Saint Michael’s College

Public Relations Office

Colchester, VT 05439

 

NEWS

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 30, 2009

Contact:  Buff Lindau

(802) 654-2536

blindau@smcvt.edu

Photo captions: Alicia McDonald at NASA research labs in California

Alicia McDonald and Professor Anthony Richardson at NASA labs

 

 

 

Holliston resident doing psych research on virtual navigation

Saint Michael’s student makes presentation at NASA labs, Moffett Field, California

 

Following a summer and fall of research, Alicia McDonald, a senior psychology and sociology double major and gender studies minor at Saint Michael’s College, presented her results in a lecture to scientists at NASA-Ames, Moffett Field in California on March 16. She and her adviser, psychology assistant professor, Dr. Anthony Richardson, travelled to the NASA research facility where they also viewed the virtual reality labs and talked to researchers about their work.

 

“I was able to experience the virtual simulators of a 747,” Ms. McDonald said. “They were so authentic that you can log flight hours in this equipment.” In another lab she wore headphones that followed sounds so minutely she could track whether movement was in front or behind.

 

Her research, titled “The Influence of Wide Fields of View and Visually Rich Environments in Virtual Navigation,” was in line with NASA’s work. Both focus eventually, in part, on providing cheaper, safer ways to train pilots—through virtual navigation, rather than training them first-thing in an expensive aircraft. The work also can be used to help soldiers figure out the lay of the land by envisioning their assignments on computerized virtual environments rather than simply on road maps.

 

Ms. McDonald received a a$3,500 grant from the NASA-VT Space Grant Consortium to do her study of the virtual navigation experience. The daughter of Lisa J. McDonald and the granddaughter of Ron and Jean West, all of Holliston, Mass., Ms. McDonald graduated from Holliston High School in 2005, before coming to Saint Michael’s, a liberal arts residential Catholic college located in the Burlington area of Vermont.

 

Ms. McDonald also travelled with seven other Saint Michael's College psychology students to the Eastern Psychological Associations meetings in Pittsburgh, Pa., March 5-8, where she made a poster presentation of her research.

 

Saint Michael’s College, www.smcvt.edu, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation’s Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael’s is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America’s top college towns, and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael’s has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael’s students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael’s professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation’s Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings.

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