more suitable for me, or meet some difficulties in my major classes, or want some information about internship.

I’ll meet my adviser at least three times per semester. Firstly, at the beginning of the semester, I’ll meet him in order to set up a list of goal or tasks I plan to finish. At the mid of the semester, through talking with my adviser, I’ll get some feedback for my work and take some adjustment. In addition, I’ll meet my adviser at the end of the semester to get advice about choosing the suitable classes especially electives. What’s more, I’ll know how I should prepare myself for the next semester.

I’m an international graduate student majoring in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, in College of Science of George Mason University. I love my major because Bioinformatics can make a huge contribution to the whole society, by improving agricultural production, disease treatment and human health. I’m especially interested in cancer research because cancer metastasis have caused high mortality and many of them are still incurable. I plan to achieve my master degree of Bioinformatics in Fall 2017 and become a cancer researcher.

This portfolio aims to introduce more information about myself, including resume, statement of purpose, plan of study, a sample of my best English writing as well as reflection photo.

                                                                                                       ——Fengmei Li

I majored in Biotechnology for my undergraduate degree. I chose Biotechnology as my major because I wanted to continue to major in discipline of science, meanwhile I wanted to keep away from the discipline like advanced mathematics, physics, chemistry, computing which I thought was difficult to learn. However, when I began my undergraduate program, I began to realize I was wrong. Because all of the disciplines were closely interrelated and intertwined with each other. As a biological student, all of these courses I wanted to get rid of were my fundamental courses before entering into the biological courses. In addition, I found that the interdisciplinary program is much more useful and powerful than single discipline. This made me become more open to interdisciplinary field and dare to embrace the challenge.

In my fourth year of undergraduate program, I went to Jiangsu Agricultural Sciences Academy for my internship. My research project was about C4-PEPC gene transgenetic rice, through transgenosis of C4-PEPC gene into rice, the photosynthesis efficiency and anti-drought ability of rice would be largely enhanced, which leads to the increase production and financial benefit. I learned to used real-time PCR, familiarized many kinds of Kits to operate the experiment and learned to use statistical method to analyze complex data. All of these practical technology benefits me a lot. Besides, I increasingly realized that the greatness and importance of my major because biological technology development can definitely contribute to social benefit.

I choose the discipline Bioinformatics for my graduate degree. The biological knowledge I accumulated in my undergraduate program can make me feel good about this field. In addition, as we have entered into an information era, the specialists majoring in Informatics or data analysis have become badly needed in current society. Thus it is a sensible choice for me to learn Bioinformatics.

In this field, I’m especially interested in cancer research. Cancer is an unsolved health problem with extremely low survival rate. Despite the strong link between mortality and malignancy, the precise mechanisms behind cancer dissemination and metastasis are still unclear. Three years ago, my grandfather died from lung cancer. He was diagnosed as advanced disease and he had struggled against cancer for half year. The whole family insisted to receive imported drug treatment regardless the new-launched drug was still during probation and extremely expensive. Unfortunately, the drug not only didn’t treat his lung cancer, but also negatively influenced his hepatic function. I was mournful when I could do nothing but to see my grandfather became increasing feeble. We refused the chemotherapy or radiotherapy which is widely known as harmful, however, as his family, although we knew the side-effect of drug therapy, we can’t persuade ourselves to keep him sick without any treatment.

Including my grandfather, a large quantity of patient struggling between life and death desperately need better treatment and efficient therapy. I wish to become an insider in this field to contribute to the great career of cancer research. As a students of Bioinformatics, I can learn to collect, store, analyze complex data, which can make critical contributions to disease detection, drug design as well as studying the mechanism of cancer dissemination and metastasis. In addition, there are several prominent professors doing cancer research, from whom I can acquire many useful guidance and instruction. For my future plan, When I graduate, I will continue to study PHD program during which I can join in a research project and learn some practical experimental skill. For my job, I can enter into biological company, research center to do research project.

Fengmei Li

3939 Persimmon Drive• VA22031• 5719927466• fli14@masonlive.gmu.edu                      

EDUCATION

George Mason University, Fairfax, VA                                                                                     08/2017

Master of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, School of Science, Expected graduation

Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, Jiangsu                                                                          09/2011-07/2015

Bachelor of Biotechnology, School of Life Science

WORK EXPERIENCE

Intern, Jiangsu Agriculture Science Academy

Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China                                                                                                    03/2015-05/2015

Project: The Mechanism of C4 PEPC-rice Photosynthesis Under low-nitrogen

• Use C4-PEPC rice and wild type rice as research material to study the influence of Low-nitrogen condition on the carbon and nitrogen metabolism of PEPC-rice
• Provide theoretical support for cultivating low-nitrogen-resistant rice

Intern, Microbiology Lab, Nanjing Normal University

Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China                                                                                                  11/2013-03/2014

Project: Research of Microbial Control on Verticillium Wilt of Eggplant

• Assist seniors and participated in the whole process
• Co-produce the mixed bacteria agent of plant rhizosphere actinomycetes and endophytic bacteria, which has preventive and therapeutic effects on cotton verticillium wilt

Research Assistant, Bird Strike Appraisal Research Center, Nanjing Normal University

Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China                                                                                                  02/2013-09/2013

Project: Authentication of Bird Strike                                                                                                      

• Summarize general pattern of bird strike in order to offer guidance to airport for its bird strike prevention facilities construction
• Responsible for PCR process and of late data analysis and compilation

VOLUNTARY SERVICE

Volunteer, Qixia Home for Elderly

Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China                                                                                                  04/13/2013

• Give a performance in lobby for the elderly.
• Massage for elderly and chat with them

English tutor, Supporting Education Activity at Shibuqiao Primary School

Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China                                                                                                  05/2013-06/2013

• Teach a Grade-5 class on English, including vocabulary classes
• Organize drama performing activities on class, cultivating the students’ interests in English through participating everyone into activities.

Volunteer, Voluntary Supporting Education providing at Sheshan Star Town

Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China                                                                                                  03/2012-05/2012

• Tutor a primary student person to person on his courses of Chinese, Math and English
• Evaluate and give feedbacks to his homework

EXTRACURRICULLAR EXPERIENCE

Intern, Summer Biological Internship, Tianmu Mountain,

Zhejiang Province, China                                                                                                               08/21/2013 – 08/29/2013

• Sampling, identifying and specimen making of animals, plants and microorganism
• Research the distribution of local trees via quadrat method

Group member, Summer Survey Project

Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China                                                                                                   06/30/2013 – 07/06/2013

Project: Investigation of Dry Cell Use and Recycling

• Design and distribute the questionnaire for survey of dry cell use and recycling
• Analyze and present data with Microsoft

SCHOOL AFFAIRS INVOLVEMENT

• Director Assistant, Students’ Association Union

09/2011-06/2013

• President, Tennis Club

09/2011-06/2013

• Secretary, Volunteers Association, College of Life and Science                     09/2011-12/2011

Analytical Summary of Phillips

Rhetorical elements analysis

In the article, Phillips (2014) found that international writers generally have problem on academic writing, which makes their academic task more difficult. The author aimed to learn “how incoming international multilingual graduate students learn to write for their fields and the resources they use to support their writing development.” Thus the author followed international student Chozin’s academic experience, recorded and analyzed the strategies he developed to improve his writing ability and English proficiency. The author covered several key concepts “strategies to deal with writing” “resourcefulness” “social support” and “exclusion”. To synthesized them together, we can have a brief summary that Chozin developed numerous strategies to deal with writing and improve English proficiency, including acquiring useful writing feedback by searching for social support and developing a network of editor. When he suffered from exclusion in group project because of low English Proficiency, instead of being depressed, he showed impressive resourcefulness to develop a topic with fully formed idea by himself, ultimately won respect from his partners and succeed.

As a result of his project, Phillips pointed out that the success of Chozin mainly depend on his own diligence and resourcefulness, and the ability of quickly developing successful strategies to overcome his writing challenges. This article was relevant to multilingual writers who are struggling on writing by encouraging them with Chozin’s own experience, to professors of international students by suggesting them to provide enough feedback opportunities to students, to researchers by offering another model for understanding the strategies to deal with writing

Key concept analysis

One of the key concepts is “exclusion”. The author didn’t give any explicit definition for “exclusion” because readers who are educated have already known the meaning. However, to explain this concept, the author recorded Chozin’s own experience of group project. Chozin is the only multilingual writer and the only person who knew nothing about the report topic “Cincinnati”, Thus his group members chose to exclude him because they thought he can contribute nothing to to project. From Chozin’s story, readers can have a better understanding of the concept.

The author also cited other research to build meaning into the concept. In the report of Leki (2001), the manifestation of being excluded was described: Ling “was not allowed to bring in her particular expertise; nor was she able to benefit from the expertise of the [Native-English-speaking] group members” and Yang “was constructed as something of a burden or a problem to be fixed”. In another case, Min “did not seem to be part of this network” (Cox, 2010). Through citing the description of these international students’ unpleasant experience of being excluded, the author explicitly showed the readers that how can exclusion be and the feeling of being excluded. These students, Ling, Yang and Min all suffered from different degree of exclusion even they were willing to do their best to contribute to the group. In addition, from citing the research of Leki(2001) and Cox(2010), the author also indicated the fact that exclusion is a general phenomenon rather than individual case among multilingual writers. Furthermore, he compared the participants’ negative reaction (Yang seems to blame herself for her weak English skills, and Min seems unconcerned with her exclusion) in these research with Chozin’s proactive behavior to manifest Chozin’s resourcefulness and leadership.

One of the unique key terms of this concept is “to be excluded from another group project.” The key term is a verb phrase with the PP modifier “from another group project”, According to the context, we can find the author use “another” here because after the bad experience of group project in last term, Chozin was required to have a group project again. Thus Chozin was worried about he might “be excluded from another group project”. To prevent from repeating the last term’s situation, he proactively took advantage of his resourcefulness and his own learning, and finally succeed. From his success, we can find the underlying reason for Chozin’s experience of being excluded: have no “marketability”, in other words, people supposed that he had nothing to contribute to the group. However, Chozin gave us a perfect example to cope with “exclusion” by his excellent performance, which need us to learn from.

Language pattern analysis

Through analyzing the the two sets of key concept in Phillips 2014, we can find that the amount of information and number of modifiers in key terms of one set is different. For the first set, the initial key term the author used to introduce the key concept is quite complex and long: “the strategies that multilingual writers employed when they encountered”, then for the same key concept, the author use “their strategic moves” and “them” which are much shorter to replace the complex one. For the second set, the author introduced her research as “my two-year, IRB-approved study on how incoming international multilingual graduate students learn to write for their fields and the resources they use to support their writing development.” After that, the author worked to simplify the key term to “qualitative approaches like the case study”, then she also used even more simplified terms like “these approaches” “the case study” and “it”.

There is another example for this writing pattern, In P76 where the author talked about “a network of editors”, the author introduced the key terms “NES students who were also studying Bahasa”, then she used shorter terms with fewer modifiers like “his editor-friends” “these editor-friends” and pronoun “they”.

We can reach a conclusion that when introducing readers with a new concept, academic writers always introduce the complexity of a concept through large amount of modifiers in order to clarify the concept clearly for the audiences. After that, in order to prevent the article to be redundant, authors need to simplify the key terms by reducing the number of modifiers and cutting the repetitious parts. In addition, they need to connect variety of key terms with each other by using these/those or using pronouns. What is interesting to me is that it is kind of a logical model for writing, which presents the complexity of a specific concept initially and then move from complex to simple by reducing and connecting key terms. To be an academic writer, it is important for us to use this pattern proficiently.

A connection across the CPP texts

When reading the article of Phillip (2014), there are many points which remind me of the ideas in de Araujo’s (2011). the author used many terms like “support network” “a network of proofreaders” “a carefully developed network of peers” to indicate the importance of having a support network. This reminded me in Araujo’s (2011), one of main adjustment issues of international students was social support and “support network” was one of the key terms used to describe social support. Phillip’s case perfectly justified de Araujo’s idea by providing example and details. The concept has some difference between the two articles, Phillip’s is limited to the support on academic writing provided by editor friends. Whereas de Araujo’s “social support” have more general meaning.

In addition, Phillip mentioned that Chozin asked Native-English-speaking (NES) students in his courses for help to get feedback on writing. (P.76), and he also cooperated with American peers when going for interview. De Araujo found that establishing relationships with Americans was an important adjustment issue. Chozin’s successful experience seemed to justify De Araujo’s point.

Finally, de Araujo (2011) reported that English language proficiency is the main factor for adjustment issues of international students. However, in Phillip’s article, Chozin said that he doesn’t care whether his group members understand his language or not and he was determined to press ahead with his learning. Chozin was impressively brave and have courage to speak out, this benefited him a lot.

Phillip’s research was a case study, thus the article provided us with a lot of details and personal experience, which can further clarify and justify de Araujo’s findings which are comparatively general and theoretical. From the combination of these two articles, we can summarize some recommendations for international students’ adjustment. First of all, it is important to search for social support actively both on daily life and academic experience, developing a study network to get feedback on writing or other assignment. Secondly, establishing network with American peers, especially cooperating with Americans to become to an insider of American life. Thirdly, certainly English proficiency can facilitate the adjustment issues and vice versa, good adjustment can promote English proficiency. But even with a low English proficiency, international students should be brave to express themselves and take first step to initiate a virtuous circle. Furthermore, it is crucial to work hard on academic research and master the knowledge in the discipline which might add one’s “marketability”.  Finally, when confront with exclusion or difficulties, international students need to develop strategies proactively, take advantage of their resourcefulness and actively display their competence.