MASON SPIRIT
S U M M 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 M M U N I T Y
WISH you were HERE different takes on summer breaks
TICK, TICK, TICK
â–
T H E LI B E R AL AR T S B IA S
Above The Encouragement Wall was the creation of Roosevelt @ Mason, the university’s largest and most active nonpartisan student policy organization. Inspired by The Courage Wall in Alexandria, Virginia, the freestanding piece of interactive art gave students the opportunity to support each other by writing anonymous notes of encouragement in a public space. Photo by Evan Cantwell
On the Cover Mason students swim with blacktip sharks during a Coral Reef Ecology class in the Bahamas. Photo courtesy of Eran Nimtz
D E PA R T M E N T S 2 FIRST WORDS
42 A LU M N I I N P R I N T
3 FR O M O U R R E A D E R S
43 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
4 4 C L A S S N O T E S
8 @ M A S O N
46 From the Alumni Association President
13 M E E T T H E M A S O N N AT I O N 34 I N Q U I R I N G M I N DS 4 0 S H E L F L I FE
A L U M N I
PROFILES
44 Juan Rodriguez, BA Biology ’09 49 Liya Palagashvili, BS Economics ’11, MA Economics ’12, PhD Economics ’15 50 Ruthie Rado, BA Theater ’14
G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y: A G R E AT U N I V E R S I T Y O F A N E W A N D N E C E S S A R Y K I N D MORE ON THE WEB When you see this graphic, follow it to the magazine’s website for more: spirit.gmu.edu.
16
21
26
3.
liberal arts are not practical.
BONUS COVERAGE Read about the 2016 Celebration of Distinction awardees on page 30.
Lyme Disease Bites What began as a high school student’s summer research project is now a licensed test in clinical trials that can detect Lyme disease earlier so people can start treatment sooner.
What I Did on My Summer Vacation Many college students can’t wait for the end of the semester and the down time that brings. But a large number of Mason students use the time away from classes to do more—acquire skills, master languages, conduct research, and generally make a difference in the world around them.
5 Myths About the Liberal Arts Robert Matz, associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, looks at some misconceptions about getting a liberal arts degree and how the degree meets up with what employers are looking for in a challenging job market.
MASON SPIRIT
F E AT U R E S
Mason robots come in all sizes and shapes. Find out more at robotics.gmu.edu.
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 1
FIRST WORDS
MASON SPIRIT A MAGAZINE FOR THE GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY
REACHING THE TOP, AND STAYING THERE
T
he influential Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education recognized Mason this year as one the “highest research” universities in the country, fulfilling a major goal that we set forth in our 2014-24 strategic plan. This is a new summit in our trajectory. Of the 115 universities on the “R1” list, Mason is one of only 10 founded since 1950. By contrast, 92 institutions on the list were founded in the 1800s or earlier (including 12 that were already in operation when our university’s namesake still strolled the grounds of Gunston Hall). The Carnegie R1 distinction, earned in part through our increasing research expenditures and doctoral degrees conferred between 2009 and 2014, will help us attract even more of the best and brightest faculty and students in the world. It sends a clear signal to the academic and scientific communities, and public and private industry, that Mason is a world-class research center and engine of innovation. Very importantly, the R1 designation highlights the unique learning opportunities that are created for our undergraduate students, an effort that recently earned a national award from the Council on Undergraduate Research. Okay, so now that we’ve joined the top group, how do we stay here? Carnegie reclassifies research universities every five years, which means that as Mason and others rose to R1, other institutions dropped out. We’re taking steps to solidify our standing. Around the same time we received the Carnegie news, we made two key hires that will better position us to maximize our research capabilities. We welcomed Deborah Crawford as vice president of research. She has extensive experience in research at the federal, university, and nonprofit levels, including a 17-year stint at the National Science Foundation. Sean Mallon joined us from the Northern Virginia-based Center for Innovative Technology. He steps into our newly created associate vice president for entrepreneurship and innovation role. He will help Mason establish and strengthen partnerships and take new technologies and products to market. Another must for remaining in the top Carnegie group is increasing our private support. The average university in our classification derives about 9 percent of its annual budget from philanthropy. Although we have made impressive progress over the last four years, Mason still derives only 5 percent of its operating budget from philanthropy. We have ground to make up there. We also will continue to commit to research opportunities for all students. The Council on Undergraduate Research awarded Mason its 2015 Campus-wide Award for Undergraduate Research accomplishment, saying that Mason has created a “national model for other institutions to emulate.” All of these endeavors require additional resources. But one thing is for sure: Mason is worth the investment. Now more than ever. Ángel Cabrera President
2 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
spirit.gmu.edu MANAG ING EDITOR Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95 A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R S Rob Riordan Melanie Balog C R E AT I V E D I R E C T O R Sarah Metcalf Seeberg ART DIRECTOR Elliott de Luca, BA ’04 SE N I O R CO PY WR ITE R Margaret Mandell A S S I S TA N T E D I T O R Cathy Cruise, MFA ’93 E D I T O R I A L A S S I S TA N T Amber Papas, BA ’16 I L L U S T R AT I O N Marcia Staimer CO NTR IBUTO R S Martha Bushong Damian Cristodero M. Leigh Harrison Robert Matz Buzz McClain, BA ’77 Michele McDonald Jamie Rogers Keith Strigaro Preston Williams 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 Ron Aira, 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 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.
FROM OUR READERS
ANOTHER MASON MATCH ➤Elana ➤ Abramov, BS Biology ’13, and I met in 2009 at a Chi Psi–Gamma Phi Beta mixer held at the Patriot Center. We were married at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Virginia, last October. We recently moved to Washington, D.C., with our mini Australian shepherd, Misha. I work as a forward deployed software engineer at Palantir Technologies, and Elana is an award-winning auto damage supervisor at Geico. We liked our undergraduate experience at Mason so much that we decided to have our engagement photos taken on campus. I thought I would share some of the pictures. Paul Thoren, BS Computer Science ’10
A DIVERSITY OF VIEWPOINTS ➤Very ➤ disappointing to hear of the way the naming of the Law School has devolved. Please don’t descend into the liberal pit [into which] so many higher ed institutions have sunken. Honor Scalia as the nomination intended. Chris Mandel, MBA ’94
➤ SEEN ON THE WEB Emily C. Mathae @emily_corinne
I feel like it's fate using my spirit violation coupon to purchase a Mason Alumni tshirt...
#MasonGrad
AND THERE YOU GO, FULL CIRCLE ➤I➤ write to you asking if you would be so kind as to pass this email along to Afra Ahmad (student profile, spring issue, p. 39). You see, as I was reading about her in the Mason Spirit this weekend, I realized that she is actually one of my former first-grade students. I received a MEd in 1987 from Mason shortly after I began teaching. I just love hearing from and about former students, but Afra's story, while no surprise to me, really warmed my heart. I could not help but try to reach out to her with congratulations on the other end of her educational journey. What a wonderful young woman! Mary Beth McHugh, MEd ’87
New on spirit.gmu.edu In this online issue, • Film and Video Studies students won a regional Emmy this year. Watch their short film online. 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. Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 3
A DVA N C I N G MA S O N
Making Philanthropy Visible AS A FUNDRAISER AND A UNIVERSITY LEADER, I’m always interested when philanthropy is in the news. So I’m pleased to note that in the past few months we at George Mason University have made more than our fair share of news, including extraordinary gifts that have led to the renaming of Mason’s school of public policy and the renaming of our law school after Justice Antonin Scalia (see page 14). We are incredibly grateful to each of the donors involved for their leadership and their generosity. Mason is a young university, and we are fortunate that many of the generation who have built and shaped this institution—philanthropists as well as public servants—are still with us. We recently honored former Virginia Governor Linwood Holton, for example, by naming a prominent plaza on the Fairfax Campus in his honor. And we will continue to look for similar opportunities to recognize such leaders, as universities public and private always have. At Mason we are creating our own traditions, and proudly writing our own history, as we speak. As we honor our past, we also must foster private philanthropy to secure our present and our future. Though George Mason is a public university, taxpayer dollars amount to just a small portion of the funds our students and faculty need. Last year, state funds covered up only 17 percent of Mason’s total operating expenses. That percentage has been declining for years; increasing private philanthropy is essential to cover the gap. That’s why we encourage every alumnus to give, at whatever level he or she feels appropriate. It’s how we give back—so that the next generation of students and strivers can write their own chapter in Mason’s history. And it’s why we seek out, and celebrate through naming, extraordinary gifts that can fund scholarships, raise buildings, and leave a legacy for generations. In May we announced a gift of $10 million from businessman and philanthropist Dwight C. Schar, a new high point in his three-decade history of commitment to George Mason. In his honor, Mason’s public policy school will now be known as the Schar School of Policy and Government. All 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the school will directly benefit from this gift. It is an extraordinary legacy that befits a man who has long been a builder in every sense of the word. Thank you, Mr. Schar. You are making a difference that will be visible for decades to come. Janet E. Bingham, PhD Vice President, Advancement and Alumni Relations President, George Mason University Foundation
1972
Plaza Named in Honor of Mason Founder On April 12, the green space adjacent to the Center for the Arts was dedicated as the A. Linwood Holton Jr. Plaza to honor the former governor’s lifetime of service, including his leadership in helping Mason blossom from a small local college four decades ago to the 34,000-student international university it has become today. In 1972, Holton signed the legislation that separated “George Mason College” from the University of Virginia. Also attending the ceremony was one of Holton’s daughters, Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton, and various key figures from throughout Mason’s history. —Preston Williams
4 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
A DVA N C I N G MA S O N
C H U C K CO LG AN :
A Life of Service You can sum up the life and career of Charles J. “Chuck” Colgan, the longest-serving state senator in Virginia’s history, in a single word: service. Senator Colgan’s service to his community, his state, and his constituents is legendary. Colgan, who retired this year at the age of 89 after four decades in the state senate, was a champion for the needs of his constituents and for higher education in Virginia. Colgan’s vision and support have spurred the rapid growth of George Mason University. From his influential perch on the Senate Finance Committee, he helped direct appropriations totaling more than $1.2 billion for higher education in the commonwealth, including more than $600 million for Mason. Buildings like the Hylton Performing Arts Center on the Science and Technology Campus are part of his legacy. But to break ground, you must first find common ground. That might be Colgan’s greatest strength, as evidenced by the bipartisan acclaim he received at a retirement tribute held in his honor last September at the Hylton Center. Now, as this “servant leader” finds more time to spend with his 8 children, 24 grandchildren, and 20 greatgrandchildren, the honors pour in. A new public high school in Prince William County will bear his name. And in March, the university’s Board of Visitors voted to rename the first academic building on the Science and Technology Campus as Senator Charles J. Colgan Hall. His legacy at Mason will continue in other ways, too, including through the Senator Charles J. Colgan Community Arts Benefit Fund, as well as a named endowment that will provide college scholarships for area citizens.
CHUCK COLGAN: Changing lives by giving to Mason Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 5
PHOTO BY EVAN CANTWELL
6 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
BUSTING
LOOSE The weather looked a little iffy, but that didn't stop anyone from moving to the beat at the opening day event of the 2016 International Week festivities.
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 7
@
MASON
Mailey Shimon in the costume workroom at her internship in New York.
PHOTO BY WILL MARTINEZ
All Her World’s a Stage
M
ason theater student Mailey Shimon spent January and February in New York as a costuming intern on the stage adaption of the movie, A Bronx Tale. Shimon, a senior, says she’d been eyeing the opportunity to work with the play’s costumer, six-time Tony Award winner William Ivey Long, since she was a sophomore. Internships at William Ivey Long Studios are competitive and are usually given to graduate students with more experience. Shimon’s mentor, Mason theater professor Howard Vincent Kurtz, mentioned her during a meeting he had with Long three years ago. Long, in turn, recommended that she apply for the internship. Kurtz wrote Shimon a recommendation letter and helped her pull together the application, which she submitted to the studio in 2014. “During the summer of 2015, I took on the
vigorous campaign on Mailey’s behalf to get her this internship during her senior year,” says Kurtz, who worked as a professional costume designer in New York City before coming to Mason. “I called Donald directly to talk through project and time slots [and] Bronx Tale became the best fit.” Shimon’s strong resume—costume, hair, and makeup work on several Mason productions, and two summers as a supervisor and costume design assistant at Berkshire Theatre Festival—helped her land the gig. But Shimon says Kurtz has been instrumental in her growth since she met him her freshman year. “We had a game plan every semester to prepare me for life after college,” she says. “He sat me down and said, ‘You can have a real future in this.’” Shimon acted as a runner between Long’s
8 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
studio and the costume shop. She went to rehearsals each day to make drop-offs. Shimon also worked on the production’s “show bible,” a breakdown of all the characters’ costumes and where items were purchased, so that if something were to happen to a costume during a show, staff would know how to replace or repair it. “The great part about this internship is all the people I get to connect with,” she says. “The networking I get to do is amazing. I’ve gotten offers for future projects and met some people that would like to work with me in the future.” Shimon’s next project is Disaster, a show in production at the Nederlander Theater on Broadway. —Jamie Rogers
@
MASON
Championship ‘Like a Dream Come True’ When Mason senior Alex Mandeville scored the winning goal that gave the club ice hockey team its first championship, the scene became a blur. “I can’t even remember it,” Mandeville says of the celebration after his power-play goal gave the Patriots a 3-2 final victory over Christopher Newport University. “It was pretty much mind-blowing.” Plenty of subplots followed Mason’s drive to the Colonial Division title in the Blue Ridge Hockey Conference of the East Coast Collegiate Hockey Association. There was the impending retirement of sixth-year coach Steve Hyjek, who forward Seve Cordova, BS Criminology, Law and Society ’14, MPP ’16, called “one of the greatest guys you will ever meet on or off the ice.” There was the 4-3 semifinal win in overtime over North Carolina-Wilmington, a team Mason had never beaten. And there was the leadership of defensemen Nick Baker, BS Applied Information Technology ’16, and Ryan Pageau, MS Applied Information Technology ’16. Mason trailed Wilmington 3-2 heading into the third period. Facing the possible end of the season, and perhaps the final game for those graduating, Baker and Pageau rallied their teammates with the reminder that Wilmington knocked the Patriots out of last year’s playoffs. “That,” Baker says, “lit a fire.” “The team responded,” said Cordova, the team’s leading scorer, whose power-play goal beat Wilmington. “We know we’re a better team and we expect to win.”
Quite a difference from Hyjek’s first season that ended with a 2-19 record. “We wanted to build a program and not just a team,” said Hyjek, whose full-time job is as a defense and aerospace consultant. “This was part of every year taking another step up the ladder, improving the capability and legitimacy of the program.” “Definitely a lot of satisfaction to watch the program grow and adapt over the years,” says Mandeville, BS Civil Engineering ’16. As for scoring the championship goal, “Definitely breathtaking,” he says. “Like a dream come true.” —Damian Cristodero
LOANER FOR LIFE MILESTONE Graduation should be a time of excitement and possibility, not a time to feel burdened by another expense. Soon-to-be alumni who can’t swing the cost of one of the most important purchases of their college careers are now getting some help from the Mason community. The new Gowns for Grads lending program allows Mason alumni to donate their graduation regalia to graduating seniors who don’t have the means to buy their own. Bachelor’s degree regalia costs around $60, while regalia for a master’s can run as much as $120, says Amanda Myers, BA Psychology ’10, an academic adviser for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Myers says she was inspired to start the program by a student she knew who was on the brink of eviction. The student had just scraped up enough money to buy textbooks. “I waited until the student left my office, and then I started crying. I was thinking, ‘It can’t just be her,’” Myers says. Staffers from Mason’s University Life later told Myers some stu-
dents had come to the campus Pop Up Food Pantry, asking for caps and gowns. At press time, about 47 caps and gowns had been received for spring 2016 graduation, and more than 148 students had applied. But with the different convocation times, Myers thought she would have enough to go around. Recent grad Crystal Horton, BSW ’16, wore one of those gowns. “As college students, we’re already not in the best financial situation,” Horton says. “I’m financially independent, and this is one thing on my checklist that I didn’t have to worry about.” Alumni are encouraged to donate their gowns anytime. Information about how to donate and how to receive is available at ulife. gmu.edu/get-help/pop-up-pantry/gowns-for-grads-lending-program or by contacting gowns4grad@gmail.com. “It’s a pat on the back,” says Myers of the loaner program. “I want to send [them] away from Mason feeling cared about.”
—Jamie Rogers
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 9
@
eorge Mason University point guard Taylor Brown, Health, Fitness, and Recreation Resources ’15, was only 10 years old when she ran her first basketball camp in her hometown of Bowie, Maryland. The young entrepreneur didn’t play around. “I had them doing layups, ball handling drills, and I had my own clipboard,” she says. “I even gave each of the kids T-shirts.” Brown was recently named to the 2016 Allstate Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Good Works Teams, which honors college basketball student-athletes who have dedicated themselves to bettering the lives of others through giving back to their communities. Brown, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in film and video studies, is one of only five Division I women’s basketball players in the country to be honored. In addition to running the youth basketball camps, Brown helps as a student mentor, contributes to the university’s Happy Heart Walk, serves in campus ministry through George Mason’s U Church, films videos for the Athletics Department, and reaches out with personal testimonies on her website, taybrowntestimony.com. “I’m so blessed, and I’m just grateful,” says Brown. “My ultimate goal is to own a sports complex center, so I definitely want to be able set an example for younger kids. I want to show them that as long as you believe in yourself and work hard you can achieve great things as well.”
Hoops and Hope Take this Mason Player to the Rim Railey the Service Dog Awarded Honorary Diploma One of George Mason University’s newest “graduates” is two feet tall, has a wet nose, and loves a good belly rub.
PHOTO BY LAURA SIKES
Railey Quiltstrom Dog-Jolliff, a devoted service dog, “graduated” from George Mason’s School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs in May and received an honorary diploma. The 8-year-old Labrador retriever attended every class with Tiffany Jolliff, who is blind, during her two years in the Organization Development and Knowledge Management degree program.
10 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y 10 |
Railey and Jolliff, a program specialist at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, have been a team for seven years. “Railey and I have been through a lot together over the past seven years—degrees, crosscountry moves, internships, and jobs,” Joliff says. “And while I, of course, could have handled all of these things on my own, it has been a blessing to have him as my unconditional companion through everything.” As Jolliff completed her degree program, it was only fitting for Railey to be honored, too. He will be retiring from service next year. —Keith Strigaro
PHOTO COURTESY OF MASON ATHLETICS
G
MASON
@
MASON
Honorees, Once Underdogs, Are
Mason T
Champions
he three newest recipients of the George Mason Medal, the university’s highest honor, have something in common besides their lovefor George Mason University: Each knows what it’s like to be an underdog. They received their medals from President Ángel Cabrera at the May 14 spring Commencement ceremony.
Charles J. “Chuck” Colgan lost both of his parents at the age of four. In 1944 at age 17 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps Reserve, serving two years on active duty. Elected to the Virginia State Senate representing the citizens of Prince William, Manassas, and Manassas Park, Colgan eventually became the longest-serving state senator in Virginia history, retiring in 2016. An ardent supporter of Mason, he led the charge in Richmond for the university’s needs, particularly for the Science and Technology Campus in Prince William County. During Colgan’s time in leadership on the Senate Finance Committee he helped appropriate more than $1.2 billion for higher education in Virginia, including nearly $617 million for Mason. Long V. Nguyen grew up in Vietnam during an era of poverty and persistent conflict. After emigrating to the United States as a teenager
Colgan
Nguyen
in the 1950s, Nguyen learned English, earned engineering degrees, and became a professor of computer science. In 1985 he founded Pragmatics Inc., an information technology firm in McLean, Virginia, that now employs nearly 500 people. In 2009 Nguyen and his wife donated $5 million to Mason; the Long and Kimmy Nguyen Engineering Building on the Fairfax Campus is named in their honor. Jim Larrañaga guided the Mason men’s basketball team to one of the greatest underdog runs of all time. In 2006 Larrañaga’s 11th-seeded Patriots became the first so-called “mid-major” to reach the Final Four. Larrañaga led Mason to 13 consecutive winning seasons, including five NCAA berths. A graduate of Providence College with a degree in economics, he is now the men’s basketball coach at the University of Miami. —Rob Riordan
Larrañaga Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 11
@
MASON
Engineering students recommended an “Elephant Skin Spa” design using a tower of street sweeper brushes that the animals can rub up against.
These Big Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
D
ESIGNING AN OBJECT TO ENRICH THE LIVES of six four-legged female clients who weigh as much as 10,000 pounds, can move at speeds of 30 miles per hour, and are apt to eat 125 to 150 pounds of food daily is an unusual class assignment for civil engineering students.
When zookeepers at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., were looking for additional designs to consider for elephant enrichment, they contacted Liza Durant, chair of the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at the Volgenau School of Engineering. The school had a connection with the zoo in alumna Paige Babel, BS ’15, a zookeeper on the Asia Trail. Babel studied civil engineering and environmental science at Mason, so when the conversation about enlisting the help of future engineers began, she immediately thought of the school. “We were looking for intellectually curious students and hoping for a structurally sound piece. We also knew that building an enrichment object would take a lot of outside knowledge about construction,” says Babel. “Our Asian elephants have all kinds of objects in their space, but we thought the students might come up with ideas we hadn’t thought about.” As part of the assignment, students from Durant’s environmental engineering class visited the Elephant Community Center at the zoo in February to meet the
12 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
six elephants, observe their species-specific behaviors, and question the zookeepers. The students appreciated information that the zookeepers shared and the insight they provided. “Being there with a specific assignment made me observe their behavior more closely,” said civil engineering student Paula Young. “I was surprised at their trunk dexterity and never thought about them not being able to see things that are above them. All of this will be good to know as we design our object.” For the next several weeks, teams of four to six students designed an object that they thought elephants would want to use or play with. At the end of the class, they presented their plans to officials at the National Zoo and are waiting to hear if one or more of their designs was chosen. “There’s no right or wrong answer to this assignment,” says Durant. “It’s more about how the teams approached the problem and what they developed. Whatever the outcome, I know the students are learning valuable engineering skills.” —Martha Bushong
@
MASON
PHOTO BY EVAN CANTWELL
M E E T T H E M A S O N N AT I O N
LaNitra Berger
Job: Director, Office of Fellowships, Honors College
Last year brought a record number of fellowships to Mason, with 19 students winning prestigious national awards, including nine Fulbrights. Six of these were mentored by LaNitra Berger. Since coming to Mason in 2010, Berger has been instrumental in assisting students seeking awards and in addressing the underrepresentation of minority students. Record Fulbrights: Berger credits a high caliber of applicants and a bit of luck for last year’s wins, but also students’ ability to carefully follow directions. “They came to me early,” she says. “It takes a year to write a successful application—they followed all the steps in the process, then they worked on draft after draft of their essays. It’s the hard work students put into their applications that makes the difference.” The Process: Each fall, Berger begins recruiting students for fellowships and advises them on their applications. Then personal statement specialist Betsy Allen, a graduate student in Mason’s Creative Writing Program, brainstorms with them on how to approach their essays. Students submit materials to a campus committee for feedback, and Berger helps them revise and submit applications by final deadlines. Finally, they practice interviewing. By April, most applicants have been notified of decisions, and “we usually have some good news to celebrate,” says Berger.
Going Where Students Hang: To reach out to the thousands of undergraduates she serves, Berger keeps weekly office hours in the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Multicultural Education. There’s typically a line outside her door, and several of last year’s winners came from meeting her there. What’s on Her Wish List: 1) Getting more students to apply for awards, particularly in the sciences; 2) cracking the Marshall Scholarship—a British program that sends 40 American students to the U.K. for two years (Mason students have made the finals twice); and 3) getting more faculty members to encourage students to apply, serve on mock interview committees, and “just see what happens when a student gets excited about something in their class, does a research project, and wins a fellowship to do it overseas.” Best Thing About Mason: “The representation of minority students in our fellowship winners,” she says. “If you look at profiles of who generally wins fellowships, it is not students of color, it is not firstgeneration students. So I was very happy that, of our 19 winners last year, 10 of them were low-income, first-generation students. At Mason, not only are we talking about diversity, we’re making it something that is actually living up to our own values.” —Cathy Cruise, MFA ’93
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 13
LEARN, CHAL
LEARN. CHALLENGE. LEAD.
LLENGE, LEAD “ It is a tribute altogether fitting
that George Mason University’s law school will bear his name.
”
—JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG
Welcome to the Antonin Scalia Law School A Renamed Law School Honors Generous New Scholarship Funds
Earlier in the spring, Mason received the largest gift in its history: a combined $30 million in current-use funds to benefit scholarships at the School of Law. In recognition of that generosity, the Board of Visitors approved naming the school after the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—a long-time Northern Virginia resident who served as a guest lecturer at the law school and spoke at the dedication of its building in 1999. The renaming of the law school became official at the May meeting of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. The scholarship funds at the Scalia Law School will offer substantial freedom from debt to some 280 students over the next five years—letting graduates pursue their dreams of making a difference by practicing in areas of their choice. A combination of $20 million from an anonymous donor joined with $10 million from the Charles Koch Foundation, the law school’s landmark gift comes barely half a year after the public launch of Faster Farther, the university’s $500 million comprehensive campaign. Running through 2018, the Faster Farther campaign will continue to offer alumni, friends, institutional donors, and other stakeholders a powerful new way to build on a diversity of established strengths that, together, will help advance the common good.
Join us in celebrating new opportunities for students of high promise. Learn more at fasterfarther.gmu.edu.
LYME DISE A SE
Bites But a new test can now detect it earlier so treatment can start sooner.
16 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
BY MICHELE MCDONALD
A
high school student’s goal to create a better way to diagnose Lyme disease at its earliest stages now helps doctors treat their patients.
It all began six years ago when rising high school senior Temple Douglas was part of George Mason University’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program.
The teenager from Lucketts, Virginia, had family members who were suffering from the tick-borne disease and wondered if Mason-developed technology could be used to design a more accurate test. Her mentor, Mason researcher Alessandra Luchini, told her to run with it. Douglas collected the first round of ticks for the initial work on the test in Mason’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine. “I lived in the countryside, so whenever people found ticks on their animals or crawling on their pants after they went hiking, I would take them with me to the lab,” says Douglas, who graduated from Princeton University and is now a doctoral student at Virginia Tech working on new cancer detection methods.
In 2014,
96%
of the confirmed Lyme disease cases were reported as coming from 14 states. Two of the states were Virginia and Maryland. —CDC statistic
And 300 patients later, the idea Douglas brought into the lab that Mason researchers refined is helping patients receive early and accurate diagnoses for Lyme disease. Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 17
Temple Douglas (left) visited with her former ASSIP mentor Alessandra Luchini in the Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine lab in 2013.
SNEAK Y START TO A LONG-TERM BATTLE Lyme disease starts with a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi, which can be carried by blacklegged ticks. Nymphs—about the size of the period at the end of this sentence—can bite unnoticed until the standard first sign of Lyme disease, a bull’s-eye rash, appears. Joint and muscle aches, fatigue, fever, chills, headaches, and swollen lymph nodes typically follow, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Borrelia burgdorferi bacterium
A dose of antibiotics usually kills the bacteria, but symptoms may persist. Patients return to their doctors months and even years later, convinced they still have Lyme disease, says Lance Liotta, co-director of Mason’s molecular medicine center. Until now, doctors couldn’t test to see whether the disease was still active or not. Regular blood tests only show if the body has created antibodies to fight the infection, but antibodies remain even after the infection is beaten.
18 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
I N T H E LY M E L I G H T “Everyone measures the antibodies because it’s much easier,” says Luchini, who spearheaded the Lyme test research and is a co-inventor of the technology.
Conner, BA English ’01, MFA Creative Writing ’09, knew some-
thing was wrong with him in early 2010.
Mason researchers bypass the antibodies and go straight for the tiniest of clues called antigens, which are shed by the Lyme disease bacterium while active. A Mason-created technology traps these particles that were once too small to test. “The antigen is a component of the toxic-causing agent itself,” Luchini says. “Instead of looking at the host response or whatever the human body does to fight the infection, we look at a piece of the infection-causing agent.”
A
rtist and writer David Michael
He was suffering from cluster headaches, temporary leg paralysis, double vision, panic attacks, hearing fluctuations, and bouts of fatigue so extreme he couldn’t drag himself out of bed. After years of enduring a battery of tests and struggling to get a concrete diagnosis—all while trying to work a full-time job in spite of his many symptoms—Conner discovered that all of his health issues traced back to an inadequate course of antibiotics he took for
TRAPPING THE PROTEINS Mason’s nanoparticle technology works much like a lobster trap, Liotta says. It’s an open meshwork with bait inside. The traps look like tiny white balls under the microscope.
What made you finally decide to write about Lyme Disease?
“The protein that we want goes in and gets stuck inside,” Liotta says. “It binds to that bait in the trap.”
re-diagnosed with Lyme in February 2015 and about six months after antibiotic
Mason’s approach can determine if someone has Lyme disease even before antibodies are made.
and Sara Bareilles to a Huffington Post editor and was given a HuffPost blog. The
And it’s those antibodies that can cause problems down the line, Liotta says. Antibodies fight infection and react to the proteins in the bacteria. But antibodies don’t stop with the infection—they move to attack proteins in the nerves, joints, and brain. Mason licensed its technology to private company Ceres Nanosciences, which has commercialized the urine-based test and brought it into doctor’s offices. Mason researchers are working with Ceres to apply a similar approach to Ebola, malaria, and tuberculosis, among other diseases. “We’re looking to repeat the story again with these other diseases,” Luchini says. “Other targets for the new type of test include Chagas disease, which is infectious and caused by a parasite, and toxoplasmosis, another parasite-borne disease.” To find out more about the Lyme disease test, visit the Ceres Nanosciences website at www.ceresnano.com. To learn more about the research being conducted at the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, visit capmm.gmu.edu.
Lyme disease at the age of 18. Now Conner is speaking out internationally about Lyme disease and advocating for those who are chronically ill with it.
I’ve done freelance entertainment and LGBT-centric writing for many years, but I lost my ambition and my ability to focus on writing after I became ill. I was treatment, I had my ambition back. I pitched interviews with [singers] Tori Amos blog gives me the opportunity to pitch to various “verticals,” one of which is HuffPost Healthy Living. [My first] article discussed everything I wished I had known about Lyme but never would have imagined could be true.
The reaction to your Huffington Post article was impressive. Were you prepared for such a reception? Not at all. I honestly didn’t think there would be much interest in Lyme disease for various reasons. I was wrong. Within hours of publication, I had emails and calls from Lyme researchers, patients, philanthropists, and others who were entirely supportive. More surprising was the number and intensity of messages from people who are desperate for medical attention, some of them literally disabled, but whose insurance won’t cover antibiotic treatment for their infections. I’ve become involved, to the extent I can, which is primarily through writing, in Lyme advocacy because there’s so much on the line. As an English major I don’t use the word “literally” casually—and I literally thought I was going to die from around 2011 through 2015. No doctor could tell me what was wrong with me beyond speculating I might be a victim of my own anxiety or possibly an as-yet-unknown disorder. I thought there was no hope—and that’s the place so many people are in right now. —Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 19
Coral Reef Ecology students take a break while scuba diving, and (above right) Erica Street, MPH ’16, shows how excited she is to be in Swaziland working on her practicum.
20 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
HOW I SPENT
MY SUMMER
Vacation Many college students can’t wait for the end of the semester and the down time that brings. But a large number of Mason students use the time away from classes to
do more—acquire skills, master languages, conduct research, and generally make a difference in the world around them. B Y CO L L E E N K E A R N E Y R I C H , M FA ’ 95 PHOTOS COURTESY OF INTEGRATIVE STUDIES
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 21
“
The wall between the
site and the earth failed.
It just poured mud and sand and dirt in there to the point that you wouldn’t have even known [the site] was there. This was my first
”
chance to taste what actual
fieldwork was like. —Bryan Dalton
22 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
W
hen George Mason University anthropology major Bryan Dalton stepped off the plane in Nicaragua last summer, he was quickly whisked away to help save an archaeological site on the brink of destruction.
It was June in the Central American country, five students and three staff members. and heavy tropical rains had flooded the “A lot of good things came out of it,” says Huellas de Acahualinca Museum, endangerLowry of last year’s emergency. “It allowed us ing the 2,100-year-old footprints encased in to work together with the Nicaragua archaevolcanic ash that the museum is built around. ologists, and the students got to do something “The wall between the site and the earth failed. they never would have had the opportunity It just poured mud and sand and dirt in there to work on before.” to the point that you wouldn’t have even • he Mason student organization Engiknown [the site] was there,” Dalton says. neers for International Development is Dalton was in Nicaragua to work on a different also traveling to Nicaragua this summer. Led archaeology dig with George Mason anthroby civil engineering major Rony Avalos, the pology professor Justin Lowry, but the flood group spent part of spring semester designing meant Lowry first needed the students to help a new water distribution system for an tackle this emergency. orphanage that supports 300 children, and “This was my first chance to taste what actual planning for the trip to install it. This is the fieldwork was like,” says Dalton—and to save group’s sixth trip to Nicaragua, although the projects have been in different locations a national treasure. throughout the country. After completing their critical mission at Acahualinca in Managua, the students traveled to “We had to figure out where the problems their original destination—Chiquilistagua, were,” says Avalos, who has been president of where Lowry runs a field school. Lowry, who the organization for three years. “The orphans specializes in archaeological anthropology, takes are only receiving water for about two hours students to Nicaragua during most summer out of the day.” And that water is of poor (continued next page) breaks and traveled there this summer with
T
Left, Mason graduate student Merna Saad travels to the village of Chino Rio Blanco in the Amazon. Right, Mason anthropology students work to save an ancient site from flood damage in Nicaragua. Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 23
quality. Avalos says the distribution system pipes are too small and are broken in many places, and the concrete water storage tower is crumbling.
and a cohort of graduate and undergraduate students. To make the three-week trip possible, she started a GoFundMe site and held a car wash as part of her fundraising strategy.
Seven students and two faculty members, including the “It was really important to me that this trip not be volungroup’s technical adviser and Mason adjunct faculty mem- tourism,” says Street. “I really wanted to do something that ber Matthew Doyle, director of Engineers for International contributed, something that future students could build Development, made the trip. upon.”
During one of her trips to India, Beverly Harp took sitar lessons (above). Whitney Woodcock, BS Civil Engineering ’16, was a part of Mason’s Engineers for International Development team working on water systems in Nicaragua (below).
In addition to the planning and construction, the student engineers also raised money to purchase the needed supplies. The group often receives support from the department and the Provost’s Office, but this year they had $7,500 to add to their budget thanks to an award from the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying for their successful service projects in Nicaragua and the partnership between students and professional engineers. • ommunity and global health major Erica Street, MPH ’16, admits she couldn’t have pointed out Swaziland on a map before traveling there last summer. But after hearing classmate Shannon Turner, MPH ’15, talk about her work in the south African country during the summer of 2014, Street knew she had to go there for her practicum.
C
Street traveled to Swaziland with Mason nursing professor R. Kevin Mallison, who has an ongoing research project there,
Street and her fellow master of public health students conducted a survey on needle injection safety among the health care workers at the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital in Manzini. In the few weeks they were there, they were able to design the survey, collect data, and present their findings. Street says she would love to return to Swaziland or one day work in another African country, but for now she has to get settled in Atlanta, where she will be working a fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the next year. •
T
his summer, global affairs major Beverly Harp is traveling to India for the fifth time. Two of her trips were partially funded by Critical Language Scholarships from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. She lived with a host family and went to Hindi class for five hours a day.
“In those two summers I went from intermediate low to advanced on the State Department’s official oral proficiency scale,” Harp says. Her goals are twofold: She is interested in working on policy issues surrounding climate change—and she wants to do it in Hindi. “Knowing English equals wealth in north India,” she says. “Studying Hindi allows me to talk to people who aren’t normally part of the [climate change] conversation.” For Harp, travel to India is a family tradition. Her grandmother taught at the Woodstock School, an international boarding school in Mussoorie, so Harp and her siblings each did a high school year in India. But for Harp, the experience stuck. 24 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
And while she is able to interview people in Hindi, she still doesn’t consider herself fluent in the language. But she soon will be. After graduating from Mason, she plans to live and work in India for three to four years before attending graduate school. •
C
an you earn credit while swimming with sharks? Yes, you can. For the past 13 years, School of Integrative Studies professors Greg Justice and Tom Wood have been traveling to the Bahamas each summer with students for their Coral Reef Ecology class.
In the 3-credit course, students learn about reef ecosystems while living on board a 65-foot sloop and sailing around the Exuma Land and Sea Park. “On this trip, I advanced my diving skills, becoming more proficient in night diving and buoyancy, as well as learning how to run underwater transect survey lines for data collection,” says environmental science major Eran Nimtz. “I was also lucky enough to be on board with a few amazing professors, and was able to learn about weather patterns at sea, the Bahamian coast, and underwater noise pollution.”
On the Coral Reef Ecology trip, Mason students had the opportunity to get a close-up look at reef ecosystems in the Bahamas.
For Tim Milmoe, BA Integrative Studies ’15, being able to see things firsthand changed his perspective. “It is one thing to study a macro-level problem such as climate change in the classroom, but it is completely different seeing the side effects for yourself,” he says. “We saw a devastated coral reef that had been eroded by the pH and temperature changes of the water. It changed my perspective on how I think about and treat the environment.” For everyone involved, a high point was swimming with blacktip sharks in a large underwater cavern, known as a blue hole. “We saw more than 200 blacktip sharks glide silently over the rim and disappear into the calm, blue distance toward open ocean,” said Nimtz. “It was one of the most peaceful and beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” Jamie Rogers contributed to this article.
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 25
-
5 Myths
about the Liberal Arts When the United States began falling behind other countries in math and science, there was a big push for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education.
26 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
Soon liberal arts were getting a bad rap. In this feature, we look at some misconceptions about getting a liberal arts degree and how the degree meets up with what employers are looking for in a challenging job market. B Y R O B E R T M AT Z
1
MYTH: THE “LIBERAL ARTS” IS ANOTHER NAME FOR THE HUMANITIES.
The liberal arts have long referred disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Only recently, with the emphasis on STEM fields, have some people started to think of the sciences as separate from the liberal arts.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCIA STAIMER
This separation is unfortunate. It obscures the values of curiosity, analytical rigor, and creative thinking shared by humanists, social scientists, and scientists alike. And sometimes it contributes to the idea that just one area of human inquiry—the sciences—can solve pressing social problems. Contemporary social problems are too complex to be solved without all kinds of knowledge. Likewise, advocates of the liberal arts believe that we must be well-rounded individuals, with at least basic understanding across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. This liberal arts tradition is at the root of the Mason Core requirements, which all Mason students must fulfill, and is a source of strength for higher education in the United States.
1.
The “liberal arts” is another name for the humanities. Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 27
2
MYTH: THE LIBERAL ARTS ARE TOO TRADITIONAL.
The idea of the liberal arts is rooted in tradition, and many of the disciplines included in them have deep historical roots. But innovation is at the heart of the liberal arts! The word “liberal” in “liberal arts” comes from the Latin word for “free” (libertas). The idea is that people who study the liberal arts are free to follow inquiry wherever it goes, even if that inquiry does not serve an immediate purpose. It’s that freedom that allows students of the liberal arts to question what we know and push knowledge farther. An understanding of the liberal arts forms a foundation on which new knowledge, appropriate for understanding and solving more immediate problems, can grow.
2.
3
The liberal arts are too traditional.
MYTH: THE LIBERAL ARTS ARE NOT PRACTICAL.
Since the liberal arts are not necessarily geared to immediate purposes, they might seem impractical. But not serving an immediate purpose is not the same thing as serving no purpose.
Think about making a budget: we allocate some money for immediate needs, save some for short-term goals, and put some aside for the long term. These allocations are all practical. Indeed, budgeting only for immediate needs is risky behavior. Likewise, a society should not only try to answer questions based on the most immediate need, or just one kind of need.
3.
The liberal arts of math, physics, and chemistry underlie the engineer’s bridge-building. The humanities liberal arts and social sciences help us to build human bridges across communities and cultures. They also help us are not practical. understand where we’re trying to go, in our own lives and as a people. What could be more practical than that? 28 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
4
MYTH: WE CAN’T AFFORD THE LIBERAL ARTS.
Recently, state higher education policy in Virginia and elsewhere has favored the STEM disciplines. The argument is that STEM disciplines produce the greatest economic returns and so are most deserving of state investment. Yet a thriving economy depends on skilled workers in all of its sectors. Economies are like ecosystems, which are healthier and more resilient when they are biodiverse. At Mason, we recognize that “we thrive together.”
4.
5
The liberal arts are affordable in a second sense as well. Instruction and research in the humanities and social sciences are less expensive compared to areas such as engineering and the physical sciences, even considering the higher grant money these fields typically bring in. Rather than being a drain on universities, the humanities and social sciences typically subsidize work in other areas.
We can’t afford the liberal arts. MYTH: LIBERAL ARTS MAJORS DON’T FIND GOOD JOBS.
While the sciences are still seen as a good occupational bet, the social sciences and humanities fields are often thought to lead to jobs for which one is overqualified. Think: barista. Studies show, however, that students across the liberal arts have excellent employment outcomes. Mason’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences pays attention to our students’ employment success (you can learn more at chss.gmu.edu/careers). It is true that the median income for a student in the humanities or social sciences is somewhat lower than, say, the median for an engineering major. But most people don’t make “the median income.” If you love your major and are good at it, you’re likely to be more successful than if you reluctantly undertake a major you’re not passionate about because you think it will lead to a higher paying job. Second, as a “well-being” university, Mason recognizes that success is not measured by annual income alone. The link between income rise and the experience of happiness or life satisfaction remains a matter of controversy. But we all know that no amount of material wealth will make us happy if it leads to work we do not love. Earning a living and creating a life well lived are both important.
5.
liberal arts majors don’t find good jobs.
Robert Matz is a professor of English and senior associate dean in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The former Mason English Department chair is a long-time champion of the liberal arts.
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 29
ELEBR AT ING The Best and the Brightest
Alumni were recognized for their significant accomplishments and their outstanding support of the university. BY JA MIE RO GER S
former Mason soccer star who has become one of the leading entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom. An alumnus known for his tireless work on every Mason committee and cause that needs him. A biology major who has been researching dendrite morphology since her freshman year. And a professor of music who also directs one of the nation’s most popular college pep bands. Those were the leading honorees at the 2016 Celebration of Distinction, the annual gathering hosted by the George Mason University Alumni Association. Since 1976, the Alumni Association has been recognizing the accomplishments and contributions of Mason’s alumni. More than 200 alumni and supporters attended the awards dinner, held April 13 at the Hyatt Regency in Fairfax. “It’s the Alumni Association’s longest-standing tradition and a highlight of the year,” says Christine Clark-Talley, associate vice president for alumni relations. “It is always inspiring to share alumni success stories that span the entire university. They demonstrate the power and impact of a Mason education.”
30 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
Martin Dunphy, Alumnus of the Year Irish-born finance mogul Martin Dunphy, BS Marketing ’90, MBA ’91, knew he wanted to be his own boss since the late 1980s. Back then, he was still a teen kicking around a ball and setting records for the Mason soccer team (it’s “football,” of course, to the Irishman). Some 25 years later, he’s not only his own boss, but he’s head of an international team of business people. He’s also Mason’s Alumnus of the Year. “There’s only so much you can do by yourself,” Dunphy says. “You have to find the right people who want to come along on the journey with you.” He still works with many of the people who helped him build Marlin Financial Group, a company he started in his London living room in 2002. With Dunphy at the helm, the company dealt mostly with banks, bought billons in assets, and then managed those assets. After years as the company’s CEO, Dunphy sold the venture for $485 million in 2014. PHOTO BY JOHN BOAL
He now owns Ascot Capital Partners, a new venture he says is fun to operate. The company essentially invests in emerging entrepreneurial companies—much like the one he established. Currently Dunphy splits his time between the United Kingdom and Northern Virginia, where he owns a farm near Leesburg. The former goalkeeper says he’s in Northern Virginia every month and is always sure to head to campus to see his alma mater play a soccer match or two. He attended Mason on a soccer scholarship and still holds the school record for the most saves. He’s also established an endowment with Mason’s Patriot Club that supports the university’s soccer program.
Scott Hine, Alumni Service Award Scott Hine, BS Decision Science ’85, likes to give things away. Long after he left behind the halls of Mason, Hine still returned to the Johnson Center, volunteering as part of the Alumni Association effort to hand out free Scantrons—those multiple choice, fill-in-the-bubble test answer sheets—to students before exams. His twin daughters, one of whom graduated from Mason twice, have even helped him in the task a few times.
PHOTO BY JOHN BOAL
Before Southside dining hall was built on the Fairfax Campus, Hine would often spend Friday nights distributing food to freshmen. But his favorite things to hand out are alumni lapel pins to brand-new Mason alumni, right after they cross the Commencement stage. Hine has distributed alumni pins at four Winter Graduation ceremonies and at 8 of the past 11 spring Commencements. “I believe that I’ve pinned more grads than anyone in Mason history,” he says. “Things like that don’t take a lot of effort, but they are the right things to do,” he says. It is this dedicated spirit that earned Hine the 2016 Alumni Service Award. Hine was a member of the Alumni Association’s Strategic Planning Committee and played a vital role in the development of a new strategic plan. He just completed his term as an at-large director on the Alumni Association Board. Now a member of the group’s Scholarship Committee, he counts among his most joyous moments calling applicants to tell them they are scholarship recipients. Hine is currently a project manager at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he provides program and project management guidance and oversight of a multibillion-dollar research and development portfolio. One of his after-retirement goals, he says, is to work at Mason. Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 31
Michael “Doc Nix” Nickens, Faculty Member of the Year Traveling the globe as a working musician and gifting his melodies to the masses are rewarding undertakings for Michael Nickens, a man who bleeds charisma and finds his sustenance in human interaction. But nothing quite has his heart like teaching. Nickens, a tenured music professor at George Mason University, director of the Green Machine pep band, an avid tuba player, and now the Faculty Member of the Year, says teaching at the university level is a way to accomplish many things. “Higher education allows for a wide range of experiences and interactions, from the absolute beginner all the way through the world-class performer,” he says. “I like that kind of variety, and access to that whole spectrum improves how I interact with every part of it.” Northern Virginia, his home, is a place of cultural convergence, Nickens says, and there’s a way to express that cultural influence through music. “I wanted to make the [Green Machine] band less segregated than a radio station,” he says. “I want as many people as possible to see themselves in our repertoire. I want them to see the richness of the community.” Faculty members at other universities are looking for Mason alumni to come to their schools and do what we do here at Mason, Nickens says. He wants to help develop a curriculum at Mason that prepares students to do that. “I am from a family of teachers, and it is in my blood,” he says. “The type of professional I have always [been] and still want to be is one that creates, performs, teaches, and advocates.”
R A E Y E H T F O Y T L FAC U Caroline Thomas, Senior of the Year A light fueled by admiration and love appears in biology major Caroline Thomas’s eyes as she talks about her younger brother Eric, who has Down syndrome and autism. “I have a voice for Eric, because he isn’t able to speak for himself,” says Thomas. Eric is her motivation, and the reason for all her accomplishments, including being named Senior of the Year. Thomas does clinical research at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and was accepted into the Early Selection Program at the George Washington University School of Medicine, where she’ll pursue her medical degree in the fall. Her journey in research and medicine began as a freshman at Mason. That’s when she met neuroscientist Daniel Cox, then principal investigator of the Cox Laboratory at Mason’s Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study. “He gave me a chance to do research,” she says. Under Cox’s mentorship, she had two research projects funded by the Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research (OSCAR), and was selected as an OSCAR Fellow. Thomas also counts her mentor Donna M. Fox, associate dean of student affairs in the College of Science, as being instrumental in her achievements. Those include receiving a national scholarship through Alpha Lambda Delta Honor Society, as well as the Provost Academic Achievement Award. She’s thinking of becoming a pediatrician so she can work with children like Eric.
Rob Riordan contributed to this story.
At the Celebration of Distinction, the Alumni Association and individual alumni chapters recognized more than 20 alumni. Visit bit.ly/CoD16 for more information. 32 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
the 2016 Dance
Gala
Didn't make it to this year's Gala? Watch an excerpt of "Impetere," by Nick Pupillo online at dance.gmu.edu. PHOTO BY TIM COBURN
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 33
INQUIRING MINDS
D I D YO U K N O W…
25% of all Mason civil engineering undergraduate students, and 28% of BS degree In 2015,
graduates, were women. The national average of bachelor’s degrees awarded to women in civil engineering is approximately
19% (ASEE, 2014).
Punch Lines and Politics DONALD TRUMP ATTRACTED MORE JOKES on late-night TV talk shows than the rest of the Republican presidential candidates combined, according to a study released earlier this year by Mason’s Center for Media and Public Affairs. The study covered opening monologues on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah from September 1 to October 31, 2015. The research was conducted by Mason communication professor Robert Lichter, director of the center, in cooperation with the Media Research Center, which provided video of the late-night talk shows. The center has been tabulating political jokes on late-night TV since 1992. This is the seventh presidential cycle the center has covered. During these two months Trump was the target of 308 jokes, more than the rest of the GOP field combined (282 jokes). The number-two Republican target was Jeb Bush, with 76 jokes. Among all candidates, Hillary Clinton finished a distant second with 107 jokes—nearly twice as many as the 58 jabs at her opponent, Bernie Sanders. Lichter’s group found that Republicans were targeted more than twice as often as Democrats: 590 to 230. Only 9 percent of all jokes about candidates concerned their policies or proposals. By contrast, 71 percent concerned personal traits, such as their personality or appearance. Jimmy Fallon told the most candidate jokes—264—followed by Colbert with 249, Kimmel with 203, and Noah, who joined The Daily Show on September 28, with 113. —Buzz McClain, BA ’77 34 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
An Eye for Learning Students as young as five will soon be able to learn about U.S. history, government, and civic participation through a new interactive online tool fashioned at Mason. The program, known as Eagle Eye Citizen, is being developed through Mason’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. Eagle Eye Citizen encourages K-12 students to think critically, analyze primary sources, and conduct research to solve challenges, which are organized by grade level. Elementary school students, for example, might compare American flags from different periods and use clues to determine which flag came first. High schoolers might be asked to determine which came first: the election of the first female member of Congress or the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The program’s progress tracking feature allows students to monitor their improvement as they work through each level.
The team creating the program will spend more than a year producing a prototype by working with public school teachers throughout the country, including Virginia’s Fairfax and Loudoun counties. Feedback from teachers and students will be incorporated into the mobile-friendly program, which can be adapted for use by English language learners and special education students. The project was funded by a nearly $300,000 grant from the Library of Congress. —Jamie Rogers
RESEARCH
GR AVIT Y WAVES IN MARS’ UPPE R ATMOSPHE RE Preliminary results from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) satellite are in, and Mason physicist Erdal Yiğit is doing his part to analyze the data. MAVEN was sent to Mars in 2013 to explore the Red Planet’s ionosphere, interactions with the sun and solar wind, and upper atmosphere. Yiğit and Scott England of the University of California, Berkeley, set out to prove that gravity waves produced in the Martian lower atmosphere can reach such high altitudes (up to 150-200 km) that they can contribute to disturbances in the upper atmosphere. Now that he’s received the data from MAVEN, Yiğit has been able to compare his computational modeling results with MAVEN’s wave signatures to see how closely they matched. “[The simulations] were in good agreement with the observations,” Yiğit says. “However, the enormous fluctuations are much larger than what is seen in the model. So this could mean that some other mechanism is playing into these fluctuations as well.” Finding the answer is important because improved understanding and prediction of how gravity waves influence the upper atmosphere is crucial for planetary missions. “If you want to land on the surface of Mars, you have to pass through the upper atmosphere,” says Yiğit. “We need to know what kinds of disturbances are in the upper layers so that any technological mission is prepared for them.” At a press conference in November, NASA announced that the first returns of MAVEN data confirmed the planet once had an ocean and
air, but it became a frozen desert when the sun’s solar wind swept away its atmosphere. “That’s the big effect,” says Yiğit, “because the atmosphere is thin and there’s not a significant shielding environment around the planet. I believe that the effect of the lower atmosphere can modulate this effect.” —Cathy Cruise, MFA ’93
Simulation of of how Mars' atmosphere is eroded by the solar wind. Courtesy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Mason English professor and poet Sally Keith was awarded a prestigious John Simon
D I D YO U K N O W…
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Keith plans to begin her fellowship in fall 2017 and work on a new collection of poems. Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 35
INQUIRING MINDS
Puppy Perks
T
he health benefits of pet ownership are well documented, but a new study by Mason researchers attempts to attach a dollar amount to the impact of pets on the U.S. health care system. Pet ownership translates into an estimated $11.7 billion in health care savings each year, according to new figures by Terry Clower, director of Mason’s Center for Regional Analysis. “There was abundant research to show that pets have a positive effect on our health, but this is the first time that anyone has looked at the impact on the U.S. health care system,” says Clower, who co-wrote the report with Tonya Neaves, managing director of Mason’s Centers on the Public Service. A major revelation in the study was the difference between doctor’s office visits by pet owners and those who do not own pets. The nation’s 132.8 million pet owners visit a doctor 0.6 times less than average non-pet owners, the report says. With an average cost of a doctor visit at $139, pet owners save $11.37 billion in health care costs. Walking a dog five or more times a week isn’t just good for the walker, who receives fitness benefits; it’s also good for the nation’s budgetary waistline. Those 20 million dog walkers are responsible for saving some $419 million in health care costs, mostly related to a lower incidence of obesity. Other benefits of pet ownership include such positive physical and mental health outcomes as lower stress, improved cardiovascular health, enhanced sense of wellbeing, and reduced allergic sensitivities, among others. The study was funded by the Human Animal Bond Research Initiative Foundation, a nonprofit research and education organization founded by the American Pet Products Association, Zoetis, and Petco. —Buzz McClain, BA ’77
Helping Police Better Handle Mental Health Calls Two Mason professors are working with police in rural Virginia to explore better ways to respond to mental health calls. Roanoke County, located in western Virginia, has a relatively low crime rate compared with more populated areas, but police there handle more than 500 mental health calls each year. If Roanoke police respond to a mental health call and the person is a danger to themselves or others, police can take the person into emergency custody and have them hospitalized. “The bigger problem is that police don’t have access to resources to help individuals who are in crisis, but don’t meet the level of being hospitalized,” says Mason criminologist Charlotte Gill, who, along with Mason criminologist Sue-Ming Yang, is working with the department on the project. A three-year, $249,933 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, a component of the U.S. Department of Justice, will help them develop a randomized experiment to determine the effectiveness of connecting people to mental health services after initial contact with police. During the experiment, police will continue to respond to mental health calls. The difference is, some people will randomly be referred to Intercept Youth Services, a mental health service provider in Roanoke. People in serious crisis who pose an immediate threat to themselves or others will be taken into emergency custody and won’t be eligible for the experiment, says Yang. Yang and Gill will research the progress of the calls and develop best practices based on their conclusions. Those best practices could be used by other police forces around the country. —Buzz McClain, BA ’77, and Jamie Rogers
36 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
RESEARCH
ILLUSTRATION BY MARCIA STAIMER
Keeping Networks a Step Ahead of Hackers Imagine burglars have targeted your home, but before they break in, Stavrou, who teaches in Mason’s Management of Secure Information you’ve already moved and are safe from harm. That’s the premise beSystems Program, heads up the research team, which recently landed hind a Mason-led research team’s new line of defense for keeping comsome $4 million in grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projputer networks secure. ects Agency. The effort also includes Columbia University, Penn State Cyber criminals often take down a University, and BAE Systems. website by overwhelming it with traffic. “Our research is vital as a real-world soluThe most common approach is to flood tion to these attacks, which are one of the Our research is vital as a real-world a server with requests because servers most critical cybersecurity threats today, can only handle so much traffic before crippling online businesses with downed solution to these attacks, which are one shutting down. These denial-of-service websites, financial losses, and damaged attacks hit record highs last year, up near- of the most critical cybersecurity threats client relationships,” says Stavrou. ly 150 percent, according to cybersecurMason researchers are working on the ity firm Akamai. The attacks last between today, crippling online businesses with next step in fending off computer hackers. 6 and 24 hours and cost $500,000 or It’s a method called “shuffling,” in which downed websites, financial losses, and more, another survey notes. hackers and regular users are quickly sepaThe new security system will use comrated through a series of splits that evendamaged client relationships. plex algorithms to keep the dreaded “nettually isolate the intruders. —Angelos Stavrou —Michele McDonald work down” or denial of service message from ever flashing on the screen. Angelos
“
”
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 37
We Are
MASON
The Mason Nation is now 8,500 members stronger as the newly minted alumni from the Class of 2016 join our ranks. PHOTO BY EVAN CANTWELL
38 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 39
SHELF LIFE
Recently published works by Mason faculty
Archives of Desire: The Queer Historical Work of New England Regionalism J. Samaine Lockwood, associate professor of English
Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own Garett Jones, associate professor of economics Over the last few decades, economists and psychologists have quietly documented the many ways in which a person’s IQ matters. But research suggests a nation’s IQ matters so much more. Jones argues in Hive Mind (Stanford Economics and Finance, November 2015) that modest differences in national IQ can explain most crosscountry inequalities. While IQ scores can predict individual wages, information processing power, and brain size, a country’s average score is a much stronger bellwether of its overall prosperity.
Archives of Desire (UNC Press, November 2015) offers a new interpretation of the literary movement of American regionalism, arguing that regionalism in New England was part of a widespread, womandominated effort to rewrite history, and was an intellectual endeavor that overlapped with colonial revivalism. Drawing from an archive of fiction, material culture, collecting guides, and more, Lockwood shows how these women intellectuals aligned themselves with a powerful legacy of social and cultural dissent. She reveals that New England regionalism performed queer historical work, placing unmarried women and their myriad desires at the center of both regional and national history.
The Thinking Eye Jennifer Atkinson, associate professor of English Atkinson’s fifth collection of poetry, The Thinking Eye (Parlor Press, December 2015) examines the syntax of our living, evolving world, paying close attention to the actual quartz and gnats, the goats and iced-over, onrushing rivers. The poems also look at the looking itself—how places and lives become “landscapes” and the ways the lenses of language, art, ecology, myth, and memory enlarge and focus our seeing.
Map Construction Algorithms Dieter Pfoser, professor of geography and geoinformation science (with Mahmuda Ahmed) 40 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
This book (Springer, January 2016) examines map construction algorithms, which compute vector maps from user-generated (GPS) tracking datasets. The book provides an overview of the state-ofthe-art research and is a resource for students.
Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics Rick Shenkman, associate professor of history
Inventive Engineering: Knowledge and Skills for Creative Engineers Tomasz Arciszewski, professor emeritus of structural engineering Arciszewski’s new book, Inventive Engineering: Knowledge and Skills for Creative Engineers, (CRC Press, March 2016) is the first textbook on inventive engineering and presents transdisciplinary knowledge with roots in engineering, cognitive psychology, history, systems engineering, political science, and computer science. It provides a body of knowledge integrated from these fields to prepare students to become successful engineers and inventors.
Can a football game affect the outcome of an election? What about shark attacks? Or drought? In a rational world, the answer is no. But as Shenkman explains in Political Animals (January 2016), our world is anything but rational. The book challenges us to go beyond the headlines, which focus on what politicians do (or say they’ll do), and concentrate on what’s really important: what shapes our response.
The Juliet Laura Ellen Scott, MFA ’93, associate professor of English Hours before dying under suspicious circumstances, retired cowboy actor Rigg Dexon gives a rootless woman a gift that will change her life forever: the deed to the Mystery House, a century-old
although Hanson asserts ems are no stranger than we would appear to our ancestors.
shack in Death Valley long thought to be the hiding place of a legendary emerald known as The Juliet (Pandamoon Publishing, March 2016).
Educating Adolescent Girls Around the Globe: Challenges and Opportunities Supriya Baily, assistant professor of international and comparative education, and Sandra L. Stacki (Eds.)
The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth Robin Hanson, associate professor of economics Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or “ems.” Scan a human brain, run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain. When they can be made cheaply, perhaps within a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. The Age of Em (Oxford University Press, June 2016) shows just how strange our descendants may be,
While many initial education benchmarks are being met, new and continuing challenges exist for adolescent girls in the developing world. This book (Routledge, April 2015) takes a global look at the obstacles and enablers in girls’ education that can have lasting institutional, psychological, and social consequences. It looks at many complex issues affecting education for adolescent girls around the world and provides a critical framework through which researchers may explore and critique these complexities.
Freedom of the Press In his first book, Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America (Harvard University Press, 2016), Mason historian Sam Lebovic takes a historical look at freedom of the press and asks new questions about the role of the press in American democracy. What made you want to write this book? I wanted to write this book for two reasons. First, I was struck by what seemed to me to be a paradox in American press freedom today. First Amendment rights to press freedom have never been more highly protected or respected. Yet the actual freedom of the press seems beset by unexpected crises, such as the problems of accessing state secrets, or the “war on whistleblowers,” or the economic crises of the newspaper industry in the wake of the internet, and the shuttering of newsrooms and the laying off of reporters. So I wanted to write a history that would help explain how this paradox developed. George Mason famously included a declaration of press freedom in his Virginia Declaration of Rights. What would he make of freedom of the press today? I think Mason would be struck by how little the idea of press freedom changed in the last 200+ years, despite radical changes in the press and the government. In practice, of course, the right to publish without government interference is much more highly protected today than it was in the early years of the republic. Most of the founding generation, for instance, thought that there were clear limits to the types of speech and publication that were protected by law, and that state governments had a right to censor a great deal of publication (until the 1920s, the First Amendment restricted Congress, not the states, from abridging freedom of the press). Over the 20th century, the right to press freedom has expanded to protect much more speech, and to protect the press from censorship from state governments. But the idea behind the right remains largely unchanged. So Mason would, I imagine, recognize the law and idea of press freedom as basically familiar, but he would be completely disoriented by the changes in the practice of press freedom. The size of American newspapers, their mass readership, and the expense of starting a paper make today’s papers very different from the four-page newspapers of his day. And he would be struck by the ballooning of the central government and the fact that the national security bureaucracy classifies so much information. Perhaps he would find it interesting that our ideas about press freedom haven’t changed despite the changes in the actual press. —Colleen Kearney Rich, MFA ’95 Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 41
ALUMNI IN PRINT Recently published works by Mason alumni
Heat 30:1 Douglas Congdon, JD ’76 CreateSpace, May 2015 In the year 2025, Earth is cooking, water is scarce, and the government has imposed rigid food-topeople ratios. John Henley intends to save his farm— or die trying. A futuristic Western, Heat 30:1 blends politics, farming, and humor in a picture of life in America 10 years from now. Congdon is an author and lawyer living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. This is his first work of fiction. He is working on a sequel.
Becoming Jonika Pat Devlin, MFA Creative Writing ’11 Possibilities Publishing, October 2015 Becoming Jonika, Devlin’s second novel, was edited by MFA alumna Kirsten Clodfelter. In the late 1960s, a judge orders Joni, a white teenage girl who is busted for selling marijuana, to teach swim lessons at a summer camp for inner-city black kids. There she is forced to re-examine her life as she confronts issues of race, self-worth, acceptance, and love.
Devlin is a native of Philadelphia and lives in Northern Virginia.
Befriending Silence: Discovering the Gifts of Cistercian Spirituality
A Want of Vigilance: The Bristoe Station Campaign, October 9-19, 1863
Carl McColman, MA ’84 Ave Maria Press, November 2015
Robert Orrison, MA History ’03 Savas Beatie, October 2015 In the months after Gettysburg, Union commander Major General George Gordon Meade and his Confederate counterpart, General Robert E. Lee, surprised each other in a game of cat and mouse during one of the most overlooked periods of the Civil War. A Want of Vigilance traces their campaign from camps around Orange and Culpeper, Virginia, through the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and back. Orrison and co-author Bill Backus have worked at the Bristoe Station Battlefield in Bristow, Virginia. Orrison also oversees a large municipal historic site program in Northern Virginia. He lives in Prince William County with his wife and son.
42 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
Befriending Silence is the first practical introduction to the ancient method of Cistercian spirituality. By drawing on his experience as a lay Cistercian, McColman explains how silence, simplicity, stability, stewardship of the earth, contemplation, ongoing conversion, and devotion to Mary combine to offer a rich path to discipleship and intimacy with God. McColman is author of The Big Book of Christian Mysticism and Answering the Contemplative Call. He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Bystanders: Stories Tara Laskowski, MFA ’05 Santa Fe Writers Project, May 2016 A woman obsessed with her co-worker’s murderer, an investigative reporter whose life is unraveling, and a new mother spooked by eerie sights on her baby’s video monitor are a few of the characters in Laskowski’s second collection of stories. Bystanders
explores how terror and uncertainty both consume and invigorate us, illuminating the darker side of the human condition while revealing our strengths, hopes, and passions. Since 2010, Laskowski has been the editor of the journal SmokeLong Quarterly. She grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania and now lives in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.
American Fallout Brandon Wicks, MFA ’05 Santa Fe Writers Project, May 2016 Long estranged from his parents, library archivist Avery Cullins brings his mother to live with him after his father commits suicide. By examining her mementos, he begins a pilgrimage into the past, exploring the boundaries of marital love in the 1970s, and how we confront our own struggles today. Wicks teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia, and is an associate editor for the journal Smokelong Quarterly.
PAT R I O T P R O F I L E
Lisa Struckmeyer YEAR: Master’s Student MAJOR: Anthropology Personal Motto: “Do what you love, study what you enjoy.”
“Addicted to Research”: While researching slave narratives with Professor Crew, Struckmeyer realized she was “addicted to research,” A Nontraditional Student: Before coming to George Mason University, and enjoys constantly searching for information. Her dream job would Lisa Struckmeyer, BA History ’12, had a nine-year career in the U.S. Air be “where all I do is research anything that people are curious about, Force as a technical sergeant and a master instructor for hyperbaric because I love to solve mysteries.” medicine. While she was able to take courses toward her bachelor’s degree throughout her military career in countries such as Germany A Curious Bee: Her latest passion has been understanding beekeepers. and Italy, she was excited to have her family move to a permanent Last year, during a summer course, Lisa was given the opportunity to location near Mason. Struckmeyer reflected that, “It was really nice to travel to Peru and help remote communities build their honey bee be near a university,” since she had no desire to take classes online. programs. In addition to taking the trip for class credit, she was also the documentarian for the trip. Her experience in Peru led her to begin A Passion for Research: Starting off as a psychology major, preliminary research this semester on honey bee keepers and their Struckmeyer soon switched her major when she discovered her true relationship with the insects most people fear. “They all have a love: history. She hasn’t looked back since. In fact, she loved history so relationship with bees and talk about them in a really interesting and much that upon graduating with her history degree, Struckmeyer human relationship way,” Struckmeyer says. “They’re very connected.” approached Robinson Professor Spencer Crew to see if she could help —Amber Papas, BA ’16 him with his research. He happened to be working on a three-volume book called Slave Culture, and brought Struckmeyer on as a research assistant. PHOTO BY RON AIRA
Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 43
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK.
CLASS NOTES
A Serious Job
Juan Rodriguez weighing giant panda cub, Bei Bei, in November 2015.
with a Side of Cute
T
alk to Juan Rodriguez, BS Biology ’09, about the giant pandas for which he is a keeper at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and his wonderment about this endangered species quickly tumbles out.
Pandas are “just a cool bear,” he says. “There’s something charismatic about them.”
But pandas also are a puzzle, Rodriguez says. They breed just once a year, and females are fertile for only two days. Plus, he says, “they’re carnivores but don’t eat meat. They eat bamboo. Just thinking about how they get nutrition from what is basically grass is an amazing evolutionary story.” Rodriguez is one of the zoo’s three primary panda keepers. In December, when the male cub, Bei Bei, made his public debut, Rodriguez held him up to make sure reporters and photographers got a good look at his overwhelming adorableness. Then Rodriguez spoke to the media, and that’s where the oral presentation course he took at George Mason came in handy. “That class helped me refine my approach when speaking to crowds,” Rodriguez says. “The most important take-away was preparing cohe44 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
sive discussions and learning to avoid words such as ‘um’ and ‘uh’ within your presentation.” Rodriguez has been with the zoo since 1997, when he started as a volunteer. He has worked in the cheetah conservation station and veterinary hospital, and as a project leader for the clouded leopard consortium in Thailand, where he helped hand-rear two endangered cubs. “He’s got his head in the game,” says Steve Sarro, an animal programs curator at the zoo. “He cares a lot.” Especially when it comes to the zoo’s four giant pandas. “There’s definitely a connection there,” Rodriguez says. “Ultimately, we’re in the business of saving species. Protecting the critically endangered, like the giant pandas, is the biggest aspect of what we do.” The pandas are cute, too, especially the youngsters. “That terminology is not typical,” Rodriguez says, explaining a scientist’s sensibility. “I might not say they’re cute, but I’m thinking it.” —Damian Cristodero
class notes 1970s
Barbara and John (Jack) Kimbell, BS Biology ’74, ’75, met at Mason waiting in line for their freshman orientation. They married in 1974 at St. Mary’s Church in Fairfax Station. They now reside in Pittsburgh and have four daughters, all involved in the field of education. Both work in management roles, Barbara for the Red Cross and Jack for ClubCorp at the Rivers Club. Douglas Congdon, JD ’76, recently published his first novel, Heat 30:1. This futuristic eco-thriller, set in Dodge City in the year 2025, portrays a farmer struggling to meet crop quotas in the face of water shortages, extreme heat, local politics, and a conspiracy to take him out. Congdon is an author and lawyer living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Donna R. Bafundo, MEd Counseling and Development ’78, retired to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in 2005. Since retiring, she has become an active volunteer in community service as a second-term member of the Board of Directors of the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry. She served as the past president of the Hilton Head/Bluffton Branch of AAUW, is the cofounder of a coastal ecology and science summer program for low-income middle school girls, and is founder of a church visitation ministry that reaches out to lonely seniors in local life-care facilities. Shelton Cartwright Jr., BS Business ’78, was awarded the 2015 Top Five Territory Manager Sales Award and the 2015 Territory Manager of the Year Award by his employer, WaterFurnace International.
1980s
Dianne Guensberg, BS Accounting ’82, joined Grant Thornton LLP as a managing director in its public sector of assurance practice. Anthony DeGregorio, BS Physical Education ’84, MS Physical Education ’89, will be serving as one of the newly elected Alumni Association representatives for the College of Education and Human Development Alumni Chapter. Scott Hine, BS Decision Science ’85, newly elected treasurer for the Alumni Association Board of Directors, received the Alumni Service Award at Mason’s 2016 Celebration of Distinction. He currently serves as the director of the Project Management Coordination Office at the Department of Energy.
Dora Mekouar, BA International Studies ’86, who writes under the pen name Diana Quincy, is having two more novels published with Penguin Random House this year: Spy Fall, a historical romance, and A License to Wed, part of her Rebellious Brides series. She has also published a four-book series, The Accidental Peers, two of which were listed as Amazon bestsellers. E. Franklin Dukes, MS Conflict Management ’88, PhD Conflict Analysis and Resolution ’92, received the John T. Casteen III Diversity-Equity-Inclusion Leadership Award, which honors a member of the University of Virginia community who best demonstrates a dedication to leadership and the ability to create a setting in which the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion is
2016-17 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS PRESIDENT
Brian Jones, MA International Commerce and Policy ’06 IMMEDIATE PAST-PRESIDENT
Christopher Preston, BS Management ’96 PRESIDENT-ELECT
Jennifer Shelton, BS Public Administration ’94 VICE PRESIDENT—ADVOCACY
Kate McSweeny, JD ’04 TREASURER
Scott Hine, BS Decision Science ’85 SECRETARY
Andy Gibson, BA History ’92 AT-LARGE DIRECTORS
Walter McLeod, MS Chemistry ‘94 Shayan Farazmand, BA Communication ‘04 Ty Carlson, BS Social Work '96 Jeff Fissel, BS Information Technology ’06
(continued next page)
paramount.
What’s New with You? 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 alumni.gmu.edu/whatsnew. In your note, be sure to include your graduation year and degree. Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 45
Honoring Our Legacy:
Advancing as a Community of Leaders
I PHOTO BY JOHN BOAL
n 1968 the graduating students of George Mason College had the foresight to create an organization designed to support and advocate for the university as a lifelong commitment. As we gear up to celebrate together 50 years of commitment to our alumni, university, and community, it’s my privilege to take the next step with you by leading the Alumni Association.
As we begin a new year our focus centers on engagement and participation. We are implementing progressive programs to engage alumni through volunteerism, philanthropy, and community development. In addition, our Golden Quill Society is taking the lead to advocate, mentor, and engage our newest alumni through professional development, networking, and social activities. Finally, we are actively engaged in the university’s $500 million Faster Farther campaign. We have established an initiative to advance our existing scholarship programs, and have designed a new scholarship to honor the leaders of the association for the past 50 years and to create a legacy for the next 50. Please let us know your ideas about how we can better serve you as peers, advocates, mentors, and stewards. Our commitment and advancement is dependent on your engagement in alumni and university activities. Our collective success always begins with you. With all my Patriot pride, Brian Jones, MA International Commerce and Policy ’06 President, George Mason University Alumni Association
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.
46 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
1990s
Mark and Kelly Pulisic, BSEd Physical Education ’91, are the proud parents of soccer phenom Christian Pulisic, who at 18 is taking the German Bundesliga by storm! Andy Gibson, BA History ’92, a senior consultant at Microsoft, will be serving as the secretary for the Alumni Association Board of Directors. Gene Zapfel, MBA ’92, has joined Koniag Government Services as president of Koniag Services Inc. (KSI) after 25 years of federal IT and management consulting services experience. He leads all aspects of delivering information technology and services for client success, revenue, profitability, and growth of KSI. Jarrod Brown, BS Biology ’93, released his first book of American and Christian poetry titled Times Yet to Be on Amazon and Kindle on March 31. Todd Randall Hansen, JD ’93, was promoted to the role of senior vice president of investments at the Private Wealth Strategies Group of Raymond James. Eric Tonningsen, EMBA ’93, has been elected to the board of directors of the Coach Initiative. Credentialed by the Interna-
tional Coach Federation, he served four years as an ICF New Mexico board member, including president, in addition to holding leadership positions with Toastmasters International. As a coach, he works with baby boomers as they plan for and enter life’s “Third Act.” The founder and principal of JourneyWorks Coaching, he resides in the New Mexico high desert with his two black Labradors. Shayan Farazmand, BA Communication ’94, a government consultant for Dell Services Federal Government Inc., will be serving as one of the newly elected at-large directors for the Alumni Association Board of Directors. Walter McLeod, MS Chemistry ’94, managing director at Eco Capital Companies LLC, will be serving as one of the newly elected at-large directors for the Alumni Association Board of Directors. Petula Metzler, BA English ’94, was appointed to a new fifth judgeship in the General District Court in Manassas, Virginia. Her sixyear term began on July 1. She is Prince William County’s first African American general district court judge. Jen Shelton, BS Public Administration ’94, is the (continued on page 42) new president-elect for
CLASS NOTES
the Alumni Association Board of Directors. Sumeet Shrivastava, MBA ’94, will be serving as the newly elected Alumni Association representative for the School of Business Alumni Chapter. Jonathan T. Baliles, MA International Transactions ’95, announced his campaign for mayor of Richmond, Virginia. He currently represents the 1st District on the Richmond City Council.
Ty Carlson, BS Social Work ’96, will be serving as one of the newly elected atlarge directors for the Alumni Association Board of Directors. Jason Force, BS Electrical Engineering ’96, won $70,000 at the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his startup Iron Goat Technologies, which he started at Mason. Iron Goat received $50,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy and
$20,000 from GE Ventures for its self-fueled harvester that produces agricultural products such as livestock feed and grass pellet fuel. Dennis Roch, MA English ‘97, is serving his fourth term in the New Mexico House of Representatives and currently serves as chair of the state’s Legislative Education Study Committee. Roch is also a 17-year educator who works as superintendent of the Logan (New Mexico) Municipal Schools.
David Zehrung, PhD Clinical Psychology ’98, a psychologist working with Veterans Affairs and in private practice, was elected president of the Pennsylvania Psychological Association.
2000s
Kenneth L. Alford, PhD Computer Science ‘00, has been promoted to professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young
University in Provo, Utah. He is a retired U.S. Army colonel. Tiffany Bronson, BA Government and International Politics ’00, was recently named the head school librarian at Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia. Andy LaRaia, MFA Creative Writing ’00, published a short story, “The Cost of Secrets,” in the First Line Journal. He also had two poems published in Burningwood Literary Journal and has a forthcoming story, “20 in 10,” due to be published in the next issue of Cream City Review. David Jolly, JD ’01, was featured on 60 Minutes in April about a bill he introduced called the “Stop Act,” which would ban all federal elected officials from directly soliciting donations. Jolly, a congressman representing Florida’s 13th District, also received the School of Law’s 2016 Distinguished Alumni Award.
At age 39, Betty Graves graduated from Mason in 1982 with a BS in Social Work. At that time the department did not have a master’s program so she completed her master of social work at Catholic University in 1984. This spring Graves returned to campus to see her 23-year-old granddaughter, Shelby Windmuller, graduate from Mason with an MSW.
Jessica Kallista, MFA Creative Writing ’02, has started an alternative art space in Fairfax City called Olly Olly. The space launched in 2015 and functions as a studio space, incubator space, and art gym for local artists. The space also acts as a gallery, open stu(continued next page) Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 47
CLASS NOTES
dio, and event space for the Fairfax community.
School in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
stability and to help communities come together.
Judy Pryor-Ramirez, BA Communications ’03, was recently appointed executive director of the Elma Lewis Center for Civic Engagement, Learning, and Research at Emerson College in Boston.
Kate McSweeny, JD ’04, is the vice president of advocacy for the Alumni Association Board of Directors.
Brian Jones, MA International Commerce and Policy ’06, managing director at the RAIL Group, is the new president of the Alumni Association Board of Directors.
Tom Ammazzalorso, MA International Commerce and Policy ’04, GSE Integration of Technology in Schools ’05, MEd Education Leadership ’10, announced his candidacy for mayor of the city of Fairfax, Virginia, on March 20. A past chair of the city’s Republican Committee, he currently serves as the social studies department chair at Suitland High
Chantee Christian, BA Communication ’05, is the newly elected Alumni Association representative for the Black Alumni Chapter. Quentin Kanyatsi, MA Conflict Analysis and Resolution ’05, received the Cote d’Ivoire National Prize of Excellency. The prize was established by Cote d’Ivoire president, Alassane Ouattara, to highlight the work of local and international organizations in the country. Kanyatsi was recognized for his efforts to promote cohesion and
Art Taylor, MFA Creative Writing ’06, won this year’s Agatha Award for Best First Novel for On the Road with Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories at the Malice Domestic convention in Bethesda, Maryland, in April. Shannon Baccaglini, MM Music ’06, MA Arts Management ’09, will be serving as the newly elected Alumni Association representative for the College of Visual and Performing
Arts Alumni Chapter. Jugnu Agrawal, MEd Special Education ’07, PhD Education ’13, will be serving as one of the newly elected Alumni Association representatives for the College of Education and Human Development Alumni Chapter. Byron Edwards, BA Communication ’08, ran the Hollywood Half Marathon, repping his alma mater in a Mason racer tank. Alex Gant, BA History ’08, will be serving as one of the elected Alumni Association representatives for the Lambda Alumni Chapter. Francis Aguisanda, BS Biology ’09, was recently
admitted into Stanford University’s PhD program in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, the nation’s first standalone PhD program devoted to stem cell biology. His research will focus on the function of stem cells within the human body and how to translate this research into clinical therapies.
2010s
Mariana X. Cruz, BS Civil and Infrastructure Engineering ’11, will be serving as the newly elected Alumni Association representative for the Volgenau School of Engineering Alumni Chapter.
ALUM N I CHAP TE R R E PR E S E NTATIV E S BLACK ALUMNI
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
Chantee Christian, BA Communication ’05
Sumeet Shrivastava, MBA ’94
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 ’11 LAMBDA
Alex Gant, BA History ’08 Conor O’Malley, BA History ’12 ANTONIN SCALIA LAW SCHOOL
Ben Owen, JD ’13 48 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
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
Gleason Rowe, BA Global Affairs ’11 GOLDEN QUILL
Chloe Kingsley-Burt, BA Communication ’13, BS Marketing ’13 Rachel Bruns, BA Global Affairs ’13
CLASS NOTES
Gail Johnson, MA Peace Operations ’12, is effecting change in Rutland, Vermont, a region ravaged by heroin. She is a key player in Rutland’s community response program, Project Vision, now a national model for fighting municipal opiate epidemics. John O’Hara, BSEd Physical Education ’12, has been named assistant coach with the U.S. U-17 national team and has relocated to Florida after eight years as assistant coach for soccer at Mason. A member of the university’s Men’s Soccer Hall of Fame, he continues to make his mark, as the U-17 team won the Mondial Football Tournament in France during his first trip with the team. Conor O’Malley, BA History ’12, will be serving as one of the elected Alumni Association representatives for the Lambda Alumni Chapter. Cristian Pineda, BA Communication ’12, will be serving as the newly elected Alumni Association representative for the Latino Alumni Chapter.
Ahmad Shami, MS Conflict Analysis and Resolution ’12, presented a TEDx Talk on the topic of “Searching for Humanity in the Most Inhuman Places.” The topic focused on the role of images and “emotional alerts” in the context of the Middle East. Kyle Green, MA International Commerce and Policy ’13, MPA ’14, will be serving as the newly elected Alumni Association representative for the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs Alumni Chapter. Ben Owen, JD ’13, will be serving as the newly elected Alumni Association representative for the Antonin Scalia Law School Alumni Chapter. Michael Shank, PhD Conflict Analysis and Resolution ’13, met with Pope John Paul II, several heads of state, Senator Bernie Sanders, and religious and civil society leaders from around the world at the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s Centesimus annus encyclical. Shank published an article with Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo on the need to end the exploitation of humans and the planet. Evan Del Duke, BA Government and International Politics ’15, and Alexis (continued next page)
Three-Time Mason Alumna Named a Forbes “30 Under 30”
E
ach year, Forbes magazine selects 30 top game-changers under age 30 and spotlights their entrepreneurial savvy and breakout talents. This year Mason alumna Liya Palagashvili, BS Economics ’11, MA Economics ’12, PhD Economics ’15, was among them.
PHOTO BY MARK MERANTA
Gleason Rowe, BA Global Affairs ’11, will be serving as the Alumni Association representative for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Alumni Chapter.
George Mason University received the Educator of the Year Award from the World D I D YO U K N O W … Affairs Council, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to global education.
Palagashvili is an assistant professor of economics at State University of New York, Purchase College. An economist and theorist, she writes about the effects of regulation on entrepreneurial capitalism and markets. Her work has appeared in academic journals and in heavyweight media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, and Newsday. From her first economics class in high school, Palagashvili says she was “captured” by the subject. “I loved it because it was a brand-new way of thinking. It was a framework I could use to understand the world around me.” Now she enjoys introducing that passion and “opening up the world of economics to new students.” Her current research involves interviewing tech entrepreneurs to try to understand problems startups face and “how the legal and regulatory environment impacts their abilities to do business and innovate,” she explains. She’s also working on finishing up her first book—with co-author and Mason economics professor Peter Boettke, MA ’87, PhD ’89—which analyzes long-term consequences of policy responses to the 2008 financial crisis. Palagashvili has collaborated on a number of articles with Boettke, and counts him among the Mason professors who, she says, changed her life and cemented the career path she would follow. Inspired not only by their research and teaching skills but their assistance in guiding her toward internships and on to graduate school, Palagashvili says she couldn’t be where she is today without her Mason professors. “They inspired me to pursue my dreams,” she says. “They taught me to think critically and to write. They are my co-authors, my career and life mentors, my biggest supporters, and my friends.” —Cathy Cruise, MFA ’93 Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 49
CLASS NOTES
(continued from page 49)
Baker, BA Communications ’15, announced their engagement and plan to be wed on July 1, 2017. Duke was recently named the assistant director of development in the College of Science, and Baker is now an associate product manager at Hobsons, an education technology company. Marcos Martinez, MFA Creative Writing ’15, published his poem “Epistles to Reinaldo Arenas: Invocation” in fall 2015 as part of the HIV Here and Now Project. He has additional poems included in the print anthology set to be published in June 2016 to acknowledge 35 years of AIDS and advocate for a world without HIV/AIDS. Martinez co-curated the seventh annual “Call and Response” artist/writer collaborative exhibit “Lineage” in fall 2015. He also took part in the Split This Rock 2016 Festival panel “Migration and Identity: Interrogating Privilege through Poetry” in Washington, D.C., in April.
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.
INSPIRING POCKETS OF CHANGE Ruthie Rado’s first taste of theater didn’t go too well. Her mom saved up money to buy tickets to take a three-year-old Ruthie to see the national tour of Beauty and the Beast. “Thirty seconds into the show, I said, ‘Mommy, I don’t like this. Can we go?’ And we left!” says Rado, BA Theater ’14. Twenty years later she has more appreciation for the arts, and she’s using her own “pocket change” to give children a memorable theater experience. Together with Mason alumni Collin Riley and David Johnson, the Springfield native formed the Pocket Change Theatre Company while she was still attending Mason. Mason’s School of Theater acted as an incubator for the company by allowing the group to use one of its stages for their first performances. College of Visual and Performing Arts dean Rick Davis suggested the name for the company, which carries a dual meaning. “It means we have a very small budget,” says Rado, who serves as artistic director of the company. “But it also means we want to create local pockets of creative change in the community.”
50 | FA S T E R FA R T H E R : T H E C A M PA I G N F O R G E O R G E M A S O N U N I V E R S I T Y
Pocket Change performs its shows in unconventional settings to give a play context. Los Dos Burritos, for instance, a bilingual show about a donkey that gets confused with a burrito [burrito means “little donkey” in Spanish], will be performed at food trucks, restaurants, and preschools. Rado also performs in the group’s Shakespeare on a Playground series, which makes theater accessible to those who may not have the means or the time to see performances in a traditional setting. “I remembered how musty Shakespeare seemed when I was a kid,” she says. “There had to be a way to make that classical language less intimidating. We had to perform in a space with no expectations, just fun. A playground is that creative, safe space.” Shakespeare is a part of her day job too. She is a graphic design fellow at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. And understanding how one of D.C.’s major theater companies is run helps her grow Pocket Change. “[We do] stories [children] can relate to—not stories about a far away land, but everyday life,” she says. “They don’t have to be a dragon or a princess. They see that their lives can be extraordinary.” —Jamie Rogers
CLASS NOTES
Obituaries
Margaret Bloom, BSEd Elementary Education ’71, March 29, 2016 Joan Papst, BA History ’73, February 20, 2016 Jeanne Andriot, BA Psych ’74, MA Psych ’76, January 17, 2016 David McNeese, BS Biology ’74, March 3, 2016 Norman Nash, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’74, January 28, 2016 Leslie Bruffey, BS Business Administration ’75, March 24, 2016 Sharon Courlas, BS Biology ’75, February 9, 2016 Elizabeth Catron, MA English ’76, January 13, 2016 James Thompson, BIS ’76, February 13, 2016 Patricia Warren, BA Psychology ’76, March 13, 2016 Nancy Croft, BIS ’77, August 25, 2015 Thomas Kenny, BS Business Administration ’77, March 20, 2016 Louis Metcalf, BS Business Administration ’78, March 3, 2016 Susan Manola, MEd Education Administration/Supervision ’79, November 20, 2015 Thomas Petruska, MBA ’79, February 2, 2016
Arthur Hammarstrom III, BSN ’80, MSN ’97, February 29, 2016 Jane Hebb Siragusa, BSN ’80, March 6, 2016 Karen Cunningham, BS Decision Science ’81, March 6, 2016 Steven Hesling, BA Government and Politics ’81, December 24, 2015 Michael Marsh, JD ’81, December 31, 2015 David Burds, MEd Counseling and Development ’82, January 30, 2016 Darel Johnson, MBA ’82, April 4, 2016 Shelia McGough, JD ’82, September 22, 2015 Elizabeth Osborn, BIS ’83, February 27, 2016 Barbara McCann, BSEd Early Education ’84, April 20, 2016 James Brincefield III, BA English ’86, February 20, 2016 Betty Graham, BA English ’86, January 3, 2016 Theresa Johnson, MEd Counseling and Development ’87, March 31, 2016 Mary Newton, BA Anthropology ’88, September 3, 2015 Garson Page-Wood, MPA ’88, August 1, 2015 Ruth Heimburg, MS Conflict Management and Resolution ’91, January 1, 2016
Martha Seavey, MEd Counseling and Development ’91, April 6, 2016 Mary Miraglia, MA History ’92, October 9, 2015 Ben Fritz, MA Music ’92, PhD Education ’99, February 4, 2016 Neil Griffin, BS Biology ’94, March 8, 2016 Kevin Caulfield, BSN ’95, December 28, 2015 Julie Dickson, MEd Special Education ’95, March 31, 2016 Elaine Duffner, MEd Special Education ’97, December 15, 2015 Magdalena Forsyth, BSN ’97, March 24, 2016 Myrna Oliver, BA English ’00, July 13, 2015 Belinda Widmaier, MEd Curriculum and Instruction ’02, March 27, 2016 Amy Angelo, MEd Education Leadership ’03, April 2, 2016 Eric Swartz, BA Government and International Politics, ’03, JD ’06, December 25, 2015 Andrew Carruthers, MA Criminology, Law and Society ’14, March 1, 2016 Michael Fijalka, BA History ’14, February 21, 2016 Nicole Long, MBA ’15, April 2, 2016
FAC U LT Y A N D S TA F F Charlie Jones, associate professor of English and linguistics, died April 5 at age 63. Before coming to George Mason University, he taught linguistics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He published articles on theoretical syntax in various linguistics journals and conference proceedings. Jones is survived by his wife of 42 years, Elaine Sheep Jones, and their two sons. The Jones family and Mason’s Linguistics Program are establishing a Charlie Jones Linguistics Award for graduate students. Tax-deductible contributions can be made by check payable to George Mason University Foundation and mailed to The Charlie Jones Fund, c/o Steven H. Weinberger, Director of Linguistics, Department of English, MS 3E4, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030. Earle C. Williams, a longtime supporter of George Mason University, passed away March 25 at the age of 86. Williams was a key member of the group of Northern Virginia business leaders who catalyzed Mason’s growth into a major university during the 1980s and 1990s. As president and CEO of BDM International, Williams built the firm into one of the original so-called Beltway bandits. He helped to found Mason’s School of Information Technology and Engineering (now the Volgenau School of Engineering), establishing through his philanthropy one of its first endowed chairs, the Earle C. Williams Professorship. From 1987 to 1998,
he was a trustee of the George Mason University Foundation, receiving the prestigious Mason Medal in 1995. He also served as chair of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, among many leadership roles in the business and technology sectors. Williams is survived by his wife of 64 years, June Anson Williams, their three daughters, and seven grandchildren. George Zaphiriou, Professor Emeritus of Law, died on March 18 at the age of 96. After attending the University of Athens, where he earned his LLB, he moved to London to continue his law studies with an LLM at the London School of Economics. He went on to practice international law in the United Kingdom, including successfully defending two extradition cases in the House of Lords. In 1973, Professor Zaphiriou moved to Chicago where he was a visiting professor at Illinois Institute of Technology-Chicago Kent College of Law. It was at this time that he became a U.S. citizen and a registered lawyer in Illinois, which meant he could practice in the United States. Three years later, he was appointed a professor of international Law at Mason’s School of Law. In the later years of his professional life, he was a member of a panel of international law arbitrators. Husband of the late Peaches Griffiths, he is survived by two children, seven grandchildren, and a great granddaughter. Summer 2016 M A S O N S P I R I T | 51
4400 University Drive, MS 3B3 Fairfax, VA 22030
Students from Mason’s chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineering competed in the regional Concrete Canoe Competition on the Potomac River March 31 – April 2, 2016. The Mason teams won first place in the Co-Ed Sprint, second in the Men’s Sprint, and fifth place overall. PHOTOS ALEXIS GLENN PHOTOS BY RON ARIA AND BY EVAN CANTWELL