Mason Spirit Winter 2016

Mason Spirit

w i n t e r 2016

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 mmu n i t y

living a

Balanced Life the art and science of well-being

Pu t o n a w e ll- b e i n g fac e

â–

Fi n d i n g yo u r t r i b e

Above Mason alumna Janice Rojas, BA Psychology ’13, received a master’s degree in forensic science at the 2015 Winter Graduation. A first-generation student whose family is from Bolivia, Rojas has been a regular at Mason since participating in the Early Identification Program in high school. She plans to pursue a career as a medicolegal death investigator or a homicide detective.

d e pa r t m e n t s 2 Fi r s t W o r d s

38 a lum n i i n p r i n t

3 Fr o m Ou r R e a d e r s

39 Pat r i o t P r o f i l e

4 A d va n c i n g M a s o n

41 C l a s s N o t e s

10 @ M a s o n

42 From the Alumni Association President

13 M e e t t h e M a s o n Nat i o n

A l u m n i

32 I n q u i r i n g M i n d s 36 S h e l f L i fe

Profiles

40 Steve Piper, BS Business Management ’92, MBA ’94 44 Lori Sims, BA Criminology, Law and Society ’11, MPP ’15 46 Rhea Seehorn, BA Studio Art ’94

G e o r g e M a s o n U n i v e r s i t y : A GREAT UNIVERSITY OF A NEW AND NECESSARY K IND More on the WEB When you see this graphic, follow it to the magazine’s website for more: spirit.gmu.edu.

A Magazine for the George Mason University Community

spirit.gmu.edu

F e at u r e s

Manag ing editor Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95

Positive Spin 20 For many, the term “well-being” brings to mind a touchy-feely quest for personal health and happiness, but there’s a wealth of research behind well-being where strategies are being tested and proven scientifically successful.

A s s o c i at e E d i t o r s Corey Jenkins Schaut, MPA ’07 Melanie Balog C r e at i v e D i r e c t o r Sarah Metcalf Seeberg

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Art Director Elliott de Luca, BA ’04 Seni o r Co py wr iter Margaret Mandell A s s i s ta n t E d i t o r Cathy Cruise, MFA ’93

Put on a Well-Being Face When the founding fathers wrote of our unalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness was among them. But what if pursuing happy makes us less happy? That’s where well-being comes in.

Design Marcia Staimer, Illustrator

Finding Your Tribe 28 Living Learning Communities, called LLCs,

Co ntr ibuto r s Martha Bushong Damian Cristodero Buzz McClain, BA ’77 Nance Lucas Michele McDonald Pam McKeta Jamie Rogers Preston Williams

provide Mason students with the opportunity to live among people who share the same interests or majors. Finding one’s niche on campus has never been easier.

P H o t o g r a p h y a n d M u lt i m e d i a Evan Cantwell, MA ’10, Senior University Photographer Alexis Glenn, University Photographer Melissa Cannarozzi, Image Collections Manager Produc tion Manag er Patrick Fisher editorial board Renell M. Wynn Vice President for Communications and Marketing Janet E. Bingham Vice President for Advancement and Alumni Relations Christine Clark-Talley Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations

Mason Spirit

Mason Spirit

Right Mason Spirit is published quarterly by the Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations and the Office of Communications and Marketing. Please log in at alumni.gmu.edu to update your records or email spirit@gmu.edu. For the latest news about George Mason University, check out www.gmu.edu. George Mason University is an equal opportunity employer that encourages diversity.

A sneak peek at the Doc Nix garden gnome that will be the premium giveaway at the January 31 men’s basketball game against George Washington.

Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 1

First Words Donald de Laski realized many years ago that college should do more than prepare students for fulfilling careers. It must also prepare students for lives of meaning and purpose.

Mr. de Laski was a visionary to whom Mason owes a debt of gratitude. His generosity is the reason we now have a Center for the Advancement of Well-Being. Because of his forward thinking, Mason has become a model of well-being for other institutions.

Mr. de Laski demonstrated that giving is about so much more than money. It’s about sharing a vision so that others may benefit.

Below is a wonderful Washington Post story about his foresight, written by his daughter Kathleen, another great friend of George Mason University. Their family legacy lives on in the work that we do and is an enduring example of the power of philanthropy. Ángel Cabrera President

>> from the Washington Post >>

W

hen Dad told me he wanted to give George Mason University $10 million to establish a center to spread the study and practice of “finding yourself,” it’s safe to say I was a little concerned.

By this time, in 2008, I had been appointed by Virginia’s governor to George Mason’s Board of Visitors and was chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. I felt a sense of responsibility to make sure any gift aligned with the university’s academic agenda.

Turns out, Dad was way ahead of his time with his vision to connect well-being to universities.

In the United States today, college students have an alarmingly low view of their own wellbeing, which, given the campus press about sexual assault, shootings, student debt, and “failure to launch,” maybe shouldn’t be a surprise.

Only 13 percent of college students report having a positive sense of well-being, according to Gallup surveys, significantly lower than highschoolers or any other age group tracked. And it is why I wish my parents, both deceased, could see the result of the gift.

Mason used the grant to create programs, an academic minor, and a Living Learning Community, and to support research and coaching.

Students have called the life-examining classes “life-changing.”

The programs send the message the university cares about them. In fact, Mason is the first university to put what the field now calls “well-being” at the center of its strategic plan.

Well-being is not just physical wellness—it’s for the soul. Physical well-being is one of five components Gallup tracks every day around the world. The others are social, financial, community, and purpose.

There is significant research on how to mitigate a low sense of well-being.

At the college level, it’s all about helping students and faculty to be engaged, to be hopeful, and to thrive. These are actually predictors of success in life and work.

Gallup tracks six activities on college campuses that correlate highly to engagement. They include having one caring mentor, participating in a long-term internship or experiential learning project, and being deeply involved in a few extracurricular activities, rather than skimming the surface with many.

When I heard Gallup present this at Mason, I initially worried the data raised a red flag about online learning. Isn’t the growing proportion of online learning making students less personally engaged by definition?

Surprisingly, I was wrong. The university with the best marks from students on mentorship is the oldest distance university in the country, Western Governors University. Students have one mentor, full on, throughout their studies.

They don’t physically meet until they cross the stage at graduation.

This data is a design challenge to universities, as well as my organization, the Education Design Lab.

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Apparently “engagement” is a significantly more important predictor of workforce success than a student’s GPA. Where are the students who benefit most from a school optimized for “well-being?”

At large, under-funded state universities and community colleges.

Mason is one of those schools, with one-third of freshmen being the first in their families to earn a four-year degree and 50 percent of students transferring from the community college system.

With 25,000 Mason students, faculty, and alumni participating in well-being activities last year, Nance Lucas, director of the university’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, sees an unmistakable yearning on campus to connect our lives to purpose and meaning. Much like Dad. So, I applaud Mason’s embrace of my father’s idea and Gallup’s commitment to build a cohort of well-being universities around the country.

Perhaps this movement will move the needle in the workplace as well, where only 30 percent of Americans report feeling engaged. That matters, because engagement is so closely tied to productivity, health care costs and, to come full circle, well-being.

Kathleen deLaski, the president of the deLaski Family Foundation and the founder of Education Design Lab and EdFuel, served on the university’s Board of Visitors from 2005 through 2013.

From Our Readers

Those Were the Days ➤After ➤ reading my alumni magazine tonight, I googled Mason Day 1980s for fun and found the 50 Years of Mason Day (April 23, 2015) article on your site. I looked at the photo and there I was, the kid in the GMU Marshal shirt. I laughed out loud at my former curly hair. I am pretty sure it was 1980, my freshman year.

I think the band was Skip Castro. I was a Fairfax County Police Explorer back then, and later an Auxiliary Officer with Fairfax County in 1984–85. I did the marshal deal a couple of Mason Days and Patriots Day until 1984. I was in SGA as the Student Senate President in ‘81 and ’82. I worked in the Rat for those years, too. Those were great times.

I retired from the Portland (Oregon) Police Bureau in 2012 as lieutenant inspector and then came out to the suburbs to relax for a few more years.

Scott Johnson, BA Government and Politics ’84

Where did my class notes go? ➤I➤ was disappointed to find that the Class Notes section of the Spirit does not seem to be represented anywhere online, or at least it hasn’t been for the last few years. This seems very odd in this day and age of ubiquitous online information, and it limits the Spirit’s usefulness to alumni. Maybe I missed something?

Pete Enghauser, BS ’86, MS ’90

EDITOR’S NOTE: We stopped putting Class Notes online several years ago because we were receiving so many requests from people who wanted their out-of-date notes taken down.

The print magazine goes to all alumni for whom we have addresses.

Alumni can also post information they’d like to share online in our password-protected alumni community. Visit alumni.gmu.edu for more details on how to register and log in.

For your first login, you’ll need your 10-digit Mason ID, which you can find on this magazine’s mailing label.

New on spirit.gmu.edu In this online issue, • We take a look at some of the research projects being funded by the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being.

And don’t forget to • Follow us on Twitter @MasonSpirit for alumni news, events, and more.

• Become a fan of the Mason Spirit on Facebook for links to photos, videos, and stories at www.facebook.com/MasonSpirit.

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

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.

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A dva n c i n g MA s o n

Spreading Well-Being The late Donald and Nancy de Laski wanted the world to understand how mindfulness and living a purposeful life could be transformative. For this reason, the couple made a $10 million gift through their family foundation that created the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University.

Six years after the landmark gift, the center embodies the de Laskis’ dream as it undertakes its largest initiative, making George Mason the first Well-Being University (see the feature story on page 24). With every student, faculty, and staff member at Mason committed to learning how to live a more meaningful life, we can’t help but achieve the de Laskis’ goal. Everyone who passes through Mason’s campuses will take what they have learned out into the world and spread the message.

The Well-Being University Initiative is one that is pure Mason: an interesting idea that was nurtured, becoming something that has the potential to set this university apart from its peer institutions. It is also the perfect example of the power of donor impact at Mason.

Without the de Laskis’ vision for a world where everyone can live a meaningful life, the center might not have come to fruition. Without the center, Mason would not undertake the Well-Being University Initiative. Without that initiative, the impact our students and faculty make on the world around them would look very different.

I thank the de Laski family for entrusting us with their dream and for the support that made it a reality. Each of you has the opportunity to play a part in Mason’s next worldchanging initiative, whatever that may be. It’s as simple as getting involved at Mason today, in whatever area sparks your imagination. It’s the key to leading a meaningful life.

Thank you for all you do.

Janet E. Bingham, PhD Vice President, Advancement and Alumni Relations President, George Mason University Foundation

Wu’s Donation from Key Award Strengthens Student Scholarship Fund

W

hen George Mason University provost S. David Wu received the prestigious ChangLin Tien Leadership in Education Award from the Asian Pacific Fund in October, George Mason students were the ones benefitting the most.

“In the spirit of this award, and in support of Mason’s goals in achieving inclusive excellence, I am donating the grant that accompanies this award toward the scholarship fund at Mason,” Wu says.

Wu’s $10,000 donation to Mason’s student scholarship fund is the first made by a faculty member since the public launch of Faster Farther, the university’s comprehensive $500 million campaign.

“Student success is one of the pillars of the Faster Farther campaign, and no one is more committed to our students than our faculty,” says Janet E. Bingham, vice president of University Advancement and Alumni Relations and president of the George Mason University Foundation.

“We celebrate Provost Wu for winning this memorable award, and we thank him for leading by example as our chief academic officer.”

The Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award is named after the first Asian American leader of a major U.S. research university. Tien was named chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley in 1990. His family partnered with the Asian Pacific Fund in 2006 to establish the award to recognize rising Asian American leaders in higher education and encourage more Asian Americans to aspire to the leadership that he exemplified.

“My hope is to encourage students to embrace the vision of success exemplified by Dr. Tien,” says Wu. —Michele McDonald

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A d v a n c i n g Ma s o n

THE GREATEST GIFT:

Above, Elena Prien with Mark Thurston, director of education programs at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being.

A Life Well Lived When she turned 80, Elena Prien, BIS ’82, decided the best present would be to give something away. So she gave Mason $150,000.

The gift created the Elena Scholarships Endowment, which will award $1,000 annually to six students studying with the Center for the Advancement of WellBeing. “When I made the decision to start a scholarship, I went looking for a program that provided all the lessons I had learned about living a meaningful life and found it at the center,” Prien says.

For her, it was the culmination of a long road to personal well-being. Searching for meaning after her 22-year-old son took his own life, Prien discovered the benefits of mindfulness to understand and come to terms with her emotions and reach a more peaceful state of mind. With her own life stabilized, she earned her degree at Mason and went on to work as a nurse in a long-term care facility.

Now, through her generous gift to Mason, Prien hopes to see generations of students follow in her footsteps: learning how to best take care of themselves, then paying it forward in a groundswell of well-being.

Elena Prien: Changing lives by giving to Mason

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THE POWER OF >>

Access Ideas Place THE POWER OF >>

THE POWER OF >>

give today fasterfarther.gmu.edu

W h e n yo u m a k e a M a s o n i n v e s t m e n t, t h e r e’s n o t e l l i n g h o w m a ny l i v e s yo u c a n t r a n s f o r m

JOIN

JIMMY Decades ago, my family was among the early backers

of George Mason University because we believed Northern Virginia needed a first-rate public university at its core. In the years since, we’ve seen Mason’s transformative effect on the regional economy and on dreams that know no boundaries, offering service to the community and research of consequence for our world.

Building George Mason University helped Northern Virginia thrive, and the two working together have moved faster and gone farther than anyone could have imagined half a century ago. Our family considers Mason among its best investments, and I know it can be one of yours. When you make a Mason investment, there’s no telling how many lives you can transform.

Our university’s future is limitless, and so is its reach.

So are your opportunities to give and participate in the Faster Farther comprehensive campaign, Mason’s largest fundraising effort to date. As campaign chair, I invite you to visit us on the web at fasterfarther.gmu.edu to consider the ways the Mason Nation can help our students, our faculty, and our campuses go faster farther—and flourish.

Please join me.

—James W. Hazel, JD ‘84 Chair, George Mason University Foundation Board of Trustees Chair of the Faster Farther Campaign

It Was a

Blast

When college students say they had a blast, they typically

don’t mean watching 20,000 pounds of explosive power blast 40,000 tons of rock, but that’s how senior civil engineering student Rachael Wright described her field trip to Cedar Mountain Quarry.

Wright was one of 40 students from Volgenau School of Engineering professor Burak Tanyu’s geotechnical engineering class who donned bright orange hard hats on a crisp fall morning and toured the 1,500-acre quarry just south of Culpeper, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Mountain foothills.

Tanyu designed the field trip to teach students about geological formations and what it takes to make the rock aggregate that forms the basis of many Virginia roads. His class combines two fields of study—geotechnical engineering and geology—that are often taught separately.

“It was thrilling to see the explosion,” says Wright. “Watching rocks fly, seeing dust billow out from the rubble, and feeling the force of the explosion through the air before hearing it—it was surreal.”

—Martha Bushong

PhotoS by EVAN CANTWELL

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It Keeps You Running

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his is how a lifelong runner is created— by delivering newspapers in the small town of Wallace in northwestern Idaho, where snow can be on the ground from October through April.

“A lot of times there was too much snow to ride a bicycle,” says John Schreifels, who as a kid delivered papers in the town 50 miles east of Coeur d’Alene. “When it’s 20-below and you’re delivering papers, you want to move pretty fast.”

For Schreifels, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at George Mason University, speed no longer is of the essence.

Now, it’s about the miles and how they can help fund the endowment for the John A. Schreifels Chemistry Scholarship given through the College of Science.

“I always wanted to give back to people and society,” Schreifels said. “We need people to help us figure out what we should do. If I can do my little part by raising money for this, it

would be fantastic.”

Schreifels figures that since his passion for running was reignited in 1991 by a doctor who, after a physical, pronounced him “soft,” he has run 23,216 miles, all well-documented on a spreadsheet. As of December 2015, he needed about 989 more miles to reach 24,901, equaling—and how cool is this?—the circumference of the Earth. If enough people pledge donations for his final push, Schreifels hopes the endowment, currently $40,000, will reach $50,000.

Scholarships given the past two years were for $300 and $500, respectively, “That’s the thing about John, he’s such a giving person,” says Donna Fox, associate dean for student affairs at the College of Science. “He really wants to leave something behind to the students that will be meaningful.”

Schreifels began the endowment in 2008 with $3,000 received from Mason for a Teaching Excellence Award and says he donates

To contribute to Schreifels scholarship endowment, go to fasterfarther.gmu.edu and indicate that you want to contribute to the John A. Schreifels Chemistry Scholarship.

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each month from his paycheck. Colleagues have pledged as much as a dime for every mile he runs.

And he runs—an average 4.3 miles a day, he says—no matter the obstacle.

Shortly after starting the endowment, Schreifels had surgery for prostate cancer.

The day he was released from the hospital, he insisted on walking what Diane, his wife of 35 years, called “a victory lap” on his basement treadmill.

To stay away from the dogs he says occasionally attacked him as he ran through his Warrenton, Virginia, neighborhood, for the past 10 years he has run almost exclusively on the treadmill, usually at 4:30 a.m.

“People say, ‘How can you run on a treadmill in front of a wall?’” Schreifels says. “It gives me a chance to think about things for the day.”

—Damian Cristodero

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Questions with the Tuba Guy

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f you have driven to Mason’s Fairfax Campus, chances are good that you’ve caught a glimpse of Tuba Guy Jay Converse, MS ’88, probably on Braddock Road. He decorates his “beloved” 1951 Holton sousaphone with colorful propellers and pinwheels while making tracks—and music— around Fairfax City. Converse started his solo marches in 2004 to prepare for the 30th reunion of the University of Virginia pep band, which he helped start while an undergraduate in the 1970s. This summer he rigged the horn to shoot fire and traveled to Black Rock City, Nevada, for Burning Man 2015. He also plays on campus with the NCAA’s #1 pep band, Mason’s Green Machine. We caught up with him in October for a brief discussion.

Do you have a favorite song?

My #1 non-seasonal song is probably “If I Only Had a Brain” from The Wizard of Oz, that’s one that young and old know. Though, in a couple weeks, The Addams Family [theme song] will move to the top of the charts.

You used to track your routes and distance on your Facebook page TubaGuy. Why did you stop?

I stopped tracking routes a while ago. I was bored looking at other people’s “I ran 4.3 miles today!” posts, and figured they were bored with mine.

Do you have a personal best for distance?

My personal best is 28 miles on my second marathon. I underestimated the distance from Hybla Valley to Mount Vernon to the White House.

Is there any significance to the number 99 on your Green Machine jersey?

I picked 99 for no reason except I look 99 years old compared to the rest of the band.

illustration by marcia Staimer

We saw a photo of you from Homecoming 2015. All the 20 -somethings seem to be playing white King tubas.

Yep, that’s me, playing my scruffy old horn amidst the new clean ones.

I heard a rumor last year that the Mason art department was going to “creatively” paint them, but I’m still waiting.

—Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95

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Reeling in the Years

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Mason alumna Larisa Prinz designed The Rat’s interior walls.

he Rathskeller underwent a major makeover this past year. The back wall of the restaurant now boasts an oversized timeline that begins with the 1964 groundbreaking of the Fairfax Campus. The new interior details of the restaurant affectionately known as “The Rat” were designed by Larisa Prinz, BA Art and Visual Technology ’09, MPA ’15, who is the retail unit

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marketing coordinator for the campus food service provider, Sodexo.

Sodexo staff worked on the project with input from the Mason Alumni Association and Robert Vay, BA American Studies ’92, MA History ’99, the digital collections archivist for the University Libraries.

—Buzz McClain, BA ’77

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PHOTO BY EVAN CANTWELL

M e e t t h e M a s o n N at i o n

Katrina Sapp

Job: Piano Technician, School of Music The two weeks before classes begin are crunch time for Katrina Sapp, the woman who helps keep Mason’s School of Music in tune. As the school’s first and only full-time piano technician, Sapp is responsible for keeping the school’s 65 plus Steinway & Sons pianos tuned and in tip-top condition for the hundreds of music students and faculty who use them year-round.

Plenty of Playtime: All Mason music students—from vocalists to violinists—must take at least two years of keyboard studies. “These pianos are getting played 10 hours a day. I’ve come in [at] 11 o’clock at night, and all of the [practice] rooms are full.”

Cool Tunes: It can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 1/2 hours to tune one piano. During the semester, each grand piano will be tuned at least once a month. The pianos in the choral room and the recital hall of the de Laski Performing Arts Building can be tuned as often as three times a week during recital season. “There are 88 notes on a piano and 200 plus strings. There are a lot of working parts to get one note to produce a pleasing sound.”

I’m All Ears: To be successful at piano tuning, one must develop a well-trained “ear” and then protect it. “My ears are my livelihood. I’m the one going to concerts with earplugs. When a fire engine goes by, I’m plugging my ears.”

Paging “Dr.” Sapp: As a full-time tech, Sapp can address problems quickly and usually fix them the same day. One student told Sapp she was grateful the school not only had these amazing Steinways but its very own “piano doctor.” “Pianists can’t practice in their dorm rooms. The last thing I want them to worry about is the piano, especially the day of their recital.”

Lost and Found: Part of Sapp’s job includes extracting random items that have fallen inside the cavity of the piano. A professional must remove the objects, as an untrained hand could damage the instrument. Pens and pencils are the most often dropped items, but Sapp has also retrieved Mason IDs and loose change. “One day I might have enough [coins] to buy some chips.”

—Jamie Rogers

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Build It and They Will Come.

Skaters, That Is. Ben Ashworth takes a test run of the skate bowl assembled in front of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the Finding a Line festival.

“I

grew up being told ‘no’, ‘don’t do that,’ ‘get out of here.’ It’s motivating because you don’t fit the mold, so it makes you work harder,” says avid skateboarder Ben Ashworth, BA Art ’99, Sculpture Studio supervisor at Mason’s School of Art. Growing up, he used wheelchair access ramps, handrails, and empty pools to practice his craft. This led to trespassing tickets and vandalism charges.

“You get older, you don’t feel like running from the police and security guards,” he says. “So what do you do?”

You build.

Ashworth, who is currently working on an MFA at Mason, has worked on public commissions for the past 20 years, many of them skate structures that benefited nonprofits and the Washington, D.C., community.

Last year, Ashworth was commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to work as a co-curator of the festival Finding a Line: Skateboarding, Music, and Media. The event was the brainchild of Jason Moran, the Kennedy Center’s artistic director of jazz, who wanted the center to host an event that merged different art mediums.

With the help of Mason students, Ashworth and his team built a skate bowl that was installed in front of the Kennedy Center. The project was a collaborative effort that took place over many months. Half of it was built at Mason’s School of Art. The other half was made by community members at Blind Whino Art Club in southwest Washington, D.C. Mason students were an integral part of the process; they cut the “ribs,” or planks of wood supporting the ramp, each taking a turn at learning to operate the power tools. They claimed ownership by writing “John’s Rib” or “Sam’s Rib” on each plank.

Since the skate bowl is modular and can be arranged in different ways, it was moved shortly after the festival to its permanent home at the Cuba Skate warehouse in Washington, D.C. —Jamie Rogers

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Getting the “Band” Back Together

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ore than 110 alumni and current students returned to the School of Music for Alumni Weekend 2015 ready to perform.

The draw was the opportunity to reconnect with fellow alumni, faculty, and current students—and get the band, orchestra, and chorale back together.

The 80+ alumni from as far back as the Class of 1983 traveled from as far away as California to attend. A number of Mason music professors were on hand to catch up with their former students and conduct pieces, including Joe Kanyan, associate professor emeritus of music, who retired in 2001.

The reunion concert was organized by Lynn Wildman, BA Music ’05, who is the school’s senior academic advisor. Participants were provided repertoire about two weeks before the event and started rehearsing at 9:30 a.m. on the Saturday of Alumni Weekend. The concert, open to the public, was that same day at 3 p.m.

“I haven’t played for this long in months,” said flutist Sara van der Horst, BM ’14, during the lunch break. Van der Horst now teaches band in the D.C. public schools and gives private flute lessons. “I missed being in a band.”

Kristen LaCherra, BA Music ’15, agreed. “My career is in arts management so it is so much fun to sing in a choir again.”

There were lots of hugs and plenty of opportunities for people to catch up—and stock up on Mason gear, judging from the number of Mason Bookstore bags.

“We wanted a way to reconnect with our alumni and to celebrate their accomplishments within our community,” says Wildman. “This alumni event was the first of many we hope to have. We want [our alumni] to know that they are always a part of the Mason family, and we hope that they will come back and visit often.”

—Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95

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On the Ritcher Scale, His Determination Is a 9 r ubb l e wa s e v e r y w h e r e .

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hat is how George Mason University sophomore Amrit Tamang described his hometown of Tutung in Nepal when he arrived in May, nine days after the second of two devastating earthquakes that news reports said killed more than 8,500 across the country and destroyed more than 500,000 homes.

“The houses are made of rocks and mud, so all the rocks were just laying on the ground,” Tamang says of the rural village about 17 miles outside Kathmandu.

Originally, Tamang was in Nepal to check on his mother, who lives in Tutung, and his father’s parents, who live in the nearby village of Kalche.

But the visit quickly turned into a construction project with Tamang, a pre-nursing major, as the general contractor.

Armed with $8,000 in donations, Tamang helped build temporary bamboo and tin-roof shelters for his relatives, headed efforts to bring water to the villages from more than half a mile away (a closer spring dried up after the earthquake), restore electricity with solar panels, and build 22 bathrooms with four stalls each.

He was there for two months.

“At first I didn’t really care about doing relief work. I just wanted to see everybody,” says Tamang, who, since he left Nepal, has visited about every two years.

But the devastation, the people’s anxiety, and the lack of aid getting to the isolated towns changed his plan.

“He’s kind,” says Tamang’s father, Surja. “He sees other people are up-

set. He thinks he can help.”

Surja was a Sherpa on Mount Everest for 10 years before coming to the United States in 2005 with his new U.S.-born wife and then 9-year-old son. Tamang says his mother, who is divorced from Surja, sold biscuits and noodles out of his childhood home, which the earthquakes destroyed.

It was five days before Tamang heard through an uncle who lives in Kathmandu that his mother and grandparents were okay.

After the earthquakes, which measured 7.8 and 7.3, respectively, on the Richter scale, Tamang reached out to friends, students, and teachers at Rappahannock County (Virginia) High School, where he was a foursport athlete. They raised $8,000.

Tamang said George Mason’s Nepalese Student Association, of which he is president, also raised $5,000 that it sent to various charities. The parents of Tamang’s stepmother,

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Medge Carter, paid for his ticket to Nepal.

With the money he raised, Tamang says he bought about 100 tin roofing sheets, 22 bags of cement, 30 solar panels, bathroom pans, and about a mile of plastic pipe to access water.

The material had to be carried on foot over dirt roads from the closest town, about a half-day’s walk.

It was physically demanding, and Tamang says he lost 10 pounds on just two daily meals of rice.

Some of the construction was rudimentary. The shelters had bamboo walls tied together with rope, mud floors, and tin roofs held down by rocks. But the bathrooms were made of brick with cement floors.

“I remind myself every day I’m living a dream life,” Tamang says of being in the United States. “I just wanted to help the people who were less fortunate.”

—Damian Cristodero

A Whale of a

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Photo by Evan cantwell

Fans of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History will recognize the 13-foot-long Zygorhiza kochii skeleton from the “Life in the Ancient Seas” exhibit.

When the Smithsonian began renovations in its dinosaur hall last year, the 36-million-year-old fossil cast was boxed and put on a shelf. In stepped George Mason paleontology professor Mark D. Uhen, who specializes in ancient whale studies and has been a Smithsonian research associate since 1994.

For more than a year, Uhen worked to move the 300-pound skeleton cast to Mason’s Fairfax Campus, where it was stored in a classroom until put on display in the atrium that connects Exploratory and Planetary Halls.

Zygorhiza is significant because it belongs to the first group of whales that are a close relative to today’s whales, says Uhen. This precursor to modern whales made its home in Mississippi and Alabama during the late Eocene Epoch, dining on fish and squid.

“Everyone loves fossils, even people who say they don’t like science,” says Uhen.

—Michele McDonald Photo by EVAN CANTWELL

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Positive Spin

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For many, the term “well-being” brings to mind a touchy-feely quest for personal health and happiness, but there’s a wealth of research behind well-being where strategies are being tested and proven scientifically successful.

B y Cat h y C r u i s e , M FA ’ 93

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eorge Mason University psychology professor Todd Kashdan realized early in his career that treating problems “only gets you so far.”

Now a world-recognized authority on well-being research, Kashdan was of the new field. Seligman told Kashdan what he already knew—that he then treating individuals with anxiety and panic disorders, PTSD, and was studying the wrong thing. emotional problems. But he noticed how, even if he removed these condi“So I flipped it,” says Kashdan, who is also a senior scientist at Mason’s Center tions, his clients didn’t necessarily go on to live fulfilling lives. for the Advancement of Well-Being. “Instead of studying [anxiety] as the response to threatening situations, I began to explore what happens when “They could live a completely neutral life,” Kashdan says, “where they just sit on the couch and mindlessly flip through channels, as opposed to know- you respond to threatening situations with a mindset of curiosity.” ing what meaningful goals they could pursue and how they could spend their time in a productive and satisfying way.”

In the late 1990s, when the term “positive psychology” was first coined, Kashdan met famed psychologist Martin Seligman, considered the founder

His book Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life is the result of his investigation using curiosity as a strategy for managing uncertainty, discovering passions, and becoming mentally tougher and more agile. He extends that theme in his latest book, The Upside of Your Dark Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 21

“

The whole point is, there are very simple tools and strategies anyone can do that will make a huge difference in their life, as long as they’re

intentional about doing it. It’s simple, but not easy. It takes effort and

”

attention.

Side, where he explores how uncomfortable experiences and situations can be a portal for the realization of human potential.

Psychologist Beth Cabrera, a senior scholar at the center and wife of Mason president Ángel Cabrera, was also influenced early on by the positive psychology movement. A university professor for most of her career, Cabrera was prompted to write a book when she realized much of the science of wellbeing “never gets out to the people,” she says. “I felt like I kept writing these academic articles that maybe three academics might read. That moved me to try to share the science with a broader audience, to make it easier to understand, and more accessible.”

Beth Cabrera

Todd Kashdan

Her book Beyond Happy: Women, Work, and Well-Being (see page 37) examines the challenges women face in trying to fulfill both career and family responsibilities, and offers strategies for living a more authentic, meaningful life.

Through the center, Cabrera also teaches strengths workshops and leadership development courses. “[These classes] present applicable strategies that have been proven through research to increase well-being,” she says.

—Beth Cabrera

around people with views, ideologies, and feelings that are different from your own. While distress tolerance may require people to visit some dark places, it is, he says, the “secret juice for creating a kinder, more compassionate, more happy place to be living.”

In the end, will this area of science truly make us happier?

Yes, says Cabrera, if we work at it. “The whole point is, there are very simple tools and strategies anyone can do that will make a huge difference in their life, as long as they’re intentional about doing it. It’s simple, but not easy. It takes effort and attention.”

Kashdan agrees, adding that embracing the research behind these strategies leads to better results. Research has shown that even something as simple as a keeping a gratitude journal is more effective if the person does it two to three times per week. Studies show that daily journaling has a downside. “Because on the fifth day, when you can’t think of anything new, you start to think, wait, maybe I don’t have that much richness in my life,” Kashdan says.

Part of the mission of the center is to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on well-being. The center’s scholars and fellows are working to make connections between science and application and develop evidence-based practices.

The center supports a number of research projects across the disciplines.

Such strategies include practicing mindfulness and gratitude, identifying and learning to apply strengths, and finding new ways to nurture relationships—techniques that help people cultivate positive emotions and appreciate what’s going well in life, rather than focusing on what’s not.

And Mason researchers are looking even deeper and push- “Our common sense is not calibrated sufficiently for us to ing farther into this emerging field. figure this stuff out on our own,” says Kashdan. “This is where science gets the exactitude of what works best for Kashdan is currently researching what he calls “distress tolwhom, under what conditions, and with what dosage. And erance,” or learning to accept the distress caused by being that’s where the magic comes in.”

If you would like to support well-being initiatives at Mason, contact Kevin R. Augustyn at kaugusty@gmu.edu or go to fasterfarther.gmu.edu.

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10 Tips f o r Im p r o v i n g Y o u r W e l l - B e i n g Ta k e 5.

Spend at least five minutes daily doing some kind of contemplative activity. Practice mindfulness (moment-to-moment awareness of your environment, body, and mind), reflect, listen to music, or do whatever helps you cultivate peace of mind.

Q u i t m u lt i ta s k i n g .

Resist the urge to multitask or to check your phone or email when you are working or having a conversation. Focusing your attention will boost your effectiveness—and improve your relationships.

Ta k e a m i n i v i c t o r y l a p.

Create a “victory log” in which you list your past successes. Pull it out when you have a bad day and need a reminder that you can do it.

D o n ’ t p u r s u e h a pp i n e s s .

There’s no magic formula for happiness. Resist the pursuit of happiness as an end goal. Instead seek out experiences that will make you happy. Even better, change up your routines and inject more novelty and curiosity into your daily life.

Engage in r andom ac ts of kindness.

By varying your good deeds (volunteering, holding the door for someone, giving a compliment, hosting a surprise party for a friend), you’ll experience even greater increases in your mood.

1 6 2 7 3 8 4 9 5 10

App r e c i at e a l l yo u r e m o t i o n s .

Remove the negative label from negative feelings.

Emotions—including anger and anxiety—are tools.

Learn to appreciate everything in your emotional toolbox.

H o p e c a n b e a s t r at e g y .

Having a sense of hope leads to more productivity in your day and greater resilience when facing challenges.

Surround yourself with hopeful, positive people for a boost to your well-being. Hopeful people also experience gains in health.

Yo u g o t ta h av e F r i e n d s .

Make time for friends and meaningful relationships (mentors, family members). Find ways to be connected with others who are supportive, encouraging, and caring.

P r ac t i c e g r at i t u d e , b u t d o n ’ t o v e r d o i t.

Trying to identify dozens of things you’re most grateful for on a daily basis can have detrimental effects to your well-being. Instead, think of one or two things you’re most grateful for each day or even on a weekly basis.

D o n ’ t b e at yo u r s e l f u p.

Everyone makes mistakes. Being kind to yourself increases the likelihood that you will achieve your goals.

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Put on a Well-Being Face When the founding fathers wrote of our unalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness was among them. But what if pursuing happy makes us less happy? That’s where well-being comes in.

T

B y Na n c e Lu c a s

hese days, everywhere you turn people are talking about the value of happiness. Some say it improves relationships, aids in longevity, and makes communities more attractive places in which to live.

But what might come as a surprise is that this constant pursuit of being happy actually makes us less happy.

Rather than always worrying about whether we should be happy, a more effective and sustainable approach is to focus on building lives of greater well-being. And the sooner we start, the better off we’ll be.

Our vision at George Mason University is to become a model well-being university, a place where students learn what it means to have a well-lived life. At Mason, we define well-being as building a life of vitality, purpose, resilience, and engagement. And we are committed to preparing students to live in an integrated world with a deeper sense of compassion and connection to others.

Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 25

The purpose of a college degree is not to prepare students to have a happy life. It’s about preparing them to be engaged and responsible citizens, equipping them with knowledge and skills to live their lives authentically with greater meaning and purpose. Yet too often, students begin their college careers selecting an academic major because they want to follow someone else’s path, or they want to please everyone but themselves. It’s not unusual to hear stories of graduates who land a high-paying job on Wall Street only to discover a few years later that their lives are void of passion and purpose.

Focusing on well-being can guide students on the right path for them early. Well-being is about experiencing meaning, pursuing higher goals, giving to others, and thriving. Increasing students’ well-being can lead to greater chances of degree completion and a positive impact on their emotional health.

At Mason, we’re implementing evidence-based practices based on the science of well-being. These practices provide opportunities for students to learn how to become more resilient, more imaginative, and more creative as they solve complex problems. They help students experience the full range of emotions—both positive and negative. And they are critical to understanding what it takes to create and sustain high-quality relationships.

These practices are being implemented through a range of programs and experiences at Mason. For example, the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being hosts a thematic undergraduate residential Living Learning Community called Mindful Living (see story on page 28). In this program, students learn and practice how to cope with life’s challenges and manage their stress in productive ways. They keep gratitude journals and even experience improv theatre as a strategy for unleashing their creativity and learning how to invest in the success of others.

Students outside this residential program can explore similar content in the following academic courses: The Foundations of Well-Being and Resilience; Consciousness, Meaning, and Life Purpose; Positive Organizations and Leadership; and Conflict Transformation from Mindfulness Perspectives. Assessment data from the Mindful Living LLC and courses like these show significant student gains in problem solving, stress management, life satisfaction, and purpose.

University Life has created a special peer well-being educator program, which prepares upper-class students to facilitate workshops on topics like resilience, meditation, and strengths deployment. Like a ripple effect, these experiences equip our graduates to enhance the well-being of others.

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How will we know we’re making a positive impact on students’ well-being? The university entered a partnership with the Gallup Organization through the center to measure student and alumni well-being, positioning Mason as a national case study on measuring educational and life outcomes using less conventional metrics. Since the 1930s, Gallup has conducted research to help measure and quantify a “life well-lived.”

Another feature of that partnership is Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment, which is available to all students and employees. The assessment identifies an individual’s innate talents and strengths with a focus on what’s right about people rather than what’s lacking. Gallup’s research reveals that individuals who invest in their strengths are three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life. And they are six times more likely to be engaged in their jobs.

Well-being is about experiencing meaning, pursuing higher goals, giving to others, and thriving. Increasing students’ well-being can lead to greater chances of degree completion and a positive impact on their emotional health.

The university’s investment in building the strengths of each student is already showing positive gains. For example, students who completed the strengths assessment last year compared with those who did not showed significant increases in hope, engagement, commitment to pursuing goals, and a belief that Mason is positively contributing to their well-being.

Mason’s Career Services staff coaches students on their StrengthsFinder profile, preparing them to use this information in interviews with prospective employers. Academic advisors are using this tool to help students make more informed decisions about their academic majors and career paths.

While it will take some time to fully realize this vision, we have already witnessed thousands of students and employees engaged in well-being efforts and programs during the first year of this 10-year goal.

Simply put, Mason’s commitment to students’ well-being is a game changer for all of higher education.

Nance Lucas is executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being and an associate professor in New Century College. For more information about the center and the well-being university initiative, visit wellbeing.gmu.edu and wbu.gmu.edu.

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finding

your tribe

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N

M

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EN

T AN

D SUSTAINABILITY

B y Co ll e e n K e a r n e y Ri c h , M FA ’ 95 > > >

Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 29

Living Learning Communities, called LLCs, provide Mason students with the opportunity to live among people who share the same interests or majors.

Finding one’s niche on campus has never been easier.

G

Meghana Varde (third from the left on the bottom row) found her perfect spot in the Mindful Living LLC, a community open to all majors.

eorge Mason University sophomore Lamar Crosby is proud of his electric blue polo shirt, the one that identifies him as a peer mentor on campus.

“If I wear that shirt, it is like I am Superman,” the Savannah, Georgia, native says. “People come up to me all the time and ask, ‘Do you work here?’”

Crosby enjoys helping his fellow students. This is his second year living in the Global Living Learning Community (LLC). Last year he was active on the LLC’s council, which deals with student concerns. This year he has a job that provides an ombudsman-like framework for the kind of work he loves to do.

Crosby came to George Mason seeking diversity. “In Georgia, there just wasn’t a lot of diversity,” he says. “I felt a different experience was necessary.”

In the Global Living LLC, students from the United States (or as they call themselves “domestics”) live alongside international students in the Mason Global Center, an experience that provides all with the opportunity to share their culture and some to practice speaking English. As part of the LLC program, each community takes a class together. For the Global Living students, that class is COMM 305 Intercultural Communication.

LLCs have been available at Mason for almost 20 years and continue to grow in popularity. Mason now hosts 16 communities that vary in topic from Sustainability to Leadership and Community Engagement. Major-based LLCs cater to students majoring in the arts, business and economics, and engineering. The Honors College LLC is a popular one, filling three residence halls this year. Some LLCs are exclusively for freshmen; others combine freshmen with upperclass students.

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Global LLC peer mentor Lamar Crosby

“It gives students a head start,” says Kara Danner, the LLC development director. “You only have one freshman year, and fall semester lasts 14 weeks. That’s not a lot of time to get acclimated and find out what campus is all about.”

Studies have shown that LLCs improve student retention rates and achievement. They also encourage interaction with faculty. Not to mention the fact that there is always someone to grab a meal with and get advice from.

Xiaoxia Zhang found her place in the Sustainability LLC.

This is applied computer science major Mike Hudson’s second year serving as a peer advisor to the freshman-only Engineering LLC. As a part of his job, Hudson teaches a freshman transitions course specifically geared to engineering majors.

Choosing to live in the LLC his freshman year was an easy decision for Hudson. “In high school, I got picked on for being the nerdy kid and being smart,” he says. He figured by living with other engineers he would find like-minded individuals, and he did.

In addition to teaching the class, Hudson makes himself available to students during the week and often goes to get food with groups of them at Southside. He believes that because engineering students have many of the same classes, they are more bonded.

“It is like a built-in study group,” says Hudson, who is from Yorktown, Virginia. He has also found that engineering students, after the LLC year, are more likely to continue to live together in groups during their time at Mason.

“LLCs are one of the best things we offer on campus,” he says. “It is a great way to get to know people and make friends.”

Meghana Varde, a chemistry major from New Jersey, agrees. “I couldn’t see myself living anywhere else on campus,” she says of the Mindful Living LLC, a community open to all students.

Varde says that, as a freshman, she received good advice from upperclassmen—especially about transitioning to college life.

Now in her second year in the LLC, she is returning the favor: “You are helping freshmen get through what you went through last year.”

Junior Xiaoxia Zhang had a difficult time deciding whether to major in psychology or environmental science. She decided on psychology but can keep up with her interest in the environment through the Sustainability LLC, where she has lived for two years.

Zhang, who came to Mason from Beijing, China, really enjoys working in the organic gardens on the Fairfax Campus. “I’m a foodie. I have to try everything.”

For more information about LLCs at Mason, visit llc.gmu.edu

When she returns to China after graduation, she plans to set up a garden for her parents. As a part of her LLC, she also helped build a rainwater garden outside of Piedmont Hall, where the LLC resides, and worked on the Presidents Park Hydroponic Greenhouse, which provides produce for Mason Dining.

“I wish the greenhouse was bigger,” says Zhang. “There is nothing like eating something you’ve grown yourself.”

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I n q u i r i n g Mi n d s

Minibot Goes Where Humans Can’t

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obots are often used to perform tasks when conditions are considered unsafe for humans. But their limitations are often apparent. Many of the machines can’t climb stairs or ladders, pick up tools, or navigate debrisridden areas. And they’re not always easy to operate.

A Volgenau School of Engineering senior design project has overcome many of these challenges by creating a small robot or “Minibot.” The pint-size humanoid robot stands only 18 inches high, weighs less than five pounds, and can be controlled with virtual reality gear by users who’ve had little or no training. Proportioned like an average human, the robot moves on six wheels for stability, and it can pick up objects with the claw-like pinchers on its arms. Even more impressive, the device is kinematically scaled and uses haptic feedback—forces, vibrations, and motions—so the user sees and feels just what the robot does.

The team used AutoCAD for the robot’s design, created the code in open source so anyone could use it, and printed the parts with a 3-D printer. After building the prototype, the students put the system through its paces with untrained users, such as Mason undergraduates and faculty members. They discovered that even people without previous experience could learn to use it quickly.

Electrical and computer engineering professor Daniel Lofaro, the team’s advisor, has submitted a grant to the National Science Foundation that proposes using the Minibot and its system in such places as Ebola-stricken Africa, where it can perform tasks for longer periods than hazmat-suited humans.

—Martha Bushong

Did You Know…

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded a $920,000 grant to Mason’s College of Health and Human Services as a part of the agency’s effort to increase the use of the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral Treatment (SBIRT) method when addressing substance abuse. Mason faculty expect to train about 1,000 social work, psychology, and nursing students during the grant’s three-year period.

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Research

Hitting Osteoarthritis Where It Hurts Mason researchers have received more than a million dollars in grant funding for their novel approach to treating osteoarthritis, the most common form of this debilitating disease. Their new drug, which could be injected directly into an injured joint, blocks the connection point among proteins that cause inflammation. It will now undergo further testing, thanks to the grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

Lance Liotta, co-director of Mason’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, heads up the team of researchers who created the patent-pending drug. Osteoarthritis occurs when the cushion, or cartilage, between joints breaks down from injury, overuse, or weight.

The body responds by igniting an “inflammatory firestorm,” Liotta explains, that spreads inside the joint and causes osteoarthritis. “Our inhibitor blocks that from happening and cools off the firestorm,” Liotta says.

The work is being conducted at Mason’s interdisciplinary Institute for Advanced Biomedical Research at the Science and Technology Campus in Prince William County, Virginia. Chemistry professor Mikel Paige is synthesizing the treatment, with help from Mason and the University of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology.

—Michele McDonald

Students Test the Waters While George Mason University is known for its prime location at the hub of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, the university is also ideally situated among waterways that provide important data for research. Mason—located at the headwaters of Rabbit Branch watershed, which drains into the Chesapeake Bay System—is part of a national $1.3 million environmental project funded by the Dominion Foundation. The project uses Mason’s streams and retention pond as a working lab to investigate approaches for monitoring stormwater, developing advanced flood warning methods, and creating new ways to assess water quality.

Portable instruments outfitted with a GPS system monitor the quantity and quality of water flowing into streams and Mason Pond after a storm, and determine water temperature, turbidity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and nitrate concentration. They even photograph what’s happening in the stream.

The project is run by Professors Celso Ferreira and Viviana Maggioni of the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, with assistance from electrical engineering and geoinformation science professors and student interns. Data collected from the team will be shared through the Mason Water Data Information System.

—Michele McDonald Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 33

I n q u i r i n g Mi n d s

Volunteering to Assess Volunteers

Parks Provide More Green than You Think

Since the success of organizations often lies in the work of their volunteer forces, Mason students have been helping groups figure out what works best when coordinating volunteers, and how to keep these unpaid assistants coming back. Using surveys to obtain an inside peek into how organizations run their volunteer units, students involved in Mason’s Volunteer Program Assessment helped gather and provide crucial information for these groups, while they gained hands-on experience in their field.

The free assessment program—one of only a few such programs in the country—was created in 2012 by graduate students in Mason’s industrial/organizational psychology concentration. Last year it was run by nearly 20 students who assessed 17 organizations.

These included the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Virginia’s Fairfax County Park Authority, and the Humane Society.

The assessments provided the groups with comparisons to their peers, and shed light on challenges such as outdated technology, conflicts between paid and volunteer staff, and how groups are organized. They also revealed what volunteers see as most important in their jobs. The sheriff’s department survey, for instance, showed volunteers desired additional training, more support for coordinators, and indications that their work was appreciated. In response, the department implemented new policies and processes, and placed volunteer coordinators into a larger command unit where they would be more involved in decision making.

Parks are more than pretty places, and it’s important for people to know how much more. The economic impact of regional parks in communities has been assessed through a joint effort between the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) and Mason’s Center for Regional Analysis. And the bottom line is, parks are good for the bottom line.

What began as an evaluation of Cameron Run Regional Park in Alexandria, Virginia, expanded into a first-of-its-kind, nationwide project. Bill Beckner, an NRPA senior research manager, says the effort will allow those involved with parks throughout the United States “to go forth with a number that says this is the value of our services and our land in the community.”

Using the NRPA’s database of 1,200 parks as a starting point, the two organizations reviewed park income streams, employment numbers, operational spending and capital spending on depreciable items such as small equipment, and major projects including exhibits and new buildings. The data was correlated with help from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Regional Input-Output Modeling System. Thirty case studies were also conducted, and findings were presented at NRPA’s annual conference in September.

They will now become a resource for local governments and citizens.

—Michele McDonald

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—Damian Cristodero

Research

“Right to Try” May Do More Harm Than Good The emotionally charged “right to try” legislation enforced in about 40 states allows terminally ill patients to access unproven yet potentially life-prolonging treatments. But a Mason researcher says these laws may hinder the development of future drugs and conflict with federal law.

Tony Yang, a health policy professor in Mason’s College of Health and Human Services, says state laws that speed up patient access to experimental drugs not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are “not good laws” and are “unlikely to survive constitutionally.” Yang says too many questions surround the legislation, such as who pays for the experimental treatments (most likely the patients themselves) and how state laws might hinder future drug development by threatening the research and approval process.

His report was published last summer in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Yang instead sees the FDA’s faster timeline for “compassionate use” exceptions as a better path for patients,

noting that those who are unlikely to survive the 30-day approval period can apply by phone. While Yang agrees the process of accessing experimental drugs needs to be improved, he advises that a more effective approach involving patients, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, scholars, and the FDA is the best way to achieve that goal.

—Michele McDonald

Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 35

S h e lf L i f e

Recently published works by Mason faculty

operational centers of gravity in armed conflict.

Deterring Cyber Warfare: Bolstering Strategic Stability in Cyberspace Brian M. Mazanec, PhD Biodefense ’14, adjunct professor, School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs Deterrence theory was well developed during the Cold War for the deterrence of kinetic attacks. While the deterrence of cyberattacks is one of the most important issues facing the United States and other nations, the application of deterrence theory to the cyber realm is problematic.

Deterring Cyber Warfare (Palgrave Pivot, December 2014) offers an introduction to cyber warfare and a review of the challenges associated with deterring cyberattacks. This timely study, written with coauthor Bradley A. Thayer, reflects increased international interest in cyber warfare, and is based on the recognition that information networks in cyberspace are becoming

professor of computer science, Volgenau School of Engineering

Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice Douglas Eyman, assistant professor of English Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice (University of Michigan Press, Digital Culture Books series, June 2015) gathers, synthesizes, and critiques current work that stakes a claim to “digital rhetoric” as field or methodological approach.

It argues for a view of digital rhetoric as an emergent, interdisciplinary field of practice that has developed in parallel forms in a wide range of disciplines.

Eyman is senior editor of the open access scholarly journal Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy.

Tin Can Diary: The Diary of Earl W Foxwell, Jr.’s Tour of Duty Aboard the Destroyer USS Edwards DD-619 Harry Foxwell, adjunct

Tin Can Diary (Narya Publications, June 2015) relates the story of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Edwards DD619 during World War II in the Pacific, as told in the war diary of Earl W. Foxwell Jr., the author’s father.

It describes the wartime action and daily routine of Earl and the Edwards’ crew, including the terrifying Kamikaze attacks of 1944 and 1945.

provides 13 labs spanning the common topics in the first semester of universitylevel physics. Each lab is designed to use only the student’s smartphone, laptop, and items easily found in big-box stores or hobby shops. Each lab contains theory, setup instructions, and basic analysis techniques. All of these labs can be performed outside of the traditional university lab setting, with initial costs averaging less than $8 per student, per lab.

Managing Integrated Health Systems John (Jay) Shiver and John Cantiello, assistant professors in the College of Health and Human Services

The Presence of the Absent: Therapy with Families and Their Ghosts

Kinematic Labs with Mobile Devices Jason M. Kinser, associate professor, Computational and Data Sciences Kinematic Labs with Mobile Devices (Morgan & Claypool Publishers, July 2015)

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ple in their lives who either died or disappeared, but are still there. They offer insight into processes that may prove transformative for the therapist (both family and individually oriented), as well as enlightening to the general public.

Carlos E. Sluzki, MD, Professor Emeritus of Conflict Analysis and Resolution and of the Department of Global and Community Health In The Presence of the Absent (Routledge, July 2015), Sluzki uses six examples of individuals and families in therapy who live and interact with the presence of their absent—pivotal peo-

Managing health systems is an evolving discipline as a result of the rapidly changing marketplace, the Affordable Care Act, advancement in patient care and safety, and changing societal expectations. To meet the needs of health care executives, managers, and those studying the health care industry, editors Shiver and Cantiello assemble contributions from experts in the health field and academia to cover topics such as finance and the chang-

ing health economy, legal aspects, ethics managing human capital, patient safety, information technology, quality improvement, and public policy.

The book (Jones & Bartlett Learning, August 2015) also contains individual interviews with key thought leaders in the field.

Atmospheric and Space Sciences: Neutral Atmospheres Erdal Yiğit, assistant professor of physics This book, the first of a two-volume SpringerBriefs on Atmospheric and Space Sciences (Springer, July 2015), presents a concise and interdisciplinary introduction to the basic theory, observation, and modeling of atmospheric and ionospheric coupling processes on Earth. The volume is designed for students and researchers looking to gain quick insight into atmospheric sciences and current research. It also is a useful tool for professors devel-

oping a course in atmospheric physics.

Beyond Happy: Women, Work, and Well-Being Beth Cabrera, senior scholar, Center for the Advancement of WellBeing Over the course of a decade, Cabrera, a positive psychology authority, has surveyed and interviewed more than a thousand women to gather insight into how to effectively balance career and family responsibilities. Beyond Happy: Women, Work, and Well-Being (ATD Press, August 2015) gathers essential findings and offers women proven strategies for living more authentic, meaningful lives. The book covers pathways to reducing stress and finding more meaning in life by employing strategies for thriving based on personal values, developed strengths, and what matters most— enduring family ties and relationships.

The (Literary) South Does Rise Again Mason English professor Eric Gary Anderson has always loved horror. He started reading horror fiction and watching old scary movies while still in elementary school. A few years ago he started “finding ways to connect my love of horror with my job—which I also love,” including a class on vampires in literature.

It was at the 2012 Society for the Study of Southern Literature conference that he and coeditors Taylor Haygood of Florida Atlantic University and Daniel Cross Turner at Coastal Carolina University started hatching the idea for the anthology Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture (LSU Press, 2015).

What inspired you to put together this book?

The undead continue to capture imaginations. When we started this project, the undead seemed to be everywhere in the South and beyond: in television shows like The Walking Dead and True Blood, as well as in all manner of movies, fiction, etc. We wondered what that meant, and especially why the undead in the South were so significant. As responses to our call for proposals rolled in, we realized there was something much bigger at work: a strain of undeadness running through all of southern literature and culture. Sometimes it was actually undead figures—ghosts, zombies, vampires, and such—but it could also take much more subtle forms. For example, one essay considers early photographic capturing of dead bodies on Civil War battlefields and the ways that the Old South basically died and then came roaring back to life as a cherished undead thing, the Lost Cause. Meanwhile, the dark legacy of slavery has given birth to all kinds of ghosts and hauntings. And so, too, has the trauma of the Indian removal crisis.

Our most exciting takeaways from this project: Undeadness in the South is much, much bigger than we thought—and much more unruly than older notions of “southern gothic” suggested.

What do you write about in your chapter of the book?

My chapter offers a new reading of Poe’s classic short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I consider Poe’s story alongside African American writer Charles W. Chesnutt’s conjure story “Po’ Sandy,” another story about the eerie links between people and haunted houses. Poe and Chesnutt are rarely discussed together, so my chapter breaks new ground simply by connecting these two stories—and they connect beautifully. I also discuss a Lumbee [Native American Tribe] ghost story because Chesnutt lived in Lumbee country in North Carolina but doesn’t much acknowledge Lumbees in his conjure tales.

—Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95

Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 37

Alumni in print Recently published works by Mason alumni

Make Yourself Indispensable: A Guide for Career Success Roger Campbell, BS Business Administration,’74 CreateSpace, March 2015 Make Yourself Indispensable, written with Darren McKnight, is a practical guide to career success that addresses key behaviors and techniques to help you maximize opportunities in your profession. Insights are provided in an easy-toread style, and address the core dimensions of being indispensable: effective communication skills, a strategic view to success, and a passion for learning.

Campbell is the author of numerous books. He has been actively involved at Mason for many years, serving as a guest lecturer and an assistant in Mason’s Career Services.

The Psychic Workbook: Tools and Techniques to Develop Reliable Insight Karen Fox, BS Business ’82 Schiffer Publishing, April 2015 Discover how to use the full capacity of your mind with The Psychic Workbook.

Use this workbook’s tools, techniques, and exercises to learn how to turn

hunches and intuitions into strong psychic awareness.

This is Fox’s second work published by Schiffer. She is a professional psychic development instructor and the director of the Aspen Program for Psychic Development in Denver, Colorado.

Not to Mention a Nice Life Sean Murphy, MA English ’93 Bright Moments Books, June 2015 Not to Mention a Nice Life examines corporate America during the not-so-quiet storm that preceded the historic economic meltdown of 2008. Murphy guides us through the alternately surreal and exciting world of big deals and small souls through his character, Byron, a poet who finds himself unprepared for life after 30.

The book was featured as a “#1 Hot New Release” for Kindle. Murphy’s memoir, Please Talk about Me When I’m Gone, was published in 2013.

The ABCs of Old Town Warrenton Jessica (Lott) Smolinski, BA Religious Studies ’07

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Piedmont Press, December 2014 Motivated by her love for her hometown of Warrenton, Virginia, Smolinski wrote and illustrated The ABCs of Old Town Warrenton in her spare time, during her two children’s naps.

The book encourages young readers to explore and learn about the town’s buildings, monuments, and events, and her handdrawn style appeals to both nostalgic adults and their children. The book was printed locally and is available for purchase at Great Harvest Bakery and at the Fauquier History Museum in Warrenton.

Smolinski, a stay-at-home mom, lives in Warrenton with her husband, Jason, and two children.

She Was a Cathedral Naomi Thiers, MFA ’90 Finishing Line Press, November 2014 She Was a Cathedral, Thiers’ third book of poetry, is about individual women the author has known, encountered briefly, or heard about. It is dedicated to, and titled for, another poet who died five years ago— Patty Beaur-thaud Summerhays, MFA ’91. A close friend of Thiers, Summer-

hays received her MFA from Mason the same time as Thiers, and was editor of Phoebe magazine while at the university.

Mostly Momentous Minutes, Mawkish Memories, and Myopic Musings of Marc from Maine Marc E. Zimmerman, MA ’95 Well Done LLC, June 2014 A lifetime of humorous and dramatic moments are depicted in Zimmerman’s book, including a frontpage, international incident originating in the halls of Congress involving the FBI, KGB, CIA, and circus clowns.

Other tales include true stories about John Wayne, saving lives (swimmers, U.S. citizens, and Zimmerman’s own), great white sharks, cats, cows, and dental records chicken.

Zimmerman grew up in Bath, Maine, and spent 15 years in Washington, D.C., working on Capitol Hill.

He now lives in Washington state where he works in mid-market mergers and acquisitions, and teaches courses in international business, government, and finance.

Pat r i o t P r o f i l e

Jason Strum Year: Junior

Major: Kinesiology

J

ason Sturm has done much to raise the profile of adaptive training and adaptive sports played by amputees. The Herndon, Virginia, resident, who in 2002 lost his left leg below the knee in an army training exercise, is a world champion bobsledder and a CrossFit trainer for amputee and non-amputee clients.

“I’d like to start a nonprofit that builds custom sports prosthetics, Sturm says. “If you are an above-the-knee amputee who wants to get into Olympic weightlifting, let’s design a knee that doesn’t just collapse when it thinks you are trying to sit down.”

Sturm, 38, whose leg was blown off by two misdirected 105mm shells that also killed two soldiers, uses himself as an example.

“They build legs for running and custom legs for bicycling, but the leg I use for weightlifting and the other stuff I’m doing was originally Photo by EVAN CANTWELL

designed for snowboarding,” Sturm says. “I’m using it way beyond the capacity it was intended for, and I’m doing it at my own risk. But it gives me the movement at the bottom of my leg I need.”

Sturm, a married father of two, put that leg to the test in November 2014 at the start of the World Cup para-bobsledding season. He hopes the expanded five-race season prompts the sport’s inclusion in the 2018 Winter Paralympics in South Korea.

“I was instantly hooked,” he says of bobsledding, which he took up on a whim when the U.S. para-bobsledding team advertised for members.

“Just because you don’t have an arm or a leg doesn’t mean you’re not able to do these things. You just have to reset your mindset.”

—Damian Cristodero Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 39

c la s s n o t e s

Smelling the Roses on the Way to the

T

he notification on the Dalton Highway that indicates you have reached the Arctic Circle isn’t much—just a sign with a representation of a globe and a star that shows where you are in Alaska.

But the less-than-grand scene did not undermine what Steve Piper, BS Business Management ’92, MBA ’94, and his buddies rightly called an “amazing sense of accomplishment” during their June road trip to the northern reaches of the United States.

“A dream I never wanted to wake up from,” says Piper.

Not just because they were there, but because of how they got there—riding 1,600 miles round trip from Anchorage on rented motorcycles, sometimes over narrow dirt and gravel highways with, at one point, a bald eagle that seemed to pace them from 30 feet above.

“But what made this trip even more special,” Piper says, “was experiencing it with good friends.”

The trip took shape 15 months earlier at a party where Piper, who lives in Annapolis, Maryland, and is CEO of CyberEdge Group, a research and marketing firm, reconnected with old friend Erich Steller.

Steller was planning a ride through Alaska to celebrate his 50th birthday. Piper was in, as was friend Russ Tooker.

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Arctic Circle

The trip took five days over the Glenn, Richardson, Denali, and Dalton Highways. The Denali and Dalton (the notorious roads in the TV show Ice Road Truckers) are mostly unpaved, with potholes the size of beach balls that would “change your day,” Piper says, and tractor-trailers flying by at 70 to 80 miles per hour, stirring up clouds of dust.

The scenery, though, was breathtaking and punctuated by caribou, horned Dall sheep, moose, and grizzlies.

The payoff was the Arctic Circle, which, with temperatures in the 70s, really wasn’t that arctic. No matter.

“Absolutely mind-blowing,” Tooker says. “Never imagined I’d be standing north of the Arctic Circle.”

“That was Steve’s suggestion we go that far up,” Steller says. “Steve is very organized, but he’s also hilarious. He’s witty with a dry sense of humor.”

And a sense of adventure.

“Life passes us by too quickly,” Piper says. “It’s important to stop and smell the roses once in a while, or in my case, Alaska moose droppings.”

—Damian Cristodero

class notes 1960s

Helen R. (Jean) Gleason White, BA English ’69, was elected for the second time to serve as president of the American News Women’s Club (ANWC), Washington, D.C. A 46-year legacy member of the ANWC as well as a 36-year member of the National Press Club, White worked closely with White House correspondents Helen Thomas and Sara McClendon to set up what is now the annual ANWC Gala honoring three women student journalists with scholarships. This year’s ANWC Gala honoree was Norah O’Donnell of CBS This Morning. White is a retired U.S. Department of State project manager, Class of 1998, whose current works-in-progress include a fifth murder mystery in the Hush Hush murder series, a book of poems, and a biography of her father-in-law, Frank R. White, Harry Wardman’s architect.

1970s

Bonnie Atwood, BA Psychology ’74, was nominated for Woman of the Year 2015 by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Her team raised $12,000 for blood cancer research.

Additionally, she received three awards in the 2015 Virginia Professional Communicators communications contest: first place for columns; third place for editorials; and honorable mention for blogs. The first place award will advance to national competition.

William E. Alexander, BA History ’76, was named executive director of Logan Community Services in Guthrie, Oklahoma. He was previously chief operating and financial officer for Youth Services of Oklahoma County and director of finance for the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Marie Detty Youth and Family Services of Lawton, Oklahoma.

R. F. (Pommett) Gilmor, BSEd Elementary Education ’79, has published 34 picture books for young children and beginning readers since retiring from teaching. All the books are available at Amazon. com. She lives with her husband and German shepherd in Maryland.

She notes that her three married children and nine grandchildren are her toughest critics.

1980s

Michael W. Robinson, BA English ’82, JD ’86, is the president-elect of the Virginia State Bar. He is a partner with Venable LLC. Manuel Capsalis, MA History ’84, JD ’88, was presented his official commission as a Fairfax County General District Court judge on July 16, 2015. He took his official oath of office the previous month. He had previously been a substitute judge

for the 19th Judicial District in Northern Virginia.

1990s

Ann Marie Hicks, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’90, was keynote speaker at Misericordia University’s annual convocation ceremony, where she earned her bachelor’s degree.

Hicks retired in 2003 from nearly 40 years of teaching both in the United States and in Africa. She remains active in charitable and anti-poverty causes in Northern Virginia.

Editor’s note: Class Notes are submitted by alumni and are not verified by the editors.

While we welcome alumni news, Mason Spirit is not responsible for information contained in Class Notes.

Janet Rodriguez, BA Speech Communication ’90, won the 2015 Clarion Award for Television Talk Show–National for her work as a producer on CCTV-America’s Global Business: Latina Entrepreneurs.

Leslie Herman, BS Parks, Recreation, and Leisure Studies ’91, MPA ’05, became Vienna, Virginia’s parks and recreation direc(continued)

What’s Going On? We are interested in what you’ve been doing since you graduated. Have you moved? Gotten married? Had a baby?

Landed a hot new job? Received an award? Met up with some Mason friends? Submit your class notes to spirit@gmu.edu. In your note, be sure to include your graduation year and degree.

Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 41

tor on September 14, 2015.

She was previously superintendent of events and facilities for the city of Fairfax’s parks and recreation department.

Make It a Resolution Happy 2016, fellow alumni! A new year is a clean start for many of us—a chance to accomplish something you’ve always wanted to do or an opportunity to establish a good habit.

As you set resolutions this year, please keep our alma mater in mind. Mason needs you—whether you attend one of our networking events, volunteer for Admissions or Career Services, make a gift in support of something you love at Mason, or get involved in some other way. Your connection to Mason is a lifelong one, and one that we hope you will continue to pay forward to future generations of alumni through your participation in the life of this university.

One easy way to give back to Mason is by supporting the Alumni Association’s scholarship fund. Each year, the association presents awards to five current students.

Our goal, as part of the university’s “Faster Farther” campaign, is to increase the awards we can give. With the power of 170,000 alumni, it’s not a difficult goal to achieve. If each of us resolves to give a gift of any amount to this fund, we can, together, make a huge impact on the lives of future alumni. To find out more about this effort, please visit alumni.gmu.edu.

As always, thank you for continuing to support Mason.

I look forward to seeing many of you over the course of this year at the many exciting events your association has planned for you. We will get the year off to a great start by gathering at Homecoming on February 12-13, 2016. Registration is open at alumni.gmu.edu, and be sure to snap up your game tickets at gomason.com before they’re gone.

Go Mason!

Chris “CP” Preston, BS Management ’96 President, George Mason University Alumni Association

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La Bravia J. Jenkins, JD ’91, was named president of the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys at the organization’s annual meeting in Virginia Beach on August 8, 2015.

She has served as Fredericksburg’s Commonwealth’s Attorney since 2008. She is also a member of Governor Terry McAuliffe’s Parole Review and Update Commission.

Victoria Lipnic, JD ’91, was nominated by President Barack Obama to a reappointment as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She has been a panel member since 2010.

Carter Wilbur, BA Area Studies and International Studies ’91, began a two-year assignment in the summer of 2015 as the chief of the economic, environment, and energy section at the U.S. Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan. His prior assignments as a career foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State include Dhaka, Bangladesh; Lilongwe, Malawi; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Washington, D.C., as well as a special assignment outside

the State Department to the Asian Development Bank.

Ted Lancaster, BS Law Enforcement ’92, was named vice president and chief operating officer for Kia Canada. He was previously vice president, field sales and sales operations for Nissan Canada.

Oliver Potts, BA Government and Politics ’92, was appointed director of the Federal Register in August 2015. He was previously deputy executive secretariat at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was responsible for oversight and coordination of the agency’s regulatory agenda.

Miriam Van Scott, BA English ’92, is the author of a story chosen for publication in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Merry Christmas!

Sarah Davis, BA English ’93, began a small press called CHBB Publishing in 2012 for young adult/new adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy. CHBB now houses four other successful imprints: Vamptasy (Adult Horror), Hot Ink Press (Adult Romance), Steamwork Ink (Steampunk and Alternate History), and Encompass Ink (LGBTQ Fiction). (continued on page 42)

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Bill Karlson, MS Software Systems Engineering ’94, co-owns KO Distilling in Manassas, Virginia, which opened in September 2015. The distillery makes, stores, bottles, and ships clear (unaged) and brown (aged) distilled spirits. More information is available at www.kodistilling.com.

Tyson Claure, BS Finance ’95, graduated in August 2015 with a master’s degree in sports industry management from Georgetown University. He was also selected by faculty and staff to the prestigious Hoya Professional 30 for exemplifying leadership and excellence.

Russell McIntyre, BIS ’96, retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency as a member of the Senior Executive Service and office chief for the agency’s Office of Forensic Intelligence. He was also inducted into the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame.

Lou Gattis, MA Economics ’97, PhD Economics ’01, was named faculty director of the Penn State Smeal MBA Program. He is a clinical professor of finance at the university.

Emily (Gamis) Wedlock, BA Speech Communication ’97, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’98, a dedicated runner, has committed to finishing 40 races

before she turns 40. Her 40th race will be the Disney marathon on January 10, 2016. She is running her race in support of Reaching 4 Autism Miracles and is chronicling it at www.facebook.com/Running4AutismMiracles.

Penney Azcarate, JD ’98, was presented her official commission as a Fairfax Circuit Court judge on August 14, 2015. Before being elected by the General Assembly to the Circuit Court, she was the chief judge of the Fairfax County General District Court for seven years.

J. K. Daniels, MA English ’98, MFA Creative Writing ’11, won the second New Southern Voices Poetry Prize from Hub City Press.

Her work, Wedding Pulls, will be published in summer 2016. She teaches creative writing and literature at Northern Virginia Community College.

Joe Lahr, BS Marketing ’98, joined Surefire Social as vice president of technology. He was previously chief operations officer for Targeted Victory.

Sirena Johnson, BS Accounting ’99, was appointed to the board of directors for the Small and Emerging Contractors Advisory Forum. She is a principal at Thompson Greenspon.

David McGlothlin, MA New Professional Studies ’99, was named the 2015 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He teaches at Provincetown Schools in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Jill Rademacher, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’99, joined Silicon Valley Community Foundation as its chief donor experience and engagement officer. She previously served as managing director at Arabella Advisors.

Gregory Riegle, JD ’99, is the managing partner of the Tysons Corner office of McGuireWoods. He is a commercial real estate and land use attorney.

Denise Turner Roth, BA Government and Politics ’99, was nominated by President Barack Obama and sworn in as administrator of the General Services Administration in July 2015. She had been serving as acting administrator since March.

2000s

Michael Berlucchi, BA Government and International Politics ’02, was appointed in May 2015 to a three-year term on the Human Rights Commission

by the Virginia Beach City Council. He is a community engagement manager at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia.

2015–16 Alumni Association Board of Directors PRESIDENT

Alan Harbitter, PhD Computer Science ’02, became a shareholder and joined the Advisory Board of Grip, a software development intelligence firm.

Harbitter currently serves on the boards of XBOSoft, ARC of Northern Virginia, and the Medical Care for Children Partnership Foundation, and is chair of the Mason’s Computer Science Industry Advisory Board.

Christopher Preston, BS Management ’96

Melanie McCabe, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’02, MFA Creative Writing ’05, received an honorable mention for the Library of Virginia’s annual literary awards.

She teaches high school English and creative writing in Arlington.

Christina Vanecek, BS Marketing/ Minor in Economics ’06

William DeLuca, MS Biology ’03, is a research scientist at the University of Massachusetts. He was recently part of a team that outfitted a Blackpoll warbler with a tiny transmitting device that tracked the bird’s migration from the United States to South America.

The journey involved three days of nonstop flight covering more than 2,500 kilometers.

PRESIDENT-ELECT

Brian Jones, MA Public Policy ’06 VICE PRESIDENT— ADVOCACY

Kate McSweeny, JD ’04 VICE PRESIDENT— MEMBER INVOLVEMENT

Jennifer Shelton, BS Public Administration ’94 TREASURER

Andy Gibson, BA History ’92 SECRETARY

AT-LARGE DIRECTORS

Allen Johnson, BA English ’99 Jed Bullock, BA Government and Politics ’00, MPA ’02 Sirena Johnson, BS Accounting ’99 Conaway Haskins, BA Government and Politics ’99 Jeff Fissel, BS Information Technology ’06

Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 43

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Steve Pachella, MBA ’03, was named vice president of capital markets for ReliaMax, where he will lead the company’s external funding efforts, including establishing an assetbacked securities program.

He was previously managing director of strategy and loss mitigation at CIFG Holdings, Ltd.

Alumna Driven to Help Others Thrive

“I

am a public servant at heart.” That’s the first line of an essay Lori Sims, BA Criminology, Law and Society ’11, MPP ’15, submitted to a federal agency as she applied for a prominent—and valuable—fellowship. It’s the first thing she wanted the judges to know about her.

Sims has already devoted much of her life to helping others. She juggles several positions at area nonprofits,

including one that helps survivors of domestic violence and one that assists young victims of human trafficking.

Her full-time job was as a mental health professional at a crisis stabilization program.

That was last spring. Thanks to the essay and her compelling life story, Sims won the fellowship, becoming one of the 2015 Presidential Management Fellows. Some 7,800 people applied for 600 spots.

The fellowship is administered by the Office of Personnel Management and is intended to develop potential government leaders by permitting them to rotate from agency to agency at their pleasure for two years—paid, and with benefits—sampling the duties and demands for a few months at a time. At the end, a permanent job or term position is offered.

“Vulnerable populations in general attract me,” Sims says.

Sims understands hardship. Both of her parents were in the service and money was often in short supply.

“I’ve been in situations where my surroundings were not the best,” she says. “But I’ve seen the other side of things. I’ve got a glimpse of what happens when you come out of a bad situation. I choose to use that as an opportunity to give back to individuals who need my help the most.”

And Sims, it seems, can’t behave in any other way, except as a champion of those who need help. “I believe that each individual should be afforded the opportunity to succeed.”

“I feel like the fellowship has not only put my career goals in arm’s reach, but also validates everything I’ve worked so hard for my whole life. My dream to bring about socially responsible and effective policy change can and will come true.”

—Buzz McClain, BA ’77

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Marilyn K. Rahilly, PhD Education ’04, completed an 11-month Fulbright Senior Scholar Award in Taiwan during 2014-15.

Dan Hicks, BS Health, Fitness, and Recreation Resources ’05, made national headlines when he stopped on his way home from work as a police officer and talked a man off a highway bridge.

The incident was captured on traffic cameras and went viral. Hicks is a senior police officer in Raleigh, North Carolina.

S. Brendan Lynch, JD ’05, was appointed to the United Arts of Central Florida Board of Directors. The nonprofit organization invests in art, science, and history in Lake, Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties. He is a partner at Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed, P.A. Meghan Millar, BS Marketing ’05, MAIS ’14, joined Temple University as direc-

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tor of ticket operations.

She was previously assistant athletic director for ticketing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Elizabeth Ryan, JD ’05, has been elected partner at Squire Patton Boggs LLP, where she specializes in international policy and regulatory law matters. In fall 2015, the National Law Journal selected her as a “Rising Star” in Washington, D.C., and Legal Bisnow named her to its annual list of 40 Under 40.

Carlton Darby, BIS ’06, was promoted to Army Reservist Chief Warrant Officer 4 in a ceremony at the McNamara Headquarters Complex at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, on June 18, 2015. He is a civilian employee of Defense Logistics Agency.

Eileen Moore, MEd Special Education ’06, has opened an Abrakadoodle franchise, which offers art education and creativity programs for kids and adults in Prince William County, Virginia.

Jessica (Lott) Smolinski, BA Religious Studies ’07, wrote and illustrated a children’s book, The ABCs of Old Town Warrenton.

The book features wellknown landmarks and special events in the city of Warrenton, Virginia,

each incorporated with a letter of the alphabet.

Tim Stuecheli, BSEd Physical Education ’07, has worked for Fairfax County Public Schools for more than seven years. He is always happy to meet coworkers who are Patriots and to hear his students say they want to go to Mason, as he takes a lot of pride in being an alumnus.

Max Burns, BA Government and International Politics ’08, is the Washington, D.C., communications manager at Change. org. He was previously the senior associate in the digital interactive team at Glover Park Group.

2010s

Helen Chong, JD ’11, during the summer of 2015, won the Virginia State Bar’s Edwin Burnette Jr. Young Lawyer of the Year Award and was elected to the Board of Governors of the Young Lawyers Conference. She is a magistrate in Virginia.

Wendy Payne, MPA ’11, received the Outstanding CPA in Government Career Contribution Award from (continued)

Stay in Touch Update your contact information in the alumni directory to stay connected and get the latest news from Mason. Visit alumni.gmu.edu or call 703-993-8696 to learn more.

Lisa Hunter, BS Social Work ’09, launched Jes Catering LLC in 2014 to provide job opportunities, mentorship, scholarship, and educational opportunities to the homeless.

She is also a licensed social worker in Virginia and Washington, D.C. Mark Louie, BS Finance ’09, and Barbara Louie, BA Integrative Studies ’09, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’11, welcomed a son, Zachary Stephen, on July 24, 2015.

Mason a lumna D en Decemb er to add ise Turner Roth , BA Go ress grad Roth is a vern uati dministr ator of th ng students and ment and Politi cs ’99, w e Genera their fam a l Service s Admin ilies at the Winte s on campus in istration r Gradu a in Wash ington, D tion. .C. Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 45

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the American Institute of CPAs. Payne is executive director of the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board in Washington, D.C. Nathan Cushing, BS Systems Engineering ’12, MS Systems Engineering ’13, works at General Dynam-

ics Mission Systems. He assisted with General Dynamics sponsoring a computer science capstone project for a Mason student this year, with hopes of expanding to two capstone projects for next year. He is also hoping to find research and

development collaborations between his alma mater and his employer.

Cory Hancock, BA Global Affairs ’12, MPP ’14, works in the U.S. Army Military District of Washington Public Affairs Office. He is one of the lead communicators on one of the

Army’s largest outreach programs, “Spirit of America,” which visited EagleBank Arena in September 2015.

Edith (Gail H.) Johnson, MS Peace Operations ’12, CERG ’13, founded the Historic SW Rutland, Vermont, community association as part of the city’s urban neighborhood revitalization work. Johnson is applying her recent training to the revitalizing of rural American cities in the midst of current drug problems, increased crime, and underemployment.

Charles McCaffrey, MBA ’12, is director of the South Fairfax (Virginia) Small Business Development Center. In August he was part of the Southeast Fairfax Development Corporation’s 5th Business Roundtable Speaker Series. He started his own management consulting company in 2011.

Photo by Ben Leuner/AMC

Better call Saul When the AMC television series Better Call Saul returns for a second season this winter, watch for Mason alumna Rhea Seehorn, BA Studio Art ‘94, in her role as Kim Wexler, friend and confidant to the title character. Seehorn was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and studied painting and drawing from a young age. While at Mason, she indulged her growing passion for acting and was active in the Washington, D.C., theater scene, starring in productions at Arena Stage and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. She went on to star in ABC’s I’m with Her, and in NBC’s Whitney.

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Natalie Farr, MPP ’13, married George Rogers on April 11, 2015, in Arlington, Virginia. Farr is the deputy chief of staff for U.S. Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado.

Everett Hackett, BA English ’13, won the 53rd annual John and Jessie Kelley Ocean Beach Road Race in New London, Connecticut, in August 2015.

c la s s n o t e s ALUMNI CHAPTER REPRESENTATIVES BLACK ALUMNI

David Atkins, BS Decision Science ’90

Hackett finished nearly two and a half minutes in front of the second-place finisher.

Dylan Herbert, BS Health, Fitness, and Recreation Resources ’13, recently graduated from the University of South Florida (Tampa) with a master of business administration degree in sport business and a master of science degree in sport and entertainment management.

He has accepted a position as assistant director of development with the

University of South Florida athletic department.

Janie-Lynn Kang, BA Economics ’13, has been working as an economist for the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C., since graduating from Mason. She had the opportunity to serve as co-author for an article on the state of the U.S. labor force in 2014 and recently published a book review on immigrant integration, both via the bureau’s Monthly Labor Review. She

misses her days as a student at Mason dearly and will not forget the valuable education obtained as an undergraduate.

Julia-Marie Kim, BA Economics ’13, since graduation, has accepted a position as manager at Wells Fargo and moved to North Carolina to join her husband, John, a U.S. Army staff sergeant who recently returned from his third deployment.

Joseph Workman, MS Information Security and

Assurance ’13, along with two teammates, won a competition at the U.S. Cyber Challenge Eastern Regional Camp at Virginia Tech in July 2015. The prize was a $1,000 scholarship from U.S. Cyber Challenge and a certification test voucher from ISC2, a nonprofit that educates and certifies security professionals. Workman is a network analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Brian Raska, MEd Education Leadership ’14, was (continued)

College of Education and Human Development

Jugnu Agrawal, MEd Special Education ’07, PhD ’13 Anthony DeGregorio, BS Physical Education ’84, MS Physical Education ’89 College of Visual and Performing Arts

Shannon Baccaglini, MM Music ’06, MA Arts Management ’09 Volgenau School of Engineering

Mariana X. Cruz, BS Civil and Infrastructure Engineering Lambda

Alex Gant, BA History ’08 Conor O’Malley, BA History ’12 Law

Ben Owen, JD ’13 School of Business

E. Ryan Najjar, BS Management ’13 School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs

Kyle Green, MA International Commerce and Policy ’13 and MPA ’14 Latino

Cristian Pineda, BA Communication ’12 College of Science

Walter McLeod, MS Chemistry ’94 College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Jason Reis, BA Economics ’93 Golden Quill

Chloe Kingsley-Burt, BA Communication ’13, BS Marketing ’13 Rachel Bruns, BA Global Affairs ’13 Winter 2016 M a s o n S p i r i t | 47

c la s s n o t e s

selected as assistant principal at Stafford Elementary School in Virginia.

He was previously with Prince William County Public Schools as an adaptive physical education specialist.

Mark Bergman, DA Education (Community College) ’15, was named director of strings at Sheridan College in Wyoming.

He was previously a professor of music history and the ensemble director at Mason.

Daniel Birch, MEd Education Leadership ’15, was appointed assistant principal at Kate Waller Barrett Elementary School in Stafford County (Virginia) Public Schools. He previously taught fourth grade in Prince William County and Culpeper, Virginia, and in Cohoes, New York.

Visheshta Chopra, MS Health Informatics ’15, took first place in the MicroHealth LLC Future of Health competition.

The prize for the competition included a paid summer internship with MicroHealth.

Nicole Clemente, MEd Education Leadership ’15, was selected as assistant principal at Widewater Elementary School in Stafford County (Virginia) Public Schools. She was previously a third-grade teacher at the district’s Hampton Oaks Elementary.

Kirstin Russell, BS Finance ’15, was hired as a credit analyst for the Philadelphia market by 44 Business Capital LLC. She will support the U.S. Small Business Administration’s loan program for the company.

Obituaries Alumni Stephen D. Fischer, BA Chemistry ’71, July 11, 2015 Lillie H. Gray, BSEd Elementary Education ’71, July 3, 2015 Camille Joslyn, BSEd Elementary Education ’74, June 26, 2015 Kathleen A. Copps, BIS ’81, August 11, 2015 Anita C. Dorsey, MEd Special Education ’83, June 29, 2015 Joseph Hasankulizade, BA German ’84, April 11, 2015 Sarah Van Metre, BSN ’86, June 28, 2015 Anita K. Powell, MBA ’87, September 18, 2015 James S. Gibbons, BS Medical Technology ’88, July 5, 2015 Garson Page-Wood, MPA ’88, March 17, 2015 Angela M. Szumilo, BA Psychology ’89, CerB Gerontology ’94, July 22, 2015 Dolores A. Meyers, BSN ’90, July 24, 2015 Sue E. Niebling, MEd Elementary Education ’92, July 19, 2015 Paul C. Reber, MA History ’92, July 23, 2015 Stephen W. Morris, MA International Transactions ’95, MS Biodefense ’08, September 16, 2015 Allen R. Browning, BA Communication ’99, August 26, 2015 Sandgria L. Banks, BS Decision Science and Management Information Systems ’00, June 27, 2015 George P. Stojhovic III, BS Biology ’00, September 17, 2015 Laurel K. Jackson, BS Computer Science ’01, September 28, 2014 Simon D. Fox Jr., BS Marketing ’02, July 26, 2015 Paul T. Reuss, BA Philosophy ’09, August 8, 2015 James Marino, BA History ’10, August 22, 2015 Margaret P. Fischer, BS Social Work ’11, July 8, 2015 Ryan M. Lindenbaum, Student, August 27, 2015 Walter N. Martinez, Student, July 7, 2015

F a c u l t y a n d S t a ff Nancy O’Neill Murphy, former executive assistant to the vice president for University Life, died on January 3, 2016, at the family lake house in Locust Grove, Virginia, from complications from cancer. She was 70. Born in Kohler, Wisconsin, she later moved to Colorado where she graduated from Colorado State University. After graduation, Nancy volunteered to serve as a Red Cross “Doughnut Dolly” in Vietnam, where she met her husband, James Richard Murphy. She was an Army wife for 26 years before joining Mason where she had a lasting impact helping build what has become the Office of University Life. She retired from Mason in 2012 after 22 years of service. She is survived by her husband of 47 years; her mother, brother, and sister; two sons; and five grandchildren.

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4400 University Drive, MS 3B3 Fairfax, VA 22030

JAZZ FOR JUSTICE. The 14th Jazz 4 Justice benefit concert held each November pairs the Mason Jazz Ensemble with the Fairfax Law Foundation to generate financial support for community efforts and the ensemble’s school trips, recordings, and scholarships. This year’s guest conductor was Henry Butler, dean of Mason’s School of Law.

PhotoS Alexis Glenn PhotoS by by EVAN CANTWELL