Brilliant Minds Unveiled: A Spotlight on Students' Commonwealth Governor's School Culminating Projects

The Commonwealth Governor's School aims to bring students' passions to life and promote the growth of intelligent thinkers. These students thrive in an environment where critical thinking is encouraged, and knowledge is appreciated. A fundamental aspect of this program is an extensive research project known as "culminating." 

Culminating not only significantly equips each student with adequate research skills that would not typically have been encountered until college, but it also helps each student dive into their passion and become an expert on their topic. 

Freshman Year

To begin freshman year, each student chooses a topic of research to pursue. They learn the basics of scholarly research and eventually compile the sources they've gathered to write a literature review and create a presentation for the class about their findings. 

Current freshman Cora Shields' research topic was inspired by her personal experience. Her research question is, "Does gadolinium contrast used for MRIs pose a significant threat to patient health?" 

Shields recounts her experience, where a doctor informed her and her mother of the long-lasting negative effects of gadolinium, but in a subsequent visit, "...the doctor had forgotten all about it. He said, 'Oh, no, gadolinium is perfectly safe.'" 

Shields explains how this situation inspired her passion for the topic, saying, "This made me nervous about gadolinium and distrustful of doctors… So I wanted to research it." 

Shields details the knowledge she has gained about the topic and how federal agencies, the government, and doctors simply try to dismiss the patient dissatisfaction and harm that is occurring as a result of such exposure. Shields comments on her research, saying, "Doctors are required to talk about risks associated with gadolinium, but they don't. Most people are completely unaware that a toxic and potentially dangerous metal is being injected into them when they get an MRI."

Sophomore Year

Sophomore students continue to expand on their research from the prior year and shape their research questions to incorporate the creation of a product. The product doesn't have to be something physical; it can be anything that hones in on the research the student conducted freshman year.

Sophomore Deven Jani focused on his curiosity about the significance of differing diets. Jani asks, "How can the consumption of plant-based foods versus animal-based foods impact environmental and personal health?"

Jani says, "I am astonished by the true extent of the difference in environmental impact between animal-based and plant-based diets. I did not understand the true discrepancy in land/water usage or the impact of the greenhouse gas effect on the environment." 

For his product, Jani is creating an app where users input their age, gender, and desired diet and meal. The app will list the meal's nutritional value, compare the equivalent meals from the plant-based and animal-based diets, and finally, "show the user how the diet impacts the user's personal health and environmental health."

Junior Year

Juniors continue to grow the sophistication of their research skills as they choose a new topic that will fill their next two years. They begin to incorporate the citations of APA, Chicago, and MLA, respectively, and master their organization of scholarly sources in their final literature review.

Luke Wellerman, a current junior and professional photographer, focused his research on a technique that could improve his work. His question is, "How can new artificial intelligence technologies be incorporated into photography without violating the industry's ethical standards?"

Wellerman comments on the relevance of his research, saying, "...AI will continue to be implemented in many different ways, and it is best to implement AI into our lives to optimize many different aspects."

Wellerman says, "This year, I feel that the process is more refined and targeted at specific, higher-level materials due to the knowledge that we have built up over the past two years." He goes on to highlight the teachers' guidance, saying, "All of our teachers are really good about giving strong feedback that allows us to make improvements to our creations… It really helps to have someone who looks over our work and gives constructive feedback so we can learn and improve."

Senior Year

Senior year concludes the research process as students team up with an expert to perfect their product and literature review that they began designing junior year. They conclude the year with a senior symposium that brings all CGS schools together to show off their hard work.

Inspired by her pandemic-born hobby of binging legal dramas, senior Grace Camp crafted her research question, "How can one use social media to best publicize and educate about local environmental impacts?"

After watching "Dark Waters," a documentary about an environmental lawyer who exposes a company that is knowingly contaminating drinking water and connects that scenario to Flint, Michigan, Camp becomes aware of just how large a role media plays in raising awareness of such topics. She says, "It was shocking that this was something that actually happened, and nobody knew about it until a movie was made."

Camp teamed up with expert Dr. Sharaya Jones, a professor at GMU with a degree in marketing and communications. Jones helped Camp purposely design an Instagram account as her final product to raise awareness for Fredericksburg's environment. Camp says, "She's helped me find ways to use specific colors in my advertising, and she even followed my account!"

Camp concludes, "Currently, I have reached 3,000 accounts and have roughly 130 followers. I activated this account two weeks ago, so it feels pretty exciting it's taken off this fast already!"

If you want to support her research and the environment, follow @fxbrug4enviro on Instagram!