Mason Spirit Fall 2019

SPIRIT FA L L 2019

A M AG A Z I N E F O R T H E G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y CO M M U N I T Y

Source Code Providing a solution to the state’s tech worker shortage

A M A Z I N G A M A ZO N ALU M N I | SU PP O R TI N G E M E R G I N G AR TI S T S | M E E T PR E S I D E N T H O LTO N

PHOTO BY EVAN CANTWELL

F E AT U R E S

14 AwithConversation Anne Holton In June, Mason’s Board of Visitors unanimously voted to appoint former Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton as the university’s interim president. In this feature, the Mason Spirit chats with President Holton about her new role.

About the Cover Mason is one of Virginia's largest producers of tech talent.

In this issue, we explore this topic in depth.

Illustration by David Lewis

Follow us on Twitter @MasonSpirit for alumni news, events, and more. ecome a fan of the Mason Spirit on B Facebook for links to photos, videos, and stories at www.facebook.com/ MasonSpirit.

Check our website for a behind-thescenes look at the Spirit, more alumni profiles, and breaking news at spirit. gmu.edu.

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Source Code Even before the Amazon headquarters announcement, Mason was a major source of tech talent for Virginia. Now, the university’s expansion plans include more degrees, more faculty, more students, and a new school and institute.

D E PA R T M E N T S 2 FI R S T WO R D S

3 FR O M O U R R E A D E R S 4 @ M A S O N 34 I N Q U I R I N G M I N D S 4 0 S H E L F L I FE 4 2 A LU M N I I N PR I N T 43 PAT R I OT PR O FI L E 4 4 C L A SS N OT E S 46 From the Alumni Association President

A L U M N I P R O F I L E S 44 Rabia Chaudry, JD ’00 47 Joseph Heastie, MPA ’84 49 Erin Schaible, MPA ’07

Amazon Alumni 24 Amazing Since Amazon chose Northern Virginia as the location for its second head­quarters, people have been excited about what that will mean for Virginia and George Mason University. More than 500 alumni already work for the tech giant at various locations around the world.

MASON SPIRIT

‹ In August, the Mason community was invited to sign two large steel support beams that will be installed in the new academic building on the Fairfax Campus. The signatures will be visible inside when the new building is completed.

Artists 30 Emerging The College of Visual and Performing Arts has a new program to support alumni artists at the start of their careers.

This year, they awarded three grants for projects taking place during the 2019-20 academic year.

MORE ON THE WEB When you see this graphic, follow it to the magazine’s website for more: spirit.gmu.edu.

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 1

MASON SPIRIT A MAGAZINE FOR THE GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY

FIRST WORDS

spirit.gmu.edu

WE WON'T MISS A BEAT One particular quality became clear to me in August during my first week as president: George Mason University flourishes because of the leaders, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and supporters who drive and treasure this special place.

I am so honored to lead Mason, and I can assure you we’re not going to miss a beat while the university conducts a national search for a permanent president. Mason is on a winning path, and the ambitious goals approved by our Board of Visitors in July will serve as our road­ map for the academic year.

PHOTO BY LATHAN GOUMAS

There is so much to be excited about here. Enrollment surged past 38,000 for the first time when we welcomed the largest and most diverse freshman class in Mason history. Students, of course, remain our top priority. This fall we began our Student Experience Redesign with a wildly successful opening of the Mason Student Services Center as a one-stop shop to enhance student success.

About 3,000 Northern Virginia Community College students transferred to Mason this fall, including nearly 600 across 102 degree programs in ADVANCE, the program that is streamlining pathways to graduation for students who start at NOVA and finish with Mason degrees in high-demand fields. We also continue to pursue online learning plat­ forms to provide a trampoline to life success for more students of all ages, backgrounds, and locations.

While we’re increasing access, we’re also increasing our research of consequence as a Tier-1 research university. We aim to grow our record $149 million in sponsored research expenditures from last year by 10 percent as we work toward our goal of $225 million in annual research by 2024. To deepen the impact of our work, we continue to study the feasibility of opening a medical school on the Science and Technology Campus. Our Institute for a Sustainable Earth, which draws on faculty expertise from every Mason school, enters its first full academic year of operation to tackle some of the world’s most complex challenges, including climate change.

Mason is already the top producer of tech talent in the state—no university in the common­wealth can claim more graduates in computing fields. But region and state employers, including Amazon, need even more career-ready talent to meet workforce demands. With support from the state, a new Institute for Digital InnovAtion and School of Computing will anchor an innovation district on the Arlington Campus, with business, academic, and research partners as part of the ecosystem there.

Those are just a few initiatives the university will focus on in the coming year. There is much to achieve, and every member of the university community in some way can help elevate Mason to new heights. Join us! We will accomplish our goals the way our university has always done—by working together, inspired by a shared Mason spirit that I see and feel every day.

Anne Holton President

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MANAG ING EDITOR Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95 A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R S Melanie Balog Priyanka Champaneri, BA ’05, MFA ’10 Rob Riordan, MPA ’19 E D I T O R I A L A S S I S TA N T S Saige MacLeod Liam Griffin CO NTR IBUTO R S Mariam Aburdeineh, BA ’13 Christopher Bobo Mary Lee Clark Damian Cristodero Nanci Hellmich John Hollis Lauren Huey Roddena Kirksey Buzz McClain, BA ’77 Claire Underwood Preston Williams D E S I G N A N D I L L U S T R AT I O N Joan Dall'Acqua David Lewis Marcia Staimer P H O T O G R A P H Y A N D M U LT I M E D I A Ron Aira Melissa Cannarozzi Evan Cantwell, MA ’10 Lathan Goumas PRODUC TION MANAG ER Brian Edlinski EDITORIAL BOARD Trishana E. Bowden Vice President for Advancement and Alumni Relations Michael Sandler Interim Vice President for Communications and Marketing Christine Clark-Talley Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations Mason Spirit is published three times a year by the Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations and the Office of Communications and Marketing. For the latest news about George Mason University, check out www.gmu.edu. George Mason University is an equal opportunity employer that encourages diversity.

FROM OUR READERS

LOOKING BACK

SO PROUD

➤As ➤ we were getting ready for my son’s graduation from Mason, I was thinking about all that went on during these past four years…the time at Mason really made a huge difference to my son. He definitely had an amazing experience and is leaving with great memories of Mason. Through the past four years, I always looked to your magazine because it covered a lot that went on at the university. Thank you, and continue that Mason spirit! Go Patriots!

➤Many ➤ years ago, 1989 to be exact, I was accepted as a PhD candidate in I-CAR (the Institute for Conflict Analy­ sis and Resolution). If my memory serves me well, I was the 14th PhD student to receive my diploma from I-CAR. That program—now in the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution—has grown and has contrib­ uted so much to the field of conflict analysis and resolution. In the 30 years since I enrolled, Mason has continued to address global and local needs. In this [last] issue, I saw that Mason has stepped up again—by beginning the Institute for a Sustainable Earth. The cooperative model of interdepartmental collaboration will make a difference. Thank you for once more being on the cutting edge of the issue that is foundational to the survival of the world as we know it. I am one very proud graduate of this amazing university.

Lorraine Dagostino

Adrienne Kaufmann, OSB, PhD Conflict Analysis and Resolution ’99

SPIRIT

S U M M E R 2019

A M AG A Z I N E F O R T H E G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y CO M M U N I T Y

Telling Untold Stories RESEARCH PROJECT LOOKS INTO LIFE AT GUNSTON HALL

H U M AN IT I E S’ H E AV Y H IT T E R S

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SAV I N G AN E N DAN G E R E D L AN G UAG E

We want to hear from you.

Letters to the editor are welcomed.

Send correspondence to Colleen Kearney Rich, Managing Editor, Mason Spirit, 4400 University Drive, MS 2F7, Fairfax, Virginia 22030.

Or send an email to spirit@gmu.edu.

Once upon a time, Mason was the only law school with an escalator, as the university moved into the old Kann’s department store in the early 1970s. The Original Building on the Arlington Campus will soon be coming down to make way for an innovative new space. Do you have a memory of your time on the Arlington Campus? We want to hear it! Tell us what you remember or what you’ll miss.

Send your memories to maburdei@gmu.edu, and you might be featured in a future issue.

Need to change your address or update contact information with us? Or prefer not to receive the magazine in the mail any longer?

Just let us know via email at development@gmu.edu.

Correction In the summer 2019 issue of the Mason Spirit, we accidentally omitted a book by Professor Emerita Paula Ruth Gilbert in our "Humanities' Heavy Hitters" story.

The book resulting from her 2000-01 NEH research grant is Violence and the Female Imagination: Québec's Women Writers Re-frame Gender in North American Cultures (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006).

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 3

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Brewer and alumnus Mike Sutherland talks about making beer during NUTR 430 Introduction to Wine and Beer. Left, senior Madalyn Grutzius inspects the color of a beer before sampling.

Cheers to Class Work!

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s a student, Michael Sutherland, BS Community Health ’15, was interested in the science of food and wanted to be a dietitian, but a class he took with the College of Health and Human Services set him on a different path.

“I started applying around to all of the breweries in the area because I remembered how much I had enjoyed the class,” says Sutherland, who is now the head brewer of New District Brewing Company.

NUTR 430/530 Introduction to Wine and Beer has one of the longest waiting lists at the university. The class aims to help students understand how wine and beer influence cultures and people’s relationship with alcohol and food. Students learn how to taste both wine and beer, the major classifications of each, how they are made, their history, connections with politics, and even their health effects.

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“I’ve had a lot of business and economics majors,” says Kerri LaCharite, the assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies who teaches the class.

“They see this being helpful for advancing their careers.”

A lot of information is covered in the class, but the material is perfectly paired with experimental projects, such as wine and beer tastings and a “make your own beer” section. The course even has field trips to local breweries and wineries to learn about the process from start to finish.

Sutherland helps bring brewing to the classroom by returning to campus each semester to teach students about the science of beer making. “I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to know everything about it and become really good at it.”

—Mary Lee Clark

@ Presidential Search Under Way In July, Ángel Cabrera was appointed the 12th president of Georgia Tech. The George Mason University Board of Visitors appointed former Virginia secretary of education and Mason visiting professor Anne Holton interim president. Holton, the first woman to hold the position, started August 1.

This summer, the board also announced the members of the search committee who will help select Mason’s next president. Vice Rector Jimmy Hazel, JD ’84, and sociology professor and Faculty Senate chair Shannon Davis are leading the search as committee co-chairs. The other members of the search committee are Tom Davis, Rector Horace Blackman, BA American Studies ’93, Visitor Simmi Bhuller, BA Government and International Politics ’02, Visitor Mehmood Kazmi, Visitor Ignacia Moreno, Visitor Carolyn Moss, Visitor Edward Rice, Visitor Bob Witeck, Visitor Lisa Zuccari, BIS ’89, Visitor Denise Albanese, Professor, Department of English, and Director of the Cultural Studies Program Terri Cofer Beirne, BA Government and Politics ’88, Chair of the George Mason University Foundation’s Board of Trustees Camden Layton, Student Government President Germaine Louis, Dean, College of Health and Human Services Jon Peterson, CEO, Peterson Companies Lauren Reuscher, MA History ’12, Chair of Staff Senate Carole Scott, BA English ’83, Board Secretary for the George Mason University Foundation Girum Urgessa, Associate Professor, Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering The board also hired Florida-based search firm Green­wood/Asher and Associates to assist with the search.

To submit feedback to the committee, visit go.gmu.edu/pres-search.

For the latest news about the search, visit presidentialsearch.gmu.edu.

A Q&A with Alpaslan Özerdem

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lpaslan Özerdem, the new dean of Mason’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR), came to Mason from Coventry University in the United Kingdom, where he served as professor of peacebuilding, associate pro-vicechancellor for research, and cofounder and codirector of the Centre for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations—one of the world’s largest peace and conflict studies research centers. He brings with him nearly 25 years of experience in peace and conflict studies and in developing transnational research partnerships.

PHOTO BY RON AIRA

MASON

What is your vision for S-CAR? S-CAR is a great place to study conflict analysis and resolution. It has a great faculty with global standing, and it is well placed to have an impact through its strong alumni, wonderful Point of View retreat, and amazing location vis-à-vis Washington, D.C. However, S-CAR also needs to reevaluate its place in peace and conflict studies, as there has recently been increasing competition in the United States and beyond. My vision is for S-CAR to become “The Place” for peace and conflict studies globally, which it deserves so much because of its history of nearly 40 years of existence with many achievements. We will now be working on a new vision and priorities that will enable our school to not only set the agenda for future studies, but to also have a great impact in the lives of many vulnerable conflict-affected communities across the world.

What would you like students to gain from your tenure as dean?

S-CAR is here for our students. Therefore, as dean, I will be establishing different means of engagement with our students so that I can get to know what’s happening with their degree programs and their experiences as Mason students. I would like to establish a real sense of community for all of us here at S-CAR. From my side, our students will get my full commitment, and I hope that, as an S-CAR family, we will provide them with an environment where they can flourish and excel as peace and conflict scholars and practitioners.

—Mariam Aburdeineh, BA ’13

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From left, Ali Kahil, Khalid Al-Masri, Justin Boileau, Myriam Cisse, and Eleri Burnett of the risk and investment committees of the George Mason Student Managed Investment Fund.

PHOTO BY LATHAN GOUMAS

No Monopoly Money Here: Finance Students Manage Quarter-Million-Dollar Portfolio

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ILLUSTRATION BY MARCIA STAIMER

eorge Mason University assistant professor Derek Horstmeyer has no problem trusting his finance students with a quarter-of-a-million dollars in the stock market. He’s been doing so since fall 2018 when the university’s first Student Managed Invest­­ ment Fund began.

“It’s a really cool structure,” says Horstmeyer, who teaches in the School of Business. “We get some of the top students in the finance and business school and separate them into teams that follow a particular sector in the S&P 500.”

Offered as a course, FNAN 477 Student Managed Invest­ment Fund, the experience leads to some healthy competition. At the end of the semester, the teams compete against each other and pitch how they’d like to change their group’s sector.

“Students are the ultimate decision-makers,” Horst­ meyer says. They’re also in charge of conducting market research and analysis and ensuring the portfolio is well diversified.

The top students in each class also take charge as members of the portfolio’s risk and investment com­ mittees. These students supervise the portfolio on a day-to-day basis—which means students are studying the market outside of class, too. “[This class] has prepared me for a career in asset man­ agement unlike any other course I’ve taken at Mason,” says finance major Justin Boileau, who served as the president of the fund’s risk committee. “Learning every day outside of class, as well as the real-world experience the course presents, has not only made me a better student, but will also make me a more well-rounded professional.”

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Finance major Myriam Cisse thinks similarly. “This class represents a bridge between the classroom and the experience needed for security analysis and portfolio construction. It is the best class to be ‘real-world’ ready.”

The driving force behind the class’s creation came from Trevor Montano, BS Accounting ’00, who has worked as a chief investment officer with the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He approached the school about creating the fund to give students actual exper­ience with man­ aging a portfolio. Initial portfolio funds came from the George Mason University Foundation Board of Trustees, and returns go back to the university endowment.

Students also benefit from hearing from local guest speakers and taking advantage of opportunities in the Washington, D.C., area, such as visiting the U.S. Federal Reserve.

“What the students have learned throughout finance and in the class helps them a lot,” Horstmeyer says.

“We’ve had a few students get a job because we have speakers in the finance world come in and talk to them— if they see that you’re the head of the risk committee on your resume, it’s not a bad thing.”

Overall, the class shows Mason students can handle real-world situations, Horstmeyer says. “We have matched our benchmark this year—the S&P 500—and delivered a little less volatility than our benchmark; we currently sit up approximately 15 percent since the beginning of the year.”

“The course is gratifying in that I get to have experience that I would have certainly gotten only during intern­ ships,” says Cisse. “And I am able to help generate a great return for Mason.”

—Mariam Aburdeineh, BA ’13

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In the Clear with Clearance Ready or many students, the process behind getting a topsecret security clearance can seem a little … top secret. Even the savviest student who has mastered all the standard job-hunting rites of passage can stumble when it comes to clearances. From misjudging how closely investigators scrutinize personal finances and international contacts, to the shock of learning that getting a clearance can take six months to a year—even with a job offer in hand—the process can be full of surprises for the uninitiated.

A new Mason program aims to demystify the process.

Launched in fall 2017, Clearance Ready is an initiative from University Career Services that prepares students for everything they will encounter once they enter the world of security clearances.

According to Matt Myers, assistant director of industry advising at University Career Services, the idea for the program originated from a need expressed by both students and employers.

“Students didn’t understand the process, didn’t under­ stand the timeline,” he says. “And employers—it’s a big struggle for them to be able to find people who can get through the clearance process.”

The program offers students a variety of sessions and panels, including higher-level overview sessions and work­shops that assist with filling out the dreaded SF-86, the 136-page National Security Questionnaire form.

Employer volunteers assist at all Clearance Ready sessions and are available to answer student questions and offer insight into the process. Additional industry-focused panels and roundtables have featured such area employ­ ers as the U.S. Department of Energy, FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, and more.

It’s a win-win model: Students learn what to expect and how the decisions they make now might impact their future ability to be cleared, and employers make connections with potential applicants. “[If] students…are being honest with themselves and honest with us,” Myers says, “we can present them to a group of employers where we are as confident as we can be that they are clearable.”

The program is winning praise from both students and employers. Criminology, law and society major Taye Folk says, “It’s helped me understand what are facts and what are myths about the government and law enforcement.

They make sure you have a foundational network before you even step foot into your internship or job.”

And John Amos, president and CEO of participating employer Invex Technology Solutions, is an enthusiastic

supporter, saying, “The Clearance Ready Program helps us quickly get connected with students who are eager to enter the ‘cleared’ job market and enables us to create a talent pool for our public-sector marketplace.”

Since the program’s launch, 586 students have partici­ pated, and Myers says he’s heard from several students who made connections for their current job or internship via the program.

—Priyanka Champaneri, BA ’05, MFA ’10

PHOTO BY RON AIRA

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Insights from the CIA

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tudents in Justin Gest’s PUBP 500 Theory and Practice of Public Policy class had a unique opportunity last spring when they received feedback on their policy projects from former CIA deputy and acting director Michael Morell (pictured above).

“Few people have received or delivered as many high-stakes briefings as Michael Morell,” says Gest, an assistant professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government. “It’s hard to think of anyone more qualified to advise students about the best way to present their ideas clearly and succinctly.”

Morell, who briefed four sitting U.S. presidents, from George H. W. Bush to Barack Obama, also oversaw a staff of intelligence professionals who communi­ cated complex findings to policymakers and executives. He’s now a senior fellow at the Schar School’s Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and Inter­ national Security.

Morell shared advice with the class on how to strengthen their presentations and spoke about things to watch for in a real-life briefing session. Students found his feedback invaluable.

“Receiving feedback on how to brief, as well as how to craft policy, from some­ one who has done both for decades at the highest levels of U.S. government is exactly the sort of edge that the Schar School can offer,” says public policy graduate student Joe Palank.

—Mariam Aburdeineh, BA ’13 Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 7

PHOTO BY LATHAN GOUMAS

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Smithsonian postdoctoral research fellow Michael Cove and Mason student Jamie Fetherolf Jenkins setting camera traps.

D.C. Is Where the Wild Things Are!

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ver wonder what creatures might be roaming in the dark when you’re not looking?

Across five continents, more than 100 Smithsonian Institution research projects collect a continuous stream of data on wildlife using camera traps—motion-triggered cameras that clue scientists in on what’s happening when humans aren’t around.

George Mason University alumna Jamie Fetherolf Jenkins, BS Environmental and Sustainability Studies ’19, contributed to the network during her senior year by set­ ting up camera traps in Washington, D.C., and analyzing the data with Smithsonian conservation scientist Michael Cove at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conser­­­vation (SMSC).

“This is the first time a project of this scale has ever been done,” says Cove, Jenkins’s project mentor and a Smithsonian postdoctoral research fellow. While most camera traps are set up in natural areas, this wildlife survey of Washington, D.C., placed the traps in urban environments like alleyways and neighborhoods, he explains.

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Small mammals (including squirrels, chip­ munks, rats, and mice) and their possible predators (such as foxes and coyotes) were the primary focus of Jenkins’s research.

Looking at the captured photos allowed the duo to observe numerous behaviors and ask an unlimited number of questions.

Cove said the data Jenkins collected will help contribute to the understanding of wildlife in urban settings and will add to the Smithsonian’s current knowledge base.

Working side-by-side with a Smithsonian scientist on current conservation challenges was part of the thrill. “You don’t realize how amazing of an opportunity [SMSC] is until you’re there,” says Jenkins, noting that the world-renowned scientists and journal article authors she cited in her research papers were the same ones she worked with every day at SMSC. “It’s a huge networking experience that you will never have anywhere else.”

—Mariam Aburdeineh, BA ’13

To see photos from the Smithsonian’s worldwide project, visit emammal.si.edu.

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Engineering Is in Their DNA

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hen Michael Nmair received his bachelor’s degree in civil and infrastructure engineering in May, he was following in the footsteps of his older brother and sisters. In the past three years, all three of his siblings—Sammy, Renee, and Nicole— earned under­graduate degrees in civil and infrastruc­­ ture engineering from Mason’s Volgenau School of Engineering.

They’ve also either earned or are working on accelerated master’s degrees from the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering.

A love of engineering runs in the family. Their father, Nael, is an electrical engineer, and their mother, Rana, is a civil engineer. Both work for the federal government.

“We have engineering in our DNA,” says Nicole, BS Civil and Infrastructure Engineering ’16, MS Civil and Infrastructure Engineering ’18. She currently works as a bridge engineer for the Federal Highway Administration.

The tradition of attending Volgenau started with Renee, BS Civil and Infrastructure Engineering ’16, MS Civil and Infrastructure Engineering ’18, who is now a construction manager for Arlington County in Virginia.

Nicole, Renee, and Sammy sometimes had classes toge­t­her, but they often studied independently. “If I didn’t understand something, I could ask a sibling,” Nicole says.

Sammy, BS Civil and Infrastructure Engineering ’17, received his master’s degree in May. He says being at the same university as his siblings makes him dream that one day, all of them will be able to open an engineering firm. He currently works as a senior project engineer with the construction firm Balfour Beatty.

While all pursued or are pursuing the same master’s degree, each concentrated in different areas. Sammy specialized in construction project management, Renee chose geotechnical engineering, and Nicole studied structural engineering. Michael plans to focus on transportation engineering.

Their family is a tight-knit unit, often discussing workrelated engineering challenges while sitting around the dinner table. “It’s awesome to hear how each person’s day went and what issues they faced in the field,” Nicole says.

There is also a little engineering rivalry, adds Michael, who’ll be working at T3 Design Corporation in Fairfax, Virginia, as a highway designer while earning his master’s degree in civil and infrastructure engineering at Mason.

When the family was designing a new deck for their home, “everybody had their own opinion and was trying to outdo each other with their engineering ideas,” he says.

POINT of PRIDE The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business selected Mason's Business for a Better World Initiative as one of its 2019 Inno­ vations that Inspire.

The initiative is imple­ mented through the School of Business’s Center for Prosperity, People, and the Planet.

—Nanci Hellmich

Four Nmair siblings earned undergraduate degrees in civil and infrastructure engineering from Mason’s Volgenau School of Engineering in the past three years. Pictured here left to right: Sammy, Nicole, Nael (dad), Rana (mom), Renee, and Michael.

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ESPN Gig Gives Undergrads a Career Boost

To see the final entries and the quartet’s submission, visit bit.ly/gmuanthem.

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ow many college students can say they worked for ESPN as an undergraduate?

Just ask the nearly 30 Mason students who are part of the Student Media Sports Broad­ casting Team.

ESPN+, ESPN’s streaming service, has a contract with Mason to show Patriot soccer, lacrosse, baseball, softball, wrestling, and volleyball games. Students handle all aspects of the production, including writing scripts, doing play-by-play and color commentary, handling technology services, and working the cameras.

Created in 2013 by David Carroll, associate director of technology for Mason Student Media, Mason’s Sports Broadcasting Team produces more than 100 games in an aca­ demic year, and there are no limits to how a student can participate.

“I wanted to get more people involved with student media in general, so I looked at the type of television people watch, and sports [were] the most popular,” Carroll says. “That focus has gotten a lot more people involved.”

“Having these broadcasts published on ESPN really makes this feel professional,” says sport management major Natalie McCarthy.

“And it looks really good on a resume.”

—Claire Underwood

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From left, Katie Anderson, Andrew Velez, the Patriot, Bobby Lacy II, and Wagnus Prioleau after singing the national anthem.

O Say Can You See

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erforming the national anthem at a major event in front of a national audience is a dream come true for many musicians. When Mason’s Alumni Association announced the National Anthem Contest for Mason Alumni Night at D.C. United, Green Machine alumni members Katie Anderson, BM ’14, BSN ’18; Bobby Lacy II, BA Music ’16; Wagnus Prioleau, BS Math­ematics ’19; and Andrew Velez, BM and BA English ’13, MEd ’16, MM ’19, knew they could not pass up the opportunity.

They submitted a video of themselves singing the national anthem a cappella style.

The contest was only open to Mason alumni. Of the entries received, 10—which included soloists, a duo, and the quartet— were selected to participate in the voting rounds promoted on social media. The first

round garnered 675 votes; the second round garnered 921 votes. The quartet won.

As the quartet prepared to take Audi Field and sing the national anthem before thousands of fans and a national television audience, they said, “It’s really an honor to get this chance to represent Mason.”

In their post-Mason life, the longtime Green Machine members are pursuing their career aspirations, and they continue to use their musical talents as freelance musicians.

When the quartet looks back on their Mason years, they cherish the music they created and lifelong friendships they made.

“College is short, but your college friends can last a lifetime if you reach out after graduation,” says Anderson.

—Roddena Kirksey

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Creating a Hub for Health

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s part of a shared commitment to improving health in Northern Virginia, Mason’s College of Health and Human Services and Kaiser Permanente have entered into a collaboration to address social deter­ minants of health, particularly for medically underserved and underinsured populations.

Kaiser Permanente, the region’s leading inte­ grated nonprofit health system, awarded a $500,000 grant to the university to develop a resource hub.

The hub will co-locate three community partners, including the Partnership for Health­

ier Kids, NOVA Scripts, and Northern Virginia Family Services. Each organization will work to address both clinical and social aspects of health by providing clients with referrals to medical care, food assistance, prescription medications, housing, and other social ser­ vices that have been shown to impact health outcomes. The hub will be housed within the college’s Population Health Center, which opened on Mason’s Fairfax Campus this fall.

In addition to providing underinsured and underserved communities with social services, the resource hub will complement

other research and workforce training planned for the Population Health Center.

The organizations in the hub will offer opportunities for students across all health disciplines to experience hands-on learning and to observe as professionals engage with clients.

“Kaiser Permanente is an ideal partner for the College of Health and Human Services to address the many factors that influence health in Northern Virginia, as we jointly strive for public health,” says Dean Germaine Louis.

Nurses Lend a Hand at Mobile Clinic

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The students participated as part of the Advanced Nursing Education Workforce grant, which supports innovative academic practice partnerships to prepare primary care nurses to practice in rural and underserved settings through academic and clinical training.

In addition to volunteering at the RAM clinic, students have been participating in the Mason and Partners (MAP) clinics, interprofessional clinics that serve the uninsured, immigrant, and refugee community within Prince William and Fairfax counties in Virginia.

—Mary Lee Clark

PHOTO BY MARY LEE CLARK

n early May, 13 Mason nursing practitioner students served as primary care providers at a Chesapeake, Virginia, clinic run by Remote Area Medical (RAM), a nonprofit provider of free mobile clinics.

The nurses made health recommendations, wrote prescriptions, and provided basic care to more than 120 patients. Many of the patients were uninsured or unable to afford an insurance copay.

“It was a great experience to provide basic health care to a wide range of individuals that go without primary care,” says nursing student Maité Corbin. “Connecting with this community and making a positive impact on their health care was rewarding.”

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 11

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MASON

Pan Am Games Medalist Was a Star at Mason First

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ormer Mason cross-country and distance standout Bethany Sachtleben, BS Finance ’15, won the silver medal in the women’s marathon at the Pan Am Games in Lima, Peru— her first major international competition. The former walk-on, whose name dots the Patriot record books, says it is a moment that will stay with her forever.

“You feel so many emotions,” says Sachtleben, a volunteer assistant coach for Mason’s women’s cross-country team. “I just felt really proud of myself for running a pretty smart race and proving I can compete here, that I can be a strong runner.”

Sachtleben credits that strength to her time at Mason and her symbiotic relationship with Patriots cross-country and track-and-field coach Andrew Gerard. The alternate patience and tough love Gerard provides are why Sachtleben, who lives in Fairfax and works as a financial operations analyst at a tech company in Tysons Corner, Virginia, sticks with Gerard as her coach and continues to work with the Mason team.

Next for Sachtleben are the Olympic trials on February 29 in Atlanta, Georgia.

—Damian Cristodero

Mason-led Small Business Development Center Expands to Manassas

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ason is playing a greater role in the growth of small businesses with the opening of a new Small Business Development Center (SBDC) office in downtown Manassas, Virginia.

Mason-led since 2004, the center aims to spur the state economy by providing sound business advice, education, and resources to small businesses through­ out Virginia. Mason serves as the state network’s lead institution among 14 different organizations, directly staffing three of the state’s 27 SBDC offices—including the Mason SBDC—while overseeing the management and administration of the rest.

The city of Manassas provided $15,000 to kicks things off, but Jody Keenan, the state director for the Virginia SBDC Network, said the funding was just part of the story.

“It’s partial funding to get us started, but it’s the en­ thus­­iasm from the Manassas Economic Development

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Authority and mayor’s office to have the Mason SBDC services available in the downtown historic district of Manassas,” says Keenan. “The city has recognized the need for investment in small business counseling and mentoring services, and we are the perfect fit for that demand.”

The new office will provide local small business owners with more counselors and added awareness of small business issues at no charge and at a more convenient location, as well as access to the center’s proven busi­ ness methodologies—such as lean startup—in local workshops and seminars.

Since its inception in 1987, the Mason SBDC has served more than 6,000 clients and played a pivotal role in fueling the Northern Virginia economy and business climate.

—John Hollis

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MASON

M EE T T H E M A S O N N AT I O N Jeffrey Yu Job: University Call Center Manager

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s a commuting freshman, Jeffrey (Jeff) Yu, BS Marketing ’19, found himself spending a lot of time on Mason’s Fairfax Campus and in his car.

When it came time to look for a part-time job, he really wanted to work on campus. That’s when he found a job at the university's Call Center, which is home to the Mason Messengers, a group of dedicated student callers who reach out to Mason alumni, family, and friends to update them on university happenings and raise funds for important Mason causes. "[The job] was perfect because it opened in the late afternoon, and I could go there right after classes.” Now an alumnus, Yu has worked his way up from a caller to his present position as the Call Center manager.

ANALYZING IS KEY: Yu says a large part of his job involves analyzing and reviewing data. “A normal day is reviewing the stats from the calls placed the night before and looking for special cases or pledges that have been flagged that I need to look into,” Yu explains.

In addition to reviewing data, Yu plans for the next day’s calls. Often there are 20 students on site, with each student making up to 200 or more calls each night. He does make time to monitor calls to make sure that the conversations remain of a high quality.

A PERSONAL TOUCH: While many of the student workers’ calls are met with a voicemail, Yu believes that these calls are important. “Phone calls make a more personal connection. You can get more details from alumni about their experience at Mason because of the natural flow of conversation, which you don’t have over email.” Building on the personal connection, Yu often gives detailed information about upcoming events to the student callers so they can share that with alumni, and he matches up callers’ majors with alumni from similar degrees to add another opportunity for connection.

—Saige MacLeod

PHOTO BY RON AIRA

AN IMPORTANT ROLE: The Mason Messengers bring in roughly $250,000 a year. The money raised goes to a variety of places, with donors choosing the specific designation or fund that they would like to support. As a manager, Yu understands the importance of giving back to Mason. “I see firsthand the impact of alumni giving back. Any gift we receive helps students in achieving their goals.”

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 13

PHOTO BY LATHAN GOUMAS

Conversation with Anne Holton

BY PRES TON WILLIAMS

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n August 1, Anne Holton became the seventh president of George Mason University and Mason’s first female president. The former Virginia secretary of edu­cation had been a visiting professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government and in the College of Education and Human Development.

Holton is serving as interim pres­i­­dent while the university con­ducts a national search for a permanent replacement for Ángel Cabrera, who left after seven years to become president at his alma mater, Georgia Tech.

The Mason Spirit caught up with President Holton during the first week of the fall semester to learn more about her decision to step in as president, her priorities, and the role alumni can play in Mason’s success.

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PHOTO BY RON AIRA

President Holton met students and families at Welcome2Mason activities during the first weeks of classes.

Q: W hy did you decide to accept the role as interim president of George Mason University?

A: [Board of Visitors] Rector Tom Davis is a very persuasive gentleman, but the truth is I love Mason. It was a great opportunity to be of service here.

Mason’s mission of access to excellence and of helping people from all kinds of backgrounds successfully get a high-quality higher education is one that I am thrilled to be part of. The opportunity to help carry the university forward in this time of transition was one I couldn’t resist.

Q: What is the biggest challenge of serving as a president on an interim basis?

A: It’s a big university with so many exciting things going on, and I want to be up to speed and be able to be supportive of all of that. It’s a lot to do in a little bit of time. I knew that we had become an R1 research institution and that we had such amazing work [happening] on the research side, but I didn’t have a sense of what that meant up close and personal. Obviously, I knew some of the great work going on at Schar [School of Policy and Government] and at the [College of Education and Human Development], having worked there. But the top-notch leadership research and creative work we have going on from the arts to the technical fields—it’s been fun to learn in some depth what that means.

Q: What are your top priorities?

ANNE HOLTON Hometown Roanoke, Virginia Education Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs JD, Harvard University

A: Mason’s mission is a pretty clear one: Continuing this journey of access to excellence, meaning that we work hard to provide access to as many people as possible who can benefit from a Mason education and help them get successfully through. So continuing to help the university meet that mission is a top priority. We’re embarking on this major tech talent initiative. We are already the largest provider of tech talent in the commonwealth, and yet the demand from students and employers is immense even before Amazon entered the equation. It definitely is one of my priorities to help us continue ramping up our tech talent efforts to meet the needs of the commonwealth.

As part of that initiative, we will be standing up this exciting new facility in Arlington that will house our School of Computing and our Institute for Digital InnovAtion and will be an opportunity to encourage innovation in collaboration with startup businesses. A big part, for me, is to make sure all that work happens successfully. This year will be a crucial year for that, both in terms of working out the details of the state support, but also beginning in earnest the philanthropic support work and the planning and building work. It’s a crucial year for that initiative, and I’m laser-focused on getting it done right.

Q: How will your experience as former Virginia secretary of education help you in your current role?

A: The funny thing about the secretary of education job is that you actually have fairly little authority and a lot of responsibility. So it’s your job to help bring [people] together and move in the direction of the governor’s education priorities. There were a lot of very independent actors. I used to joke with then-President Cabrera and his colleagues that college presidents

Previous Positions • Fellow at EdPolicyForward, the Center for Education Policy at George Mason • Virginia Secretary of Education • Foster care system reformer as Virginia First Lady • Judge on the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court for the city of Richmond • Attorney for low-income families with the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society Family President Holton and her husband, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, have three grown children.

Fact As a child, President Holton helped integrate the inner-city schools of Richmond when her father Linwood Holton was Virginia’s governor. In 1972 the elder Holton signed legislation that granted Mason its independence from the University of Virginia.

Follow President Holton on Twitter @AnneHolton

(continued next page) Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 15

PHOTO BY RON AIRA

Q: How does Mason plan to grow the tech talent aspect of the university to meet the growing demands of employers?

President Holton greeted students at this year's New Student Convocation at EagleBank Arena.

definitely did not think I was their boss. And I was not. Equally, on the K-12 side of things, school divisions understood very clearly that their local school boards were their boss, and yet it was my job to help bring together all these disparate elements and use the tools that were available to me through the governor and through the state agencies to encourage collaboration toward common goals. A university setting is a little different. I do have a little more direct authority, and yet it’s no surprise to find that there are a lot of independent centers of authority and responsibility here. It’s not simply a matter of the president saying, “Oh, I want a new sign there,” or “I want us to establish this new offering.” It is similar to the secretary of education job in many ways and, frankly, similar to other work I’ve done in other contexts—the ability to convene people, to listen well, and to help them come to an understanding of common goals and common ways to move forward together [are] crucial skill[s]. Even though I have technically a little more authority here, that approach to management is something I bring with me.

In fact, one of the reasons I was hired as secretary of education is, when I was first lady in Virginia, I helped move forward this foster care reform where I had literally zero direct authority, but I had convening power. If I called a meeting, people would show up, and I was able to—with good partners—leverage that into some really fairly major successful reform of our foster care system. So when I was under consideration for the secretary of education position, they knew I knew how to make something from nothing in the authority and responsibility game. Here, it’s a little different—but it’s not that different.

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A: Our opportunity to grow tech talent to meet the needs of the business community is frankly much broader than the Amazon-specific-funded tech talent initiative that we’re partnering with the state on. We’ve already seen a significant ramp-up of all of our technical degrees, and we’ll continue to see that. There are lots and lots of things helping converge to help make us a center of tech talent. One of them is our ADVANCE Program. I love the fact that we’re partnering so closely with the community colleges even in some of the most difficult fields. [The Volgenau School of] Engineering was one of the first to engage in these community college partnerships even before we had the ADVANCE pathway’s moniker on it. It’s a really important pipeline, and it’s a way that we are able to put our mission of access to excellence to work. We are producing not just tech talent, but we are producing diverse tech talent, which is what the business world wants for all the right reasons—the creativity that comes with that diversity is top among them. Also, the work we’re doing to help all of our students improve their marketability with [our new] digital certification credential. We’re giving students from all majors the opportunity to build digital skills that will help them find meaningful and remunerative work without having a technical degree.

There’s huge demand for that.

Q: How can alumni help?

A: Two clear answers. Help tell our story. My perception coming into this role is that we actually have a pretty clear mission here at Mason, and we’re doing a pretty good job of it. But there’s a wider world that doesn’t really know about this gem. I knew a community college president once who said people kept telling him his community college was the best-kept secret in his community, and he thought that was a compliment for a while. Then he figured out—wait a minute, what’s good about having my light hidden under a bushel? So help tell the Mason story, and Mason has the extra challenge in that category of, we’ve just evolved so much since our beginning 50 years ago. We are no longer—if we ever were—just

PHOTO BY MARY LEE CLARK

a commuter school. We are absolutely a world-class research institution. We are so many things that the world doesn’t know. The wider community doesn’t understand what we have to offer. So our alumni are our ambassadors to help spread the word. Then second, we’d absolutely love to have our Mason alumni give back in a very direct way. Because we’re a young institution, we don’t have an endowment built up over centuries the way some of our sister institutions do. We’ve made huge progress on our philanthropic support for the university’s mission, but we have a long way to go, and so we encourage alumni to give in every possible way. There is no such thing as a small gift, and there’s no such thing as a gift that can’t help make a difference in a student’s life.

We encourage alumni to get involved in every possible way, including giving.

Q: You have been a visiting professor at Mason for the past two years. What attracted you to the university initially?

A: I did part of my growing up here in Northern Virginia. I graduated from Langley High School in 1976, and I remember doing research projects at the Fairfax City Library around the corner. But I didn’t know anything about Mason then. Despite my father’s history with the institution, I really came to know Mason as an adult primarily through my role as secretary of education. Ángel [Cabrera] was a great messenger for the university. With my life’s work being focused on equity and how…we help people from all backgrounds, Mason is just right at the heart of that. When I was starting to figure out what I was going to do next after I left the secretary of education

In August, Ardine Williams, Amazon vice president of people operations and HQ2 workforce development, and President Holton toured Nguyen Engineering Building on the Fairfax Campus. Here, they are shown with electrical engineering professor Peter Pachowicz in his lab.

role—I left that to join my husband [Tim Kaine] on the campaign in 2016—I thought having a higher ed opportunity would be exciting, and the first place I thought of was Mason.

Q: The Mason community might not know that you play the violin and clog dance—although presumably not at the same time. Has the Green Machine come calling?

A: It was a long time ago that I played anything on the violin other than showing off to my kids that I could still move a bow across it. I grew up playing music in public schools in Virginia and loved it. I would say the major impact on me now is that it makes me an appreciator of all kinds of music. Clogging is something that I love to do. Clogging is the trad­ itional mountain dance style to really tradi­­tional old-time music—that’s what the practitioners thereof would call it. Some people think bluegrass music, but it’s really kind of a very specific subset—think of the Carter family. Clogging is one of the traditional kinds of dance to that music. It’s something I learned as a kid. I just love it, and I do it every chance I get.

I got to play around with the Green Machine at move-in week. I snuck up on Doc Nix and tapped on his shoulder. We got to dance a little together, and then he said, “Okay, I’ve got to drop off now because I’ve got to conduct.” So he left me and started conducting, and I started imitating him, and then he handed it off to me and let me do the downbeat to end them. So I’ve not only gotten to play with them, I’ve gotten to conduct them for precisely one beat’s worth. They’re a terrific part of the Mason spirit.

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 17

Source Code MASON HAS A SOLUTION TO THE REGION’S TECH WORKER SHORTAGE.

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hen Deb Crawford, George Mason University’s vice president for research, innovation, and economic impact, assembled the data for the state’s pitch to bring Amazon to Northern Virginia, the numbers were eye-opening.

Mason has nearly 5,000 undergraduate students majoring in computing sub­­ jects such as computer science, information technology, and cybersecurity— sub­stantially more than any other Virginia public university. Mason also enrolls the largest number of graduate students in computing fields.

The university’s computing programs will only become more important as Northern Virginia welcomes Amazon’s newest headquarters, HQ2, to the region.

Virginia is already ranked third as the state with the highest concentration of tech workers in the country by Cyberstates.org, and the arrival of Amazon promises to add 25,000 more jobs by 2030.

Amazon’s decision is expected to pique student interest in computing majors, and the university projects it will enroll as many as 10,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students in computing-related degree programs by 2024.

In addition, Mason plans to build on its online presence, allowing working adults the opportunity to complete a college degree or digital credential while also keeping degrees accessible and affordable to community college students who transfer to Mason through programs like the ADVANCE partnership with Northern Virginia Community College. (continued next page)

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY DAVID LEWIS

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 19

“WE’RE READY” Liza Wilson Durant knows a thing or two about Mason’s effort to expand computing and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs. For the past several years, the associate dean for strategic initiatives and community engage­ ment at the Volgenau School of Engineering has helped prepare students for high-demand jobs in Northern Virginia’s bustling technology industry. So it made sense that she was at the center of Mason’s pitch to help bring Amazon to Northern Virginia.

During a November 2018 panel discussion on National Public Radio’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show about the Amazon selection, Durant spoke at length about how Mason is well positioned to serve Amazon and other tech employers.

“Mason has been working for the past decade, and the past six years in earnest, to really deliver on the tremendous tech demand of the flourishing tech economy of Northern Virginia,” she says. “We’re 8,000-strong in our engineering school; 5,000 in computing. So, for us, it was the right time, the right place.”

“We’ve been attracting students—particularly to computing and engineering—because of the tremendous partnerships we’ve had with industry in Northern Virginia,” says Durant. “I like to believe that we have incredibly well-trained students who are really prepared to meet the demands specifically dictated and designed by the companies that hire them. I think we’re ready.”

PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE WORKFORCE Mason has already begun adding new programs in computing and related fields. Earlier this year, Mason launched a digital certification program, which ensures that all students—regardless of their 20 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

major—can develop the digital skills needed to compete in today’s technology-driven economy while creating a broader talent pipeline for em­­ploy­ ers throughout the region.

The new digital technology credential is being cham­­pioned by the Greater Washington Partner­ ship (GWP), a consortium of 12 universities and leading companies in the region. The curriculum, set according to standards defined by employers from across the region, allows undergraduates to develop the needed skills in data analytics, data visualization, and cybersecurity. The plan for the cre­dential, which merges the humanities and social sciences fields with computer science, could become a national model for regional collaboration between universities and businesses.

Durant says she’s been pleasantly sur­prised by how many humanities majors have already signed up.

She envisions others soon following suit.

“Companies realize that people who can write and speak and who understand cul­tural context and policy are vital to [their] success,” says Durant. “They see the need for students with this knowledge. But if [the students] can’t work around an Excel spreadsheet, or if they can’t analyze data, [companies] can’t effectively employ them. So, we’re on the right track here by merging these two concepts.”

Mike Fasil, BS Information Systems and Operations Management ’19, was the first student to earn the credential in May. Currently, there are 10 Mason students enrolled in the program, and roughly 200 are enrolled in the data analysis minor.

For us, it was the right time, the right place.

—Liza Wilson Durant

Virginia Commonwealth University has also launched the program, and American University, the University of Richmond, and Virginia Tech will launch their programs this fall.

Future plans include making the generalist cre­ dential available online for working professionals seeking contemporary skills, and building out a specialist credential for students who already have an extensive background in engineering and computer science.

“I think this approach is unique, it’s new, and I think it’s going to be very popular,” Durant says.

Mason was well equipped to meet the specific standards that regional employers were seeking.

The Department of Statistics within the Volgenau School of Engineering already offers a data analysis minor and needed only to add a cybersecurity element to one of the five mandatory classes necessary for eligibility for a generalist credential.

Mason is also working on a new bachelor’s degree program in cloud computing with Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) and in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Because it had many of the necessary elements in place, Mason was the first of the participating regional universities to award the credential.

A new bachelor of applied science pathway in cloud computing will provide seamless transfer from a two-year associate’s degree to a four-year bachelor’s

WORKING—AND TEACHING— IN THE CLOUD

(continued next page) Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 21

degree in cloud computing. The ADVANCE path­ way will launch in fall 2020.

“This new pathway demonstrates our commitment to creating both educational and employment ac­­ cess,” says Michelle Marks, vice president of academic innovation and new ventures. “These students will be prepared to compete for our region’s most in-demand jobs.”

Mason’s role has always been to create a pipeline for talent and innovation that serves the region.

—Provost S. David Wu NOVA and Mason faculty worked in unison with AWS Educate curriculum designers to create a path that will help students pursue careers in cloud architecture, cybersecurity, software development, and DevOps, a system of software development and delivery. All students in the program will receive membership in the AWS Educate program and gain hands-on, real-world experience with leading cloud technology and tools.

“Developing a cloud-ready workforce is an urgent chal­lenge and an incredible opportunity,” says Teresa Carlson, vice president for AWS’s World­ wide Public Sector. “Both George Mason Uni­ versity and Northern Virginia Community College have been global pioneers in developing cloud curricula for students. We are delighted to be working with these innovative institutions to turn the growing demand for cloud skills into pathways in technology for students from all backgrounds.”

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A NEW SCHOOL, A NEW BUILDING, AND AN INNOVATION DISTRICT “We expect Amazon’s new headquarters will attract other high-tech companies and new ventures to the region,” says Crawford. “These companies will want to access the concentration of tech talent in Northern Virginia.”

To support that talent pipeline, Mason is launch­ing its School of Computing. The first of its kind in Virginia, the school will take a broad, multidisci­­ pli­nary view of computing and foster collabor­ ations across the university’s campuses to advance com­puting and its application in fields ranging from government and business, to edu­ca­tion and health care.

“The goal is to highlight the strategic importance of computing not only in majors such as com­puter science and information science,” says Crawford, “but in disciplines being transformed by compu­ tational techniques, such as biochem­istry, market­ ing, health administration, and the humanities.”

A new multidisciplinary Institute for Digital InnovAtion (IDIA) will harness Mason’s faculty and student communities to advance research and grow the digital innovation economy. IDIA will be the center of innovation in Arlington, housing more than 1,200 entrepreneurs, researchers, and business leaders on the bustling Ballston-Rosslyn corridor.

The institute will be located in a new 400,000-squarefoot building planned for the university’s Arlington Campus, which will take the place of the Original Building, the former Kann’s Department store Mason acquired in the early 1970s.

“This new Institute for Digital InnovAtion will bring together Mason’s diverse faculty and student

community with partners in the public and private sectors,” says Crawford. “Together, they will learn, create, ideate, and innovate, helping to strengthen Northern Virginia’s reputation as a global center for innovation in computing.”

The institute will anchor the new innovation district under development in Arlington’s Virginia Square neighborhood. Led by Mason in partnership with numerous public- and private-sector organizations, the Innovation@Virginia Square initiative will engage and empower a diverse community of Arlington entrepreneurs to strengthen the common­ wealth’s innovation economy.

“Mason’s role has always been to create a pipeline for talent and innovation that serves the region,” says Provost and Executive Vice President S. David Wu. “[These programs] will help attract some of our most promising students and prepare them for success in the innovation economy.

Damian Cristodero, John Hollis, and Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA '95, contributed to this story.

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 23

COVER SPREAD

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Amazing

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCIA STAIMER

Amazon ALUMNI What do you get when you pair Virginia’s largest research university with one of the country’s tech giants?

AN EXTRAORDINARY WORKFORCE B Y DA M I A N C R I S T O D E R O A N D CO L L E E N K E A R N E Y R I C H , M FA ' 95

Ever since news broke last November that Amazon had chosen Northern Virginia as the location for its second headquarters (HQ2)—with the potential to bring up to 25,000 jobs over the next decade—people have been excited about what that will mean for Virginia, for George Mason University, and for Mason’s students and alumni.

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s the commonwealth’s largest public research university—pro­ ducing thousands of tech-ready graduates each year—it’s no surprise that the Mason spirit is already strong at Amazon. More than 500 alumni work for the tech giant at various locations around the world, many for Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon subsidiary that offers cloud com­puting services and has a major hub in Northern Virginia.

The tech job market here is hot, according to Saskia Campbell, executive director of Mason’s University Career Services. “It is a great time to be a student, as we have thousands of em­ ployers eager to connect with Mason talent.”

In the past year, more than 1,100 tech employers posted openings in Handshake, Mason’s database for student internships and jobs. At the start of the fall semester, these employers had posted more than 2,200 full-time tech positions and 600 internships.

University Career Services has relationships with several Amazon entities, but AWS is the most active in campus recruitment. In addition to posting on Handshake and attending career fairs throughout the year, AWS recruiters hosted a virtual open house for Mason students and conducted a “serverless” workshop on campus, in which students learned about cloud computing and had the opportunity to work on cloud architecture.

Meet some of the Mason alumni who work at Amazon, and learn how their Mason education prepared them for the workforce. (continued next page) Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 25

Isaac came to Mason from Northern Virginia Community College. And though he diverted from his original goal of working for the U.S. State Department as a foreign service officer, he says his Mason experience is invaluable.

CAMERON ISAAC BS Conflict Analysis and Resolution ’11 At Amazon: Executive design recruiter The thing about working at Amazon, Isaac says, is you don’t necessarily need a tech degree or tech background to land a position with the tech giant. There are plenty of job opportunities in design, product and program man­ agement, public policy, communications, and instruc­ tional system design that do not require experience in that space.

“I use what I learned at Mason every day at work,” says Isaac, who works out of his home in Richmond, Virginia.

“For conflict analysis and resolution, the biggest takeaways I had from those courses is your approach with people. What I learned was seeking to understand as much as you can in a short period of time, how to analyze data, and using it to drive toward a solution.”

“It’s really more about someone who will always work to better our customers’ lives, is scrappy, and who can bring ideas to life,” Isaac says.

Take Isaac, who uses his degree in conflict analysis and resolution to help him succeed in a position in which he recruits, interviews, and evaluates those who wish to join Amazon’s senior design leadership. Isaac says the analysis and negotiating techniques he learned at Mason, as well as the art of how to break down and understand complicated and hot-button issues, are the foundations for his work.

For example, while his favorite part of the job is hunting for prospects and exploring through interviews whether they will be the right fit for the company, he also enjoys picking the brains of the senior leaders who are looking to hire and learning through their experiences.

“It’s understanding how to go more in-depth with people right off the bat,” Isaac says. “Once you can go in-depth and understand a leader’s vision, their roadmap to goals and product launch, and understanding what their skill gaps are, you are going to be able to bring in people who are going to be a better fit than just a body.”

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JASON PAUL PATE Information Technology, Class of 2020 At Amazon: Systems analyst When Pate heard that Amazon will build a second head­ quarters in Northern Virginia, one of the first things he thought about were the job opportunities that will be created for area professionals and college graduates.

“It’s rare to have an industry leader in your backyard, and Mason students have a golden opportunity to answer the call for Amazon,” says the information technology major. “There’s a lot of motivated young people coming out of Mason right now who I think are definitely going to jump on the opportunity to work with Amazon.”

Pate came to Mason after a four-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps as an aviation electrician assigned to the airfield in Quantico, Virginia. Friends who had gradu­­ ated and taken classes at Mason spoke highly of the institution.

“And after some digging and long-term thinking about my career, I decided Mason could be the best opportunity for me,” Pate says.

Pate has used his time at Mason to enhance his skills and build his professional network. He did this by taking a combination of face-to-face and online classes and participating in the Theta Tau coed engineering fraternity on campus.

He says the online classes help accommodate his work schedule.

Pate is a systems analyst in the AWS Amazon Intelligence Initiative. The initiative is an accelerated onboarding and technical rotational program launched for engineers and technical leaders, who will deliver software services and infrastructure to the U.S. government.

“Attending Mason has allowed me to learn how to balance a large workload efficiently,” Pate says. “It has allowed me to approach a problem from multiple perspectives and evaluate them before tackling issues. I feel like I definitely got out of it what I wanted.”

“I’m not just trying but succeeding in only doing online courses,” Cacciotti says. “Once I got this job, I kind of delayed my graduation by taking fewer classes a semester because I didn’t want to overwhelm myself.”

Cacciotti has varied tasks at Amazon’s Ashburn, Virginia, office, including servicing and diagnosing hardware problems and determining and repairing faults in fiber paths. He says his classes at Mason were the perfect training ground.

“Most of my classes in the IT major touched on hardware and what it does. And I took a networking class that was almost exclusively on fiber,” he says. “I was able to demonstrate that knowledge in the interview [with Amazon] and in my work.”

That said, it was the totality of the Mason experience that Cacciotti believes set him up for success.

For example, his capstone project, which he led for a semester, implemented a paid-time-off and workspace reservation system for a local company and was a realworld endeavor that provided leadership and teamwork experience.

“Having the ability to take online classes has freed up so many opportunities for me,” he says. “Without that, I would be at a huge disadvantage. It would be, like, ‘Decide whether you want to stay in school or keep this job,’ and I don’t want to be in that position.”

Especially with Amazon’s new headquarters already under construction.

“I think it’s going to provide a lot of opportunities for current Amazon employees like myself,” Cacciotti says.

“My dream job is somewhere in HQ2. I just have to keep working toward it.” (continued next page)

TAYLOR CACCIOTTI BS Information Technology ’19 At Amazon: Data center technician Cacciotti, who will graduate in December, got his job at Amazon through a friend of a friend who connected Cacciotti with a hiring manager. Hired first as a contractor, Cacciotti became what he calls “a real Amazon employee” in September 2018.

Thank goodness, he says, that Mason offers so many online courses.

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 27

RAJITHA DEVABHAKTUNI MS Computer Engineering ’16 At Amazon: Cloud security engineer For Devabhaktuni, the several months she spent working for Amazon in her hometown of Bangalore, India, were more than a job. They were a learning experience.

“The learning curve was very high,” she says. “We work with customers who come in with different types of issues, so we end up learning coding and networking.

The scope of learning is not just limited to security.”

Devabhaktuni came to Mason from India specifically for the university’s computer science program. She also figured that Northern Virginia, with its many companies and proximity to Washington, D.C., isn’t a bad place to look for a job.

Another bonus was the year she spent as a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology in the Volgenau School of Engineering.

She also assisted Mason computer science professor Kamaljeet Sanghera in the development of a class that will be part of a Mason cloud computing bachelor’s program in partnership with Amazon Web Services.

“Through my tenure as a teaching assistant, I was exposed to a great diversity of students who come from different educational backgrounds,” Devabhaktuni says of her time at Mason. “The experience I gained through my work at Mason helped me get better at leadership and teamwork. I learned time management and to work independently and do everything on my own.”

Devabhaktuni says she was not surprised Amazon chose Northern Virginia, considering the high-quality universities in the area, especially Mason—a place she says she so enjoyed, “I wish I could have taken more courses.”

28 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

PRINKLE LOPES MS Information Systems ’18 At Amazon: Cloud support associate If Lopes ever wanted to convince her friends back home in India to study at Mason, she says she would talk about campus diversity, the flexibility to choose course work, and opportunities to work on campus.

“I was very picky about my courses because I wanted to learn about databases and networking, and that’s exactly what I’m doing [at Amazon] right now,” Lopes says. “I think all my courses helped me get into [Amazon Web Services].”

As a cloud support associate, Lopes, who works out of Amazon’s Herndon, Virginia, office, helps clients resolve issues relating to system infrastructures and databases.

She says she sees herself eventually becoming a cloud support engineer and then a solutions architect, someone who helps companies who want to use Amazon Web Services evaluate their needs and build their systems.

“I got more than what I was expecting,” Lopes says of Mason. “My professors took a practical approach. They told us about what was currently happening in the industry, what we need to look out for, what kind of courses we should take. They helped us even though we weren’t asking for it. That’s something I really loved.”

BRANDON MOHABIR BS Information Technology ’15 At Amazon: Cloud support associate What Mohabir enjoyed most about Mason went beyond the education he received, even though, as he says, “It covered pretty much everything I wanted in terms of skills and practices.”

The added bonuses were opportunities to get hands-on experience working in Mason’s ITS Support Center and the help he received finding a job through networking and assistance in putting together a resume.

“It was not just having the degree, but the physical experience in the field,” Mohabir says. “Those two things combined, I believe, helped me become a strong candidate, once I graduated, [with] a strong chance of landing a position at a highly regarded company.”

As he has just been promoted, Mohabir says his new role with Amazon in Herndon, Virginia, is still being defined. In his previous role as a network technician, Mohabir did hardware deployment and configuration.

He and his colleagues fixed things when they broke, but they also managed multimillion-dollar projects from conception to installation, making sure systems are operational before handing them over to the team in charge of maintaining them.

It is challenging work that Mohabir, who also minored in business, says he was comfortable undertaking because of the preparation he received at Mason. That includes the dos and don'ts of interviewing, which, he says, helped him secure his new job.

“The teachers were very helpful and provided me with good information to go in and take the certification exams I was aiming for and provided me with a good fundamental baseline of knowledge to make me confident enough to enter the job space I was looking for,” he says.

RAO AHMAD RAHIL INSIDE SPREAD ’18 MS Telecommunications At Amazon: Cloud support associate Of all the things Rahil experienced during his time at Mason, one course—TCOM 690 Scalable Network Architecture—was the most consequential. “That one course probably changed my career path.”

In it, Rahil learned about the advantages of networking in the cloud rather than through old-fashioned physical networks. He also learned about Amazon Web Services and gained hands-on experience working on AWS consoles.

“The class was very interactive, so we were learning more,” Rahil says. “I always had been more toward hardcore networking—routing and switching and physical networks. But going into the cloud, you are exposed to so many services like storage, virtual desktops, software platforms, servers, databases. So I was, like, ‘Okay, let’s dive into cloud computing.’ ” Rahil came to the United States specifically to attend Mason after speaking with an education consultant in his native Pakistan and then doing some online research.

“The deciding point was the program offered by Mason,” he says. “There’s a lot of learning, and Mason is up-todate with its course work.”

He took advantage of a project management course, which helped him understand how to manage, lead, and make presentations—a useful exercise, Rahil says, for someone whose first language is not English and who does not have experience with public speaking.

Rahil’s job in Amazon’s Herndon, Virginia, office is customer-facing, with an emphasis on understanding individual issues, troubleshooting, and developing solutions to networking problems.

For Rahil, though, it all comes back to that one telecommunications course.

“There were labs. We were troubleshooting. It was really hands-on,” Rahil says. “I will always be grateful to Mason for that course.”

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 29

PHOTOS BY LATHAN GOUMAS

Mason art alumni Valerie McKenna, Zachary Wilcox, and Andrew Jorgensen are the first group of artists to receive the CVPA grants.

Emerging ARTISTS

The College of Visual and Performing Arts has a new program to support alumni artists at the start of their careers.

BY MARY LEE CL ARK

Y

ear after year, College of Visual and Performing Arts faculty watch students hone their art and craft during their time at Mason.

“Then we watch with such pride as they graduate and apply their training in their fields,” says Rick Davis, dean of the college. “However, emerging artists always have more ideas than resources. They need the precious gifts of time, materials, and space to explore their work.”

The new Young Alumni Commissioning Project is one way the college is taking its support of alumni to the next level. Last year, the college invited young alumni to submit proposals across all artistic genres for an award to support the creation of a new work. In the 30 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

­—Zachary Wilcox

Wilcox

It seems like the right time to tell their story.

program’s inaugural year, three alumni received awards for their theater, photography, and film projects.

Zachary Wilcox, BA Theater ’15, received the $5,000 Young Alumni Commissioning Project Award, while both Valerie McKenna, BFA Art and Visual Technology ’18, and Andrew Jorgensen, BA Film and Video Studies ’17, received $2,500 Young Alumni Creative Development Awards. In addition to financial support, recipients will receive marketing and production support for their projects.

All three will present their projects to the public during the college’s 2019-20 season.

Wilcox, the grand prize winner, remembers the conversation he had with a friend from Tangier Island, a small island in the Chesapeake Bay with a population of just more than 700, that sparked an idea for a one-act play.

In the play, a reporter visits the Virginia island to learn about the community’s isolated way of life. With the award, Wilcox saw an opportunity to turn his play into something bigger.

“I’m not a reporter, but my team and I could go to the island and interview people, and then turn this little idea for a one-act into a full-length project,” says Wilcox. His full-length play with film, Tangier Island Is Sinking, is the story of the island based on conversations he had there.

Tangier Island has been in the news recently because of climate change. As sea levels rise, experts predict the island will be underwater in the next 50 years. Towns may need to be abandoned as soon as within the next 25, meaning the island’s rich culture and unique accent will be lost.

“It seems like the right time to tell their story,” says Wilcox. (continued next page) Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 31

There is science within art, and art within science.

­—Valerie McKenna

McKenna

McKenna didn’t want to choose between pursuing environmental science and art, so she chose both. Originally an environmental science major, she switched to an arts degree when she realized she enjoys the two subjects together.

“There is science within art, and art within science,” says McKenna.

Her project, “Albright,” is a continuation of her senior thesis, in which she used polluted water from the Cheat River watershed—instead of the typically used distilled water— to develop photographs she took of the site. For “Albright,” the film that captures her landscapes will be exposed directly to the elements—such as dirt—that make up the landscape she is photographing.

McKenna’s project investigates landscape portraiture and how the subject can influence its own image, but she believes this technique could be a way to discuss environmental issues like soil contamination in future projects.

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I want to tackle some modern socio-political issues while still telling a story deeply rooted in my family history.

—Andrew Jorgensen

Jorgensen seeks to tell an old family story in a different way with his short film, “The Sun and the Medicine Man.” The story that inspired the film belongs to his great grandfather, who suffered from a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis that left him unable to walk for most of his adult life.

Jorgensen will dramatize his family’s story by telling it through the experiences of his wife’s family as immigrants to the United States from Mexico.

“I want to tackle some modern socio-political issues while still telling a story deeply rooted in my family history,” says Jorgensen.

The Young Alumni Commissioning Project is made possible by a generous bequest from the estate of Linda E. Gramlich for the support of young artists, and by donors to Mason’s Giving Day, including Shugoll Research. If you would like to support emerging artists, visit advancement.gmu.edu/YACP. To find out more about the project and how to apply, visit bit.ly/CVPAYACP for guidelines and deadlines.

Jorgensen

He traveled to upstate New York to see a medicine man, who gave him instructions and a jar filled with a mysterious liquid. After a few weeks of following those instructions, he was able to walk for a short time. After running out of the mysterious liquid, he attempted to seek out the medicine man once more, only to find the medicine man had been run out of town, leaving him again immobile.

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 33

PHOTO BY EVAN CANTWELL

INQUIRING MINDS

The Arts Lead to Achievement

How are kids who take middle school arts different from those who don't?’

We found that they were very different; they were more advantaged even seven years earlier.

”

—Adam Winsler

34 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

R

esearch by Mason applied developmental psychology professor Adam Winsler reveals a direct link between participation in arts elective courses—including music, dance, visual art, and drama—and better grades in middle school. The study followed a diverse sample of 31,331 children from their preschool years up until eighth grade.

"There were two questions this study was designed to answer,” says Winsler. “One is, ‘How are kids who take middle school arts different from those who don't?’ We found that they were very different; they were more advantaged even seven years earlier.”

Winsler said that students who are exposed to the arts in middle school tend to come from higher income families with both parents in the household. The students also tended to do better earlier in elementary school and had stronger cognitive language and social skills at age 4.

"The second question we were trying to answer is, once you statistically control for all of those ways that the arts takers are different from the non-arts takers, is the taking of those arts in middle school associated with later academic outcomes?"

The answer, says Winsler, is yes.

Winsler says his research, which was published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, found that, when all variables are accounted for, arts enrollment seems to link to better academic performance in both the same year and later years.

While the benefits of the arts are not a new topic of discussion, Winsler says that as arts programs are getting cut in schools, it’s important to back these claims with strong data.

—Mary Lee Clark

“

RESEARCH

100,000 Neurons and Counting

T

he human brain is a vast network of around 100 billion neurons, tree-like cells complete with trunks, roots, and branches that communicate with electrical impulses. Mason researchers and collab­ orators met earlier this year to celebrate tracing 100,000 neurons and storing their reconstructions in the online database, NeuroMorpho.Org. Launched in 2006, NeuroMorpho.Org is the brainchild of Mason bioengineering professor Giorgio Ascoli. Its success is evident: • More than 112,244 digitally reconstructed neurons are contained in the repository.

• Researchers from 595 labs around the world, representing 36 different countries, have contributed to the repository.

• More than 1,700 peer-reviewed studies pub­ lished to date describe or incorporate data downloaded from the database.

• 142 National Institutes of Health grants have used its data.

• Lastly, the 13.7 million reconstructions down­ loaded would have taken 1,000 people working for 274 years if they had to independently map those neurons. Sharing data saved $7 billion in labor.

Ascoli recognized early on that barriers to sharing neural maps were hindering progress in brain science.

He reasoned that an open-access repository for neural reconstructions on the web, with researchers freely exchanging data, would make the study faster and more efficient. But its success was not without roadblocks.

“We live in a world that is very competitive,” Ascoli says.

Researchers were afraid of getting scooped or having others claim recognition for their work. In the beginning, only 15 percent of invited researchers accepted the opportunity to upload their data. Now, 13 years after the database’s conception, more than 80 percent of invitations are accepted.

“If everyone adds their little drop,” says neuroscientist Henry Markram, founder of the Blue Brain Project, “it may not make an ocean, but we might have a cup—and we can do a lot with a cup.”

Did You Know

M

ark D. Uhen, of the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences, was featured in the PBS documentary When Whales Walked: Journeys in Deep Time, which premiered in June. The program features top paleontologists from around the globe examining the fossil records that chronicle the evolution of some of the world’s most iconic creatures, including whales, elephants, birds, and crocodiles. Uhen spoke about his research on the evolution of whales.

—Lauren Huey

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 35

INQUIRING MINDS

Plotting the History of the Appalachian Trail

I

n 1937 the Appalachian Trail, then stretching 2,050 miles from Maine to Georgia, was declared complete.

Today, 82 years later, the trail covers 2,192 miles, and looks very different than it did in 1937. Land-rights battles, geological changes, and scenery choices are among the many reasons why.

This is the story that Mason history professor Mills Kelly, his colleague Abigail Mullen at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, and his under­ graduate students hope to capture. With the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the team is setting out to create a digital historical guide of the evolution of the Appalachian Trail over the past century.

The result will be a free, interactive research tool that will allow users to chart, examine, and make sense of the routes the trail has taken throughout its long history.

“We're going to make it possible for the person interested in the story to not only see how the Appalachian Trail has changed over time, but to get all the contextual material

around that so they can understand the decisions that were made and how it affected people's experiences on the trail,” says Kelly.

History major Brenda Ibarra is a student research assistant for the project. Her fascination with the trail started in a class she took with Kelly, HIST 300 Introduction to the Historical Method: The Appalachian Trail.

Ibarra is collecting information from personal interviews with current and past hikers. Among the changes the Mason team is documenting is the decade when McAfee Knob, now the most photographed portion of the trail, was removed due to disputes over property rights and access.

Kelly says students will be crucial for the imple­men­ tation of this project. He enjoys how undergraduate stu­dents bring different perspectives to their research and focus on topics that they are personally interested in, such as LGBTQ issues or endangered species along the trail.

Check out some of the students’ research at appalachiantrailhistory.org.

36 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

—Mary Lee Clark

RESEARCH Clinical Trial for People with Parkinson’s Moons over Mars

M

ason planetary scientist Thomas Duxbury is no stranger to deep space missions. He was very active in the U.S. efforts with the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter, the two Viking orbiters, and the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers.

Duxbury was also the only American in Moscow supporting the Soviet robotic landing on Phobos—Mars’s inner moon— in 1988. He served as a leading scientist on the Russian Mars 1996 mission, and he was the only American working in Moscow to support the Russian Phobos Sample Return Mission in 2011. He also led the U.S. Stardust mission that brought comet samples to Earth in 2006.

Now Duxbury will head an inter­ national team charged with learning more about the moons of Mars as a harbinger of possible human exploration of the red planet. Called the Phobos/ Deimos Working Group in reference to the two moons orbiting Mars, the group of scientists, representing four space

agencies—NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos)—will begin robotic exploration of the moons.

Duxbury is currently leading ESA’s Mars Express orbiter mission exploration of the two moons and participating in the same exploration by the U.S. 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter.

Duxbury is also credited with having invented the interplanetary optical navigation technique that allows the precision fly-bys and orbiting of Mars and the outer planets that is now being used by all space agencies.

“NASA thought it is in the interest of the U.S. to help other space agencies be successful in their planetary explorations because these missions are what the U.S. would like to do,” he says. “So it is a winwin for all the countries involved by participating in each other’s programs.”

—John Hollis

L

NASA/JPL

ast year, Mason’s Department of Rehabili­ta­­­ tion Science wrapped up a clinical trial on the walking function of people with spinal cord injuries. Now, Mason faculty and students at the College of Health and Human Services are taking some of the lessons learned from that study and applying them to a new study for those with Parkinson’s disease.

The clinical trial will run for 12 weeks and in­ volve a series of training sessions featuring spe­ cific exercises to improve the walking function of people with Parkinson’s disease. Rehabilitation science PhD students who were involved in the previous study proposed much of this new study’s protocol.

The trial will also focus on factors that affect walking, using the cutting-edge technology in the Functional Performance Laboratory at Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall. These include equip­ ment to record lower-extremity muscle activity, a portable metabolic system to measure breathing, and various devices that measure the character­ istics of stepping.

"We can test a lot of things in the lab, but ulti­ mately, life happens outside of the lab,” says Clinton Wutzke, an assistant professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Science and the study’s coprincipal investigator, along with department chair Andrew Guccione.

Wutzke says that the study is in response to com­munity needs. There is a large group of people with Parkinson’s in the Northern Virginia area, he says, and nationally, more people are being diag­ nosed with Parkinson’s than ever before.

—Mary Lee Clark

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 37

PHOTO BY RON AIRA

38 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

Welcome to Mason

This fall's freshman class is the largest yet and brings the university's enrollment to more than 38,000.

Fall 2019  M A S O N S P I R I T  | 39

SHELF LIFE

Recently published works by Mason faculty

Crossroads: Comparative Immigration Regimes in a World of Demographic Change

and innocence, and discusses the results of a “system of pleas,” such as sentencing disparities and disenfranchisement.

Justin Gest, assistant professor, Public Policy, with Anna K. Boucher

Handbook for Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork

Relying on immigration demographics from 30 countries, Boucher and Gest (Cambridge University Press, May 2018) present an analysis of what drives different approaches to immigration policy over space and time. In an era defined by inequality, populism, and fears of international terrorism, they find that governments are converging toward a “Market Model” that seeks immigrants for short-term labor with fewer outlets to citizenship.

A System of Pleas: Social Sciences Contributions to the Real Legal System Allison D. Redlich, professor, Criminology, Law and Society, with Vanessa A. Edkins Drawing attention to the fact that convictions today are nearly synonymous with guilty pleas, this volume (Oxford University Press, March 2019) begins with an overview and history of plea bargaining, with chapters focusing on the influences on plea decision making— including race—juvenile justice system involvement,

40 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

Lisa Gilman, assistant professor, Folklore, with John Fenn This book (Indiana Univer­ sity Press, April 2019) offers a comprehensive review of the ethnographic process for developing a project, implementing the plan, and completing and preserving the data collected. Written accessibly for lay researchers working in different mediums and on projects of varying sizes, this step-by-step manual will prepare the reader for the challenges and rewards of ethnographic research.

State Domination and the Psycho-Politics of Conflict: Power, Conflict, and Humiliation Daniel Rothbart, professor, Conflict Analysis and Resolution This book (Routledge, April 2019) offers a detailed study of the psychopolitics of governmental manipulation, in which a vulnerable population is disciplined by contorting the individual’s sense of self-worth. Rothbart draws upon recent findings in

social psychology, conflict analysis, and political sociology, with case studies of governmental directives, verdicts, policies, decisions, and norms that, when enforced, foster debasement, disgrace, or denigration. The book’s conclusion focuses on compassion-motivated practices that represent a counterforce to government-sponsored strategies of systemic humiliation.

The Illicit Economy in Turkey: How Criminals, Terrorists, and the Syrian Conflict Fuel Underground Markets Mahmut Cengiz, adjunct faculty, Criminology, Law and Society, and Mitchel P. Roth This book (Lexington Books, April 2019) offers insights into the illicit economy in Turkey, including the smuggling of pharmaceuticals, oil, antiquities, drugs, nuclear materials, and cigarettes.

The authors provide an in-depth analysis of the unintended consequences of corruption scandals, which have resulted in the purging of important law enforcement and intelligence entities formerly responsible for countering terrorism and organized crime threats.

Travelers Helon Habila, professor, English In this novel (W. W. Norton & Company, June 2019), a Nigerian graduate student who has made his home in America finds himself thrown into a community of African immigrants and refugees in Berlin whose lives previously seemed distant from his own, but to which he is increasingly drawn. His sense of identity begins to dissolve as he finds that he can no longer separate himself from others’ horrors, or from Africa.

The Routledge Handbook of Housing Policy and Planning Katrin B. Anacker, associate professor, Schar School of Policy and Government, with Mai Thi Nguyen and David P. Varady This handbook (Routledge, July 2019) provides a comprehensive multi­ disciplinary overview of contemporary trends in

housing studies, policies, planning, and housing innovations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

International scholars discuss aspects pertaining to the right to housing, inequality, homeownership, rental housing, social housing, senior housing, gentrification, cities and suburbs, and the future of housing policies.

Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand against White Nationalism Terry McAuliffe, Distinguished Visiting Professor, Schar School of Policy and Government, with John Lewis In this book (Thomas Dunne Books, July 2019), McAuliffe takes a hard, behind-the-scenes look at the actions of everyone on that fateful day in

Charlottesville, Virginia, including himself (as Virginia’s governor at the time), to see what could have been done. He lays out what was done afterward to prevent a future Charlottesvillelike incident—and what still needs to be done as America, in general, and Virginia, in particular, continue to grapple with their history of racism.

G E T T I N G G R A P H I C W I T H I M M I G R AT I O N R E S E A R C H If you picture a book about immigration research, you might not actually think of a book with … pictures. But Mason economics professor Bryan Caplan’s newest book, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration (First Second, 2019), is exactly that. Illustrated by Zach Weinersmith, the book is a nonfiction graphic novel.

With a cartoon version of Caplan as the narrator, Open Borders makes the argument that no-holds-barred immigration would lead to worldwide economic prosperity and virtually eliminate poverty.

Why a nonfiction graphic novel?

A lot of what I’ve done on immigration consists of thought experiments. And thought experiments just work better if you can see them. So this was a really nice chance to actually draw thought experiments that I’d only described in words before. I can’t even draw, but I really like the format…. I did have the idea [that] if I could go and not only write the script but also storyboard it…then I could just talk an artist into doing it…. I was fortunate enough to get my No. 1 choice of [illustrator] in the world, Zach Weinersmith.

ILLUSTRATION BY ZACH WEINERSMITH

What was it like to see yourself as a comic book character?

It was pretty natural, actually! People like to have this narrator character [in graphic novels]. Zach actually did 10 different versions of me. Tall, short, cool, geeky, he just did a lot of different ones, and then I showed them to a lot of people who knew me.

The one we went with was the boyish [version], the

funny, nerdy guy. One thing this whole genre relies on is that humans identify with a drawing very easily.

That’s why the format works.

Was there anything in your research that surprised you?

One of the least palatable complaints about immigration is “People in poor countries have very little IQ, and if we let them in, then they’re going to mess up our country.” One thing I was able to track down is work on transnational adoption. And [to see] what happens, when people from Sweden or Norway adopt infants from third-world countries…

[I saw] that this transnational adoption actually shows enormous gains of moving kids from the third world to the first world. So I have about 10 pages on this argument and the evidence in the book.

—Priyanka Champaneri, BA ’05, MFA ’10

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 41

ALUMNI IN PRINT

Recently published works by Mason alumni

Bricks without Straw

Heiress

Trina Kay Lewis, BA Communication ’88

Elisabeth Murawski, MFA Creative Writing ‘91

Whether you are curious about home­ schooling or currently have a little school in your home, Bricks without Straw: How Homeschooling Can Make Your Role as a Christian Parent Easier (WestBow Press, 2017) offers encouragement and practical assistance. In this guide, Lewis opens up about her nearly two decades of teaching her four children at home.

Postcards from L.A. Emilio Iasiello, MFA Creative Writing ’08 This poetry collection (Plan B Press, 2018) is about the trials and tribulations of trying to achieve success in the entertainment movie business. Iasiello has published short fiction and poetry in numerous academic and liter­­ary journals.

A Day in the Life in a Skilled Nursing Facility Darren DC Lyons, BA History ’90 In this short story collection (Korrior Inc., 2018), Lyons pulls from his personal life to show a glimpse of what his time was like while at a skilled nursing facility seeking rehabilitation after major health problems.

Lyons, founder and CEO of Korrior Inc., is working on his memoir, With Worn Out Tools: Navigating the Rituals of Mid Life.

Raising Girls into Extraordinary Young Women Monica Hawkins, PhD Environmental Science and Public Policy ’09 This book (AuthorHouse, 2018) provides a “blueprint” that parents can use to raise their daughters to be articulate, selfconfident, intelligent, and extraordinary young women and leaders. Monica Hawkins is a wife, mother, sports fan, and a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She has been a mentor, tutor, coach, and motivational speaker to numer­ous youngsters.

42 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

The poems in this collection (Texas Review Press, 2018) sparkle with biblical and musical allusion and timely references to a litany of literary and historical personages.

Murawski is also the author of Zorba’s Daughter, which won the May Swenson Poetry Award; Moon and Mercury; and two chapbooks. Her work has been published in The Yale Review, The Southern Review, and FIELD, among others. She currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2P Robert W. Gehl, PhD Cultural Studies ‘10 In this book (MIT Press, 2018), Gehl presents three distinct meanings of “legitimate” and explores how Freenet, Tor, and I2P grappled with these different meanings.

He then discusses each form of legitimacy in detail by examining Dark Web markets, search engines, and social networking sites. Gehl is an associate professor in the communication department at the University of Utah. He is also the author of Reverse Engineering Social Media (Temple University Press), winner of the 2015 Association of Internet Researchers Nancy Baym Award.

A Spiral into Marvelous Light Michael Gryboski, MA History ’15 In this novel (Ambassador International, March 2019), the Reverend Sammy Milton divides his time between evangelizing the lost and galvanizing conservative voters. On the day Milton dies, journalist Scott Addison is assigned to write an in-depth story meant to bury the fundamentalist preacher in vitriol. He expects the piece to be easy; however, the image of the late preacher becomes more complicated. Aside from writing fiction, Gryboski also writes news articles for a living.

PHOTO BY LATHAN GOUMAS

PAT R I O T P R O F I L E

Dolica Gopisetty YEAR: Senior MAJOR: Information Technology HOMETOWN: Richmond, Virginia

This summer, Mason information technology major Dolica Gopisetty had her head in the clouds—cloud computing, that is. In June, Gopisetty was on a panel of students discussing cloud computing at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. Those at Amazon were so impressed with her that they invited her to be a keynote speaker at AWS’s “IMAGINE: A Better World, A Global Education” conference in Seattle, Washington. She was the only student among the eight keynote speakers appearing.

Getting Certified: When Gopisetty attended an oncampus career event during her first year at Mason, one of the industry professionals mentioned cloud computing.

Gopisetty was unsure of what the term meant and set out to educate herself about the topic. “That’s where my journey started. I did a whole lot of research and saw that AWS, being [the] leading cloud computing service, offered certifications.” She decided to pursue her certification in cloud computing, in addition to her regular classes on campus.

Opportunity Knocks: Gopisetty says she likes to attend Mason’s career fairs to hone her job-hunting skills and hand out her resume. One of those resumes led to her summer job as a software development engineer intern at Gannett/USA Today. “It was a dream come true. They gave me an opportunity when no other company did. I’ll always be grateful for them.”

Always Busy: During the academic year, Gopisetty works on campus as a technical writer for Information Technology Services. She is also president of the student organization Association of Engineers. Outside of Mason, she enjoys mentoring young girls on technology topics when she can.

One piece of advice she gives the girls: Just do it. In many of her classes, Gopisetty says there are often more men than women, and she had to force herself to speak up—even if she wasn’t feeling particularly confident. “Eventually you’ll feel it. That’s what happened to me. I think that’s what helped me get to where I am. And that’s what I tell those girls: ‘You can do it.’”

Love at First Sight: Gopisetty received acceptances from several Virginia universities, but when she came to Mason for a campus visit, she fell in love—before her family had even parked the car. “We put our blinkers on and got out.

I was like, this is it.” She admits she did do some research before the visit, and the professional advantages of being in Northern Virginia in terms of the nearby companies also made a huge impression.

—Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 43

class notes

Fighting for

JUSTICE Millions of people were captivated by the murder mystery involving Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee after Rabia Chaudry, JD ’00, took the case to NPR and the hit podcast Serial was born.

Syed, who was convicted of murdering his high school ex-girlfriend, Lee, was sentenced to life in prison. Chaudry, a family friend, has been advocating for his innocence for two decades. In March, she brought the story back to the national stage with the HBO documentary series, The Case against Adnan Syed. Chaudry was an executive producer and also appeared on the show.

“Serial was good storytelling, but it wasn’t an investigative look in the way a lawyer does an investigation,” says Chaudry. That’s why she took matters back into her own hands.

In 2015, Chaudry partnered with two other lawyers, and they started their own podcast that went viral: Undisclosed, which looks at possible wrongful conviction cases, including that of Syed. She also wrote a New York Times bestseller, Adnan’s Story, which became the basis for the HBO series.

“The great thing about Undisclosed [and my other advocacy work] is that I’m not just trying to help a wrongfully convicted person get out of prison,” Chaudry says. “We’re trying to show communities of people who have very little understanding of and exposure to the criminal justice system what’s actually happening on the inside.”

Though Syed is still behind bars and the Maryland Court of Appeals denied him a new trial in April, Chaudry’s advocacy has encouraged others to take another look at the criminal justice system.

During her time at Mason, Chaudry interned at a local immigration firm. “I worked for the first year on only asylum cases and appeal work, and I loved it.”

Chaudry practiced immigration and civil rights law for more than a decade. Last year, she helped her local community by doing legal asylum work, and she has been actively involved in interfaith work.

“My work seems really diverse, when people look at it on paper, but it’s not really,” she says. “The common thread is I believe in building bridges and meeting people where they are.”

“What I want people to take away is that you don’t know unless you’re in some­ body’s shoes, so walk that mile, give people a chance. I feel that’s the case whether you talk about different religious communities, ethnic communities, social classes— everything is so polarized right now, and I’m hoping that my work helps to counter a little bit of it.”

PHOTO BY AYESHA AHMED

44 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

—Mariam Aburdeineh, BA ’13

class notes 1960s

Helen (Gleason) White, BA English ’69, is retired from the U.S. State Department.

She is a past president of the American News Women’s Club, which has funded scholarships for communication students at Mason.

1970s

Dorothy Blum, BA Psychology ’71, PhD Education ’96, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Global Employee Assistance Professionals Association (EAPA) for her distinguished leadership, work, and service to the profession.

EAPA is the world’s largest, oldest, and most respected membership organization for employee assistance professionals.

Blum is currently manager of EAP services for the Architect of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. From 1987 to 2010, she served as contracted EAP director for the U.S. Customs Service, later U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Under her leadership, Blum and her staff received the Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Special Recognition Award for “exemplary service and tireless, compassionate,

and professional support following the tragic events of September 11, 2001.”

In 2005, she and her staff were recognized again for their work in response to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in the Gulf Coast.

psychometric and scoring operations, test administration, and certificate engagement for SHRM’s certified professional and senior certified professional credentials.

Bonnie Atwood, BA Psychology ’74, received two honors this season: second place from the National Federation of Press Women for her book My Journey through Eldercare, and Member of the Year from the Metropolitan Business League in central Virginia.

Jay Pearson, BA Inter­ national Studies ’87, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’98, is the new assistant superintendent for Region 4 of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). Pearson previously served four years as the Region 2 executive principal, in addition to serving as department chair and International Baccalaureate coordinator at Edison High School, assistant principal at Edison and Marshall High Schools, and principal at Marshall High for nine years.

In 2014, he was named the FCPS Principal of the Year.

1980s

John Spence, BA Geo­ graphy ’81, was promoted to full professor at Thomas More University in Crest­ view Hills, Kentucky, where he is the program director of political science and affiliated faculty of the environmental science program. Spence has been a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners since 1986.

Nancy Woolever, BS Management ’83, MAIS ’93, was promoted to vice president, certification operations at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). She leads the team responsible for exam development,

Mike Moore, BA American Studies ’88, recently made a career change. After nearly 20 years in the financial services industry, including the last 13 with BB&T, Moore is now teaching business and information

technology classes at Oakton High School in Vienna, Virginia.

Brig. Gen. Jay “Scott” Goldstein, BS Electrical Engineering ’89, MS Electrical Engineering ’93, is the mobilization assistant to the Under Secretary of the U.S. Air Force. He was awarded the 2019 IEEE Warren D. White Award “for contributions to the design, development, and fielding of multidomain radar, electronic warfare, and cyber systems.” He received his PhD from the University of Southern California in 1997.

Jane Harrington, BS Decision Science ’89, MA English ’10, published a short story in the anthology Mountains Piled upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene (West Virginia University Press, 2019), edited by Jessica Cory.

1990s

Fred Foldvary, MA Economics ’90, PhD Economics ’92, has retired

emeritus from teaching at San Jose State University.

Sam Khater, BS Finance ’92, has joined Freddie Mac as vice president and chief economist. Khater brings more than 20 years of extensive housing finance research and economic forecasting expertise to his new role. Khater joins Freddie Mac after spending 11 years at CoreLogic, where he most recently served as vice president of research and deputy chief economist. Khater holds a master’s degree in network economics from Georgetown University in addition to his degree from Mason.

Erik Rosen, MS Applied and Engineering Physics ’93, is one of three recipients of the IDA 2019 Larry D. Welch Award for Best External Publication. Rosen cowrote the paper “Standardized Down-Looking GroundPenetrating Radar Data Collections.”

Heather A. Cooper, JD ’94, David L. Ginsberg, JD ’96, and Daniel L. Gray, JD ’96, are proud to celebrate the (continued next page)

What’s New with You? We are interested in what you’ve been doing since you graduated. Moved? Gotten married? Had a baby? Landed a new job? Received an award? Submit your class notes to alumni.gmu.edu/whatsnew. In your note, be sure to include your graduation year and degree.

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 45

DEAR FELLOW

Patriots I

n my second year and final months serving as your alumni representative and Alumni Association president, I am focused on strengthening our volunteer base and recruiting new alumni to be actively engaged with our university.

Association leadership and Alumni Relations staff have worked on mean­ ingful volunteerism and increased collaboration among our schools and colleges and units. If you are looking to get involved, please fill out a volunteer interest form online at alumni.gmu.edu/Volunteer. One of our staff will contact you to help you find where you can apply your talents and enthusiasm in an effective way.

There are a wide variety of opportunities available to you, includ­ing working with students, serving on a board committee, or con­necting with academic departments on campus. Both the Alumni Association and Alumni Relations are here to serve you and provide that lifelong Mason connection.

Did you know that we are the only large state university in the Commonwealth of Virginia without a permanent home for our alumni to gather in? We are currently exploring building an alumni center or house on the Fairfax Campus that would serve as a wel­come center for alumni to visit and hold events.

The building would have multipurpose uses and functions, with alumni as the marquee tenants and keepers of our history. Stay tuned for more information to come, and keep an eye out for a survey of your needs and wants for a home that would belong to us.

Our association’s strategic plan is now available to read online at alumni.gmu.edu/StrategicPlan. Thank you for your continued support. I hope to see you at an alumni event soon!

Together We Thrive, Jen Shelton, BS Public Administration ’94 President, George Mason University Alumni Association

46 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

15th anniversary of Cooper Ginsberg Gray, the law firm they founded together in the fall of 2004. Later joined by Mason alumni and current partners Nathan J. Olson, JD ’96, and Stephanie J. Smith, JD ’08, and associate attorney Kristen L. Kugel, JD ’12, the firm has grown in size and practices family law in all jurisdictions in Northern Virginia.

Chris Mandel, MBA ’94, was appointed to the Chief Risk Officer Advisory Council at the Executive Development Program of Mason’s School of Business. The senior vice president of strategic solutions for the Sedgwick Institute, Mandel helped develop and deliver part of the curric­ ulum as a Mason adjunct professor.

Cicero Fain III, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’97, had his book Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story, published by the University of Illinois Press in May 2019. Fain is a professor of history at the College of Southern Maryland.

Joe Little, BA Speech Communication ’98, was promoted to director of storytelling at NBC 7 San Diego. Little won four Emmys at the 2019 Emmy Awards, presented in Las Vegas in June.

Kimberly Matthews, BA ’99, published a book, Images of Modern America: The Richmond Crusade for Voters (Acadia Publishing, 2017), which provides a pictorial history of one of the nation’s most influential voter education and voter registration organizations through vintage and contemporary images.

Margaret O’Hara, MEd Education Leadership ’99, CERG eLearning ’18, secured a position with ESI as an instructional technology trainer and contractor. She will be working at the NVCC Technology Training Center.

2000s

Carmen Gloria Pérez, BA Government and International Politics ’00, moved to Hollywood, California, and has worked as an actress for the past 15 years, with more than 60 credits, mainly in television and film. She is also a writer and artist. In 2019, she launched the Kid Astronomy series of children’s books, which she writes and illustrates.

Both books in the series so far, Thank You Mercury! and Dear Pluto, have received rave reviews, and Thank You Mercury! made the Best New Space Books 2019 list by Book Authority.

More information is available on her website, www.carmengloria.net.

Michael Slimak, PhD Environmental Science and Public Policy ’03, re­ ceived the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Service as a member of the U.S. government’s Senior Executive Service. This is the highest honor bestowed on civilian government employees for sustained accomplishments exemplifying the highest standards of service to the public. He is in his 42nd year of service with the U.S. Environmental Protec­ tion Agency and directs EPA’s re­ search program on sustainable and healthy communities.

Richard Alton, BA History ’04, received a JD with a certificate in international law from the Florida State University College of Law. He currently practices business and immigration law with his wife, Melissa Alton, at Alton Law in Miami Lakes, Florida. Alton published four law review articles on foreign passport seizures, humanitarian intervention, and medieval legal history. He recently finished a term as chair of the Public International Law, Human Rights, and Global Justice Committee under the Florida Bar’s Inter­national Law Section.

Chris ‘Rocky’ Campione, MS Technology Manage­ment ’05, has been named the chief information officer for the U.S. Department of Energy. Campione returned to DOE after a 10-year stint in the private sector working in the federal division of Planet Technologies, an IT ser­­vices company.

Todd Davis, JD ’05, is associate general counsel at Strategic Education Inc. in Herndon, Virginia, where he focuses on federal regulatory and legislative matters in higher education.

Paul Winfree, BS Economics ’05, was appointed to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in April 2019 by the president of the United States.

Kristina Schnack Kotlus, BA Religious Studies ’06, is celebrating the forth­ coming publication of her first book, I Quit: Facing Cancer with Faith, Family & Friends (And Sarcasm. There’s a lot of that, too.) The book is currently avail­able for purchase at kristinakotlus.com, or for preorder at Amazon.com, and will be on store shelves February 4, 2020.

Art Taylor, MFA ’06, received a 2019 Edgar Allan Poe Award for his short story “English 398: Fiction Workshop.”

Presented each year by Mystery Writers of America, the Edgars are considered the most prestigious awards in the mystery genre. Taylor’s story originally appeared in the July/ August 2018 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Taylor is an associate professor of English at Mason, where he teaches creative writing, literature, and composition. For many years he helped coordinate marketing

Heastie says with a laugh. In 2000, he received the Alumni Service Award.

HE HELPED MASON GROW AND THRIVE Few figures in George Mason University history have served in as many roles as Joseph A. Heastie, MPA ’84. He has been a student, Board of Visitors (BOV) member, and Alumni Association Board president, and he has led Mason efforts related to diversity and access.

At Mason’s Spring Commencement, Heastie re­ ceived the Mason Medal, the university’s high­­est honor, for his many years of service.

“There’s a great sense of pride to think that I was a part of the transition of watching the school become what it has become,” says Heastie, a resident of nearby Vienna, Virginia.

In less than 20 years, Heastie earned a master of public administration at Mason (attending graduate school as a father of two with a fulltime government IT job) and served two stints on the Board of Visitors, chairing key committees as secretary, vice rector, and rector. Then came time on Mason’s Alumni Association Board, including a term as president.

Heastie also is the father of a Mason alumna— daughter Eleanor Barber, MEd Counseling and Development ’96.

Heastie played an important role in the university prioritizing access to higher education. He chaired the BOV’s Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Committee. After Heastie's second BOV term, Mason president George W. Johnson asked him to help develop what became the Diversity Advisory Board. That group brought together minority executives and business owners in Northern Virginia to raise scholarship money for minority students and to pair working students with career-relevant jobs tied to their majors.

Throughout his service at Mason, Heastie was impressed with the caliber of faculty the young university attracted and with the creative and aggressive leadership from Johnson and local business leaders. They shared a vision of how a budding research university could anchor the region, and how an initial emphasis on computerrelated majors could set the university apart from its more established state peers.

“At the time that I got on the BOV, Mason was a lot smaller school and did not have the physical facilities,” Heastie says. “But still it had kind of an attitude about it that it was going to not compromise on quality of education or quality of anything that it pursued or tried to do. I believe they’ve accomplished that.”

—Preston Williams PHOTO BY RON AIRA

He is working on a new publication on the potential for destabili­zation from the current form of humanitar­ ian intervention.

PHOTO BY EVAN CANTWELL

class notes

“I felt at one point in time that at least half of my adult life I was at Mason doing something or other,”

(continued on next page)

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 47

class notes

for Mason’s annual Fall for the Book Festival.

Caroline O’Reilly, BA English ’07, relocated to Colorado for her spouse’s job after spending the past three years in Columbia, South Carolina. She reports that Gizmo is very excited to be back near the mountains, and she is excited about the techheavy job market (and mountains!) back home in Colorado.

Nicole Reid, BSN ’07, recently became the director of the National Capital Poison Center, located in Washington,

D.C. The Poison Center provides help for poison emergencies through an innovative app and a free 24/7 hotline, and features the award-winning podcast POISON! Reid continues her work in poison prevention, writing and speaking about toxicology, and training health care professionals in clinical toxicology.

Melissa Sizemore, BS Accounting ’07, a partner with Cotton & Company in its financial management practice, received the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce 40 Under 40 Award. Sizemore, who

joined Cotton & Company in 2007 as a staff auditor, is an active member of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Association of Government Accountants.

Emily Fortunato, MS Exercise, Fitness, and Health Promotion ’09, served on the athletic training staff for the U.S. women’s national soccer team (USWNT) during the squad’s run to the 2019 World Cup title. Fortunato worked as an assistant athletic trainer at Mason from 2013 to 2015. She was part of the sports medicine staff with the Washington

Mystics before accepting her current role as head athletic trainer for Utah Royals FC, where she works closely with USWNT team members Kelly O’Hara, Christen Press, and Becky Sauerbrunn.

Ryan Raya, MA International Commerce and Policy ’09, purchased the Chaparral Ice Center in Austin, Texas, in 2017.

Home of University of Texas and Texas State University hockey, the center broke ground in May 2019 on its $50 million expansion, a sports complex called iSports.

2010s

Nicole Asselin, MA Arts Management ’10, is the author of Murder at First Pitch, a cozy mystery set in the world of independent league baseball in Massachusetts. It was published by Pandamoon Publishing on September 4, 2019.

Terri White, MA Arts Management ’11, was recognized by the New Pittsburgh Courier as a 2019 Fab 40 honoree.

The award spotlights African Americans in Pittsburgh under the age

2019 -20 G E O R G E M A SO N U N I V E R S IT Y A L U M N I A S S O C I AT I O N B OARD OF DIRECTORS

PRESIDENT Jennifer Shelton, BS Public Administration ’94 PRESIDENT-ELECT Sumeet Shrivastava, MBA ’94 VICE PRESIDENTS Tyree Carlson, BS Social Work ’96 Franziska Moeckel, BS Marketing ’07

Harry Hink, BS Physical Education ’85 Ray Wotring, BA Government and International Politics ’05 ALUMNI CHAPTER REPRESENTATIVES BLACK ALUMNI David Atkins, BS Decision Science ’90

TREASURER Gleason Rowe, BA Global Affairs ’11

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Anthony DeGregorio, BS Physical Edu­cation ’84, MS Physical Education ’89

HISTORIAN Mariana Cruz, BS Civil and Infrastructure Engineering ’11

COLLEGE OF VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS Tracy Krulik, BA Music ’09

AT-LARGE DIRECTORS Phil Abbruscato, BA Government and International Politics ’15

COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Betty Ann Duffy, MSN Nursing Admin­istration ’08

Ailsa Ware Burnett, BS Public Administration ’93, MA Sociology ’96, MPA ’07 Yoshie Davison, MSW ’09 Molly Grimsley, BA Art (Studio) ’81 48 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

VOLGENAU SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING Hadi D. Rezazad, ENGR ’03, PhD Information Technology ’09 Rob Walters, BS Computer Science ’88

LAMBDA Aléjandro Asin, BA Sociology ’11 ANTONIN SCALIA LAW SCHOOL Jesse Binnall, BA Communication ’01, JD ’09 SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Becky Anderson, BS Accounting ’10 SCHAR SCHOOL OF POLICY AND GOVERNMENT Colin Hart, MA International Trans­actions ’93 LATINO Rolando Flores Santos, BA Global Affairs ‘18 COLLEGE OF SCIENCE Taylor Sargent, BS Physics ’14 COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Ashley Phayme, BA Communication ’08

class notes

of 40 who are making a positive difference in the community. White helps high school students with college applications and connects them with staff members to audition for HBCU marching bands.

She also hosts her own annual service project, Valentines for Vets. This is her second 40 Under 40 award, having been recognized in 2017 by Pittsburgh Magazine for

her work in promoting diversity in local museums.

Having recently graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with an MBA, White will be moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, where she will join Lowe’s Companies as an associate product manager.

Christy Behne, BS Community Health ’12, is a program manager at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Behne manages

the clinic’s blood drive program throughout the greater Cleveland area in partnership with the American Red Cross.

Gabrielle Rimmaudo, BA Global Affairs ’12, started a new job in June 2019 at Industrious, which provides premium flexible workspaces designed to help companies of all sizes and stages thrive.

Rimmaudo will be the community manager for

a brand-new location in Nashville, Tennessee, where she has lived for the last three years.

Thomas Lee Jr., BS Conflict Analysis and Reso­lution ’13, has graduated with a master of public health degree from Boston University.

He is now work­­­ing as the global health academic program administrator for Boston University’s School of Public Health.

Daniel Pedreira, MS Peace Operations ’14, wrote An Instrument of Peace: The Full-Circled Life of Ambassador Guillermo Belt Ramírez (Lexington Books, June 2019). The book, Pedreira’s second, recounts the story of Cuba’s ambassador to the United States and the Soviet Union in the waning years of World War II and his role in the creation of the United Nations and the (continued next page)

ARRESTING DEVELOPMENT There was no requirement for an advanced degree to rise in the ranks of the Fairfax County Police Department, but Erin Schaible, MPA ’07, went for her master’s degree anyway, despite having three children under the age of 5 and working months-long overnight shifts.

“It was a bucket-list sort of thing,” she says. “It seems really intimidating to get your master’s, but I like challenges.”

Her Mason professors and county supervisors provided crucial flexibility, she says. Still, it wasn’t easy: “I vividly remember a warm summer night on the top floor of a parking garage—because you never want to be in a position where people can sneak up on you— and doing my statistics homework at three in the morning,” she says with a laugh.

A study-abroad component to the degree took her to the Netherlands, where she saw firsthand how government agencies can work in tandem. “For me, that was really powerful,” she says.

The degree helped her rise to the rank of deputy chief of patrol, a position that had her serving as the commander of the largest police patrol contingent in the state. She was the first female law enforcement professional to do so. She retired last year after 28 years, but retirement was short. In January 2019, she was named the chief of police for the City of Fairfax Police Department and is, again, the first woman to hold the office.

Schaible, whose department includes 66 sworn officers and 23 civilians, maintains a close relationship with Mason, given that the Fairfax Campus sits on the edge of the City of Fairfax. “She’s also very supportive of our current MPA students and helps plan our Local Government Night, which brings regional leaders to meet with students,” says Mason public administration professor James Burroughs.

—Buzz McClain, BA ’77

PHOTO BY RON AIRA

Is a PhD in Schaible’s future? “It’s a possibility,” she says. “The kids are older, but my hands are still full.”

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 49

Organization of American States.

Rachel Welford, JD ’14, has joined Cozen O’Connor as an attorney in the firm’s transportation and trade group. She was previously at American Airlines, where she served as the director of security and govern­ment affairs. Welford will work in the firm’s Washing­ton, D.C., office. Previously, Welford was an associate with Wiley Rein LLP’s aviation and corporate practice groups.

Hayley Hinton, BS Health, Fitness, and Recreation Resources ’18, started working at American University as the alumni programs assistant in April 2019.

Anika Kwinana, MA Arts Management ’18, was appointed to chair the new Community Arts Advisory Committee for Arlington County, Virginia, as a part of her work as an Arlington County arts commissioner.

PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER BOBO

class notes

The newly named Wotring Family Courtyard, in front of Thompson Hall on the Fairfax Campus, recognizes Dan Wotring, BIS ’97, and his wife, Patty, for their decades of service and generosity to Mason. As the dedication plaque reads, “In this courtyard in 1977, two students met for the first time—the beginning of a journey that led to love, marriage, two children, and countless memories for Dan and Patty.”

As volunteers, donors, parents, and loyal alumni, the Wotrings have generously supported Mason’s wrestling team (Dan was a Mason wrestler) and other causes. In 2011, they established the Daniel R. and Margaret P. Wotring Wrestling Scholarship Endow­ment. Each year, the top Mason wrestler receives the Dan Wotring Out­standing Wrestler Award. The couple also provides an annual challenge gift for the Alumni-Athlete Giving Challenge, which typically raises more than $100,000. A businessman, Dan is also a member of the George Mason University Foundation Board of Trustees.

Obituaries

ALUMNI AND STUDENTS

Frances B. Newhouse, BA Biology ’68, d. March 19, 2019 Dorothy E. Brennan, BA Mathematics ’70, d. June 2, 2019

Janis E. Miller, BS Business Administration ’78, d. Feb­ ruary 7, 2019

Mildred C. Barrett, BA Psychology ’81, d. March 19, 2019

Frances B. Owens, BA Art (Studio) ’76, d. May 13, 2019

Douglass A. Parker, MEd Education Administration ’78, d. February 20, 2019

Eileen T. Conway, JD ’81, d. July 12, 2019

Linda D. Hale, MS Conflict Management and Resolution ’86, d. March 6, 2019

Lillian T. Kozloski, BIS ’81, d. May 30, 2019

Walter H. Peake III, JD ’86, d. April 3, 2019

Richard A. Bagby, JD ’82, d. March 13, 2019

Rose Ann Walton, BA English ’86, d. March 21, 2019

Marcia Bergeron, BA Sociology ’82, MA Sociology ’89, d. May 20, 2019

Mark R. Hazen, BS Law Enforcement ’88, d. May 11, 2019

Margaret McGillicuddy, BA Anthropology ’83, d. July 13, 2019

Dawn H. Ramsey, BS Social Work ’88, MEd Counseling and Development ’04, d. February 28, 2019

Ercell H. Binns, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’71, d. April 2, 2019

Joan C. Wright, BA Psychology ’76, d. July 19, 2019

Charles W. Hyde, BS Business Administration ’72, d. June 19, 2019

William Dangoia, JD ’77, d.

March 26, 2019

Conrad L. Ring Jr., BA History ’73, d. April 9, 2019 Robert H. Flourance, BA History ’75, d. March 27, 2019 Johnny Camp, MBA ’76, d. May 2, 2019 Richard J. Donovan, MBA ’76, d. February 26, 2019

50 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

Patricia “Poppy” Lark, JD ’84, d. May 3, 2019

Alvin L. Maxfield, BS Business Administration ’76, d. February 19, 2019

Denise Elkins-Chrisner, BA English ’77, d. January 19, 2019 Donald G. Hamlin, BS Business Administration ’77, d. June 16, 2019 Thomas P. Goggin, BA Government and Politics ’78, d. June 13, 2019

Trianne L. Freese, MEd Education Administration ’79, d. March 27, 2019 Randall C. Berg, JD ’80, d. April 10, 2019 Alice M. Irving, MSN ’80, d. May 19, 2019 Martin Levine, JD ’80, d. July 3, 2019 Darlis E. Moyer, JD ’80, d. May 5, 2019 Eileen H. O’Kane, JD ’80, d. April 4, 2019

Twila A. Holbrook, BS Geology ’84, d. February 15, 2019 Stephen P. Kirby, MPA ’84, d. March 7, 2019

Jackie S. Solbach, BIS ’88, d. April 4, 2019 John E. O’Hara, BA Speech Communication ’89, d.

January 30, 2019

class notes

Joan L. Bryant, MS Information Systems ’90, d. July 22, 2019 Jacqueline R. Meeks, BS Accounting ’90, MFA Creative Writing ’95, MA English ’96, d. July 20, 2019 Christine K. Kane, BA Art ’91, BA Biology ’91, d. January 20, 2019 Andreau L. Simpson, BSN ’91, d. January 31, 2019 Michelle R. Bragg, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’92, d. February 4, 2019 Matthew D. Gansereit, JD ’92, d. June 5, 2019 Nancy A. Chiafulio, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’93, d. May 27, 2019 Brian M. Fields, BA History ’93, d. February 7, 2019

Loretta F. Khayam, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’98, d. April 19, 2019

James M. Blanchard, MA Psychology ’02, CERM ’03, d.

May 29, 2019

Justin P. Berney, BA Communication ’10, d. June 19, 2019

Tae Yi, BA Psychology ’93, d.

January 29, 2019

Richard L. Drury, DA Education (Community College) ’99, d. March 30, 2019

Barbara Daniels, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’02, PhD Education ’09, d.

March 11, 2019

Thomas S. Hurley, BS Public Administration ’10, d. June 30, 2019

Linda Bell, BA History ’95, d.

July 4, 2019

Larry Lewis, JD ’00, d. July 5, 2019

Carrie E. Bollman, BA English ’95, d. June 1, 2019

Sean S. Cope, BA Integrative Studies ’01, d. September 21, 2018

Dana D. Tucker, BA Psychology ’02, d. July 11, 2019

Gary C. LaPorta, BS Information Systems and Operations Management ’13, d. February 10, 2019

Raymond F. Hazel, BS Administration of Justice ’04, d. August 2, 2019

Xuan M. Nguyen, MS Mathematics ’14, d. February 7, 2019

Sarah Mertz, BA Foreign Languages ’04, d. August 9, 2019

Martin Ramirez, BS Criminology, Law and Society ’17, d. April 3, 2019

Hope L. Carnahan, MA New Professional Studies ’06, d.

May 12, 2019

Malcolm M. Donahoo, former student, d. July 10, 2019

Matthew Bradley, MBA ’09, d. June 29, 2019

Georgette M. Moran, former student, d. February 20, 2019

Taylor L. Reeves, BS Physics ’93, d. July 24, 2019 Kerstin Spain, BA English ’93, d. June 10, 2019

Robert P. Saunders, MS Software Systems Engineering ’95, d. June 30, 2019 Gregory Tidwell, BA Speech Communication ’95, d. April 22, 2019 Xuejun Zhao, MS Electrical Engineering ’97, PhD Information Technology ’00, d. April 21, 2019

Dallas E. Frederick, MS Statistical Science ’01, d. June 8, 2019 Kia N. Mills, MA Psychology ’01, d. July 16, 2019 Raymond J. Schneider, PhD Information Technology ’01, d. January 28, 2019 Karenne G. Wood, MFA Creative Writing ’01, d. July 21, 2019

John L. Kilgore, BA Global Affairs ’09, d. January 28, 2019

FACULTY, STAFF, AND FRIENDS Martin B. (Marty) Cohen, emeritus professor of history and art history, passed away at home on March 24. He was 81. Born in Albany, New York, Cohen had a master’s degree from Cornell University and a PhD from George Washington University. He taught history at Mason for more than 35 years until his retirement. The author of Federalism: The Legacy of George Mason and numerous journal articles, Cohen was the undergraduate director for the history bachelor’s program for many years, and in that role, he was a helpful and kind advisor to many history majors. Cohen loved to see other countries and traveled extensively throughout the world during his lifetime. He also loved theater arts and was engaged in the arts as a lecturer and as a lifelong attendee and collector.

George Mushrush, 79, passed away July 26, in Ormond Beach, Florida.

After graduating with a PhD in organic chemistry from George Washington University, he interned at the Goddard Space Center in Maryland and began teaching at Mason. He taught at Mason for 48 years and was chair of the then-Chemistry Department for 10. During his tenure at Mason, he also served as a research scientist for 30 years at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and consulted with the U.S. Air Force. Mushrush was considered an expert witness in biofuels and held four patents. He cowrote a book on petroleum, wrote more than 300 published articles, and delivered more than 300 presentations on the synthesis of fuel systems, deicers, and alternative fuels. He is survived by his wife, four children, and a grandson.

U.S. Ambassador (ret.) John W. McDonald, emeritus senior advisor at Mason’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, died May 17 at the age of 97. McDonald retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1987 after a 40-year diplomatic career. He wrote numerous books and articles on negotiation and conflict resolution. He was appointed ambassador twice by President Jimmy Carter and twice by President Ronald Reagan to represent the United States at various United Nations World Conferences. In 1992, McDonald cofounded the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy (IMTD) in Washington, D.C. That same year, McDonald was invited to become distinguished vis­ iting professor at Mason’s then-Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, the academic center for which he had been a senior advisor and advisory board member since its inception in 1982. In addition to teaching at Mason, McDonald taught law and political science at several institutes and universities.

Cóilín Owens, professor emeritus of English literature, died July 9. He was 76. Owens was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, in 1943. He earned degrees from the University of Notre Dame, University College Dublin (now NUI Dublin), and Kent State University. He taught Irish literature at Mason for 29 years and published two books on James Joyce: James Joyce’s Painful Case (University Press of Florida, 2008) and Before Daybreak: “After the Race” and the Origins of Joyce’s Art (University Press of Florida, 2013). Owens was active in the local Irish American community and served as chair of the Irish American Cultural Institute and the Gaelic League. He is survived by his wife, two sons, and two grandsons.

Fall 2019 M A S O N S P I R I T | 51

MASON MEMORIES

Life at Mason in the 1970s

Do you fondly remember certain places within the Mason commu­ nity that exemplified the “college experience”? Did a specific Mason professor or mentor influence your life and career? If so, tell us about it. Send your submission to spirit@gmu.edu. Please keep submissions to a maximum of 500 words.

52 | S P I R I T. G M U. E D U

The year was 1972, and I was a Fairfax County police officer, having joined the force in 1969 after being in the U.S. Air Force since 1965. Now that I had three years on the job, I felt it was time to return to college and get my degree. Looking around at all the great schools in the Washington, D.C., area, I thought my best choice would be George Mason, which—while then only a small school—showed the promise of great things to come.

Much like the fast-evolving growth of Northern Virginia, Mason had the same vibrant area to enable its growth.

My time on campus was that of a part-time student, as the need to mix work (rotating patrol shift work), family (working wife and three daughters), and classes was quite a challenge. The only way I could make things work was to take my classes at night, which, back then, meant 7 to 10 p.m., one night a week. I usually took two courses per semester, as I was paying my way using the GI Bill and had until August of 1978 to finish my eligibility.

Facilities at Mason, all of which were in the Fairfax area, were nothing like today. I had some classes in regular buildings on the main campus, and some in trailers. The bulk of my classes [were] in the old Fairfax High School on Route 50 [now Paul VI High School]. However, no matter the location, the classes were very in-depth, interesting, and well taught. As a BIS candidate (this fit me best given the wide range of subjects I had from my first two years of college) taking a majority of

administration major subjects, I was exposed to very well-versed professors. Most of my professors were part time, and because of the government workforce in the area, the part-time professors were mostly all working in their area of expertise. Two good examples of these were my administrative law professor, [who] was an administrative law judge; and my professor for administration policy, [who worked for the] Federal Aviation Administration. Talk about teaching from hands-on experience!

I successfully progressed through all the courses necessary for graduation and in May 1978 earned my BIS. The availability of courses, nearness of campus, and the excellence of faculty all fueled my desire to obtain my degree.

Thanks to my education at Mason and great men­ tori­ng at the Fairfax County Police Department, I was able to advance to the chief’s position and serve in that capacity for seven years.

Mason holds a special place in my life, and I am always proud to say I’m an alumnus.

John E. Granfield, BIS ’78, was Fairfax County police chief from 1985 until his retirement in 1992. He now lives in Meredith, New Hampshire, where he enjoys time with his wife and two dogs.

4400 University Drive, MS 3B3 Fairfax, VA 22030

S AV E T H E D AT E

February 22 alumni.gmu.edu/homecoming In June, George Mason University named its largest building on the Science and Technology Campus, Katherine G. Johnson Hall, after the trailblazing NASA mathematician whose story captivated millions in the Oscar-nominated movie Hidden Figures. Johnson, 100, was unable to attend, but her daughters Joylette Hylick and Katherine Moore and grandson Troy Hylick (not pictured) attended on her behalf. Pictured with high school student Olena Bromell, they were joined by 200 friends, guests, and university officials in the Verizon Auditorium at Colgan Hall for the ceremony. Photo by Evan Cantwell.