Students look for fingerprints in the Forensic Science Lab. Photo by Evan Cantwell

While you may have seen agents Abby and Gibbs navigate a crime scene on “NCIS,” there’s more to forensic science than meets the TV fan’s eye. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less cool.

“I don’t want [students] getting a job and thinking, ‘I’m so disappointed, this is nothing like TV,’” says Mason forensic scientist Jocelyn Prendergast. “Forensic science is exciting in its own way — without the glamorized side of it.”

Mason’s program, which recently added an undergraduate component, is so exciting, in fact, that best-selling mystery novelist David Baldacci has said he would like to sit in on a class as part of his research. Baldacci, who lives in Reston, Va., spoke with Mason’s forensic science students after he met program director Bill Whildin at a local book signing.

“Our seminar series is a special part of this program,” says Whildin, a retired Fairfax County police officer who worked for more than 10 years as a medicolegal death investigator. Because of Mason’s proximity to Washington, D.C., he says, the program is able to bring in outstanding guest speakers, not only novelists like Baldacci, but also experts from almost every federal agency.

“It’s a great way for students to network and learn about the agencies, the job opportunities and the credentials they would need to get in,” Whildin says.

Forensics deals with the science that is used as evidence in criminal law, and students can focus on a wide array of concentrations, including fingerprint analysis, crime scene photography or toxicology.

“One of the biggest misconceptions students have is that one person gets to do a little bit of everything,” says Prendergast, who worked as a research chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology before coming to Mason. “Forensic science is actually very specialized. It takes years and years of training and mentorship in one specific field.”

A student examines forensic evidence. Photo by Evan Cantwell

But before students in Mason’s new undergraduate program choose their specialty, they are given a solid foundation of basics. One of the two entry-level courses, Survey of Forensic Science, is taught by a 20-year member of the FBI, Joseph Dizinno, and covers DNA, evidence handling and the law. Introduction to Criminalistics, taught by Prendergast, delves into crime scene investigation, firearms, blood spatter and drugs of abuse.

Classes in the program are a blend of lecture and hands-on experience. For example, a class on forensic biotrace, which covers trace evidence — hairs, glass, soil and fibers — will require analysis in one of the labs. Next fall, Prendergast will teach Forensic Chemistry and Microscopy, which will go more in-depth into toxicology, drugs of abuse and fire investigation.

As part of the program, students also tour off-campus facilities such as police crime labs, and they have the opportunity to practice at a forensic dig site (this year, they will be digging up the remains of a pig). They also put their skills to the test by studying mock crime scenes.

The interdisciplinary forensic science program has kept pace with the field, Whilden says, pointing out that many agencies have raised their accreditation standards and now require a forensic science degree. Mason currently offers a master’s program, a graduate certificate and an undergraduate major and minor. Whildin says that the new undergraduate program is the perfect foundation for prospective graduate students.

“We try to make our students as marketable as they can be,” says Whildin. “And close to 90 percent of students who enter the certificate program like it so much that they convert over into the master’s program. It’s a great compliment to the university and to our program.”

Nutrition Kitchen from George Mason University on Vimeo. Produced by Paul King and Alexis Glenn.

Students learned how to stuff a bird and whip up a pie at the first Thanksgiving dinner in Mason’s new Nutrition Kitchen.

And just like any family, not everyone agreed on what to serve. Some students have food allergies to eggs and oats while others are vegetarian.

Sur la Table Chef Matt Finarelli led 19 students from the Nutrition for Health Professionals (Nutrition 295) class in the intricacies of stuffing a chicken. Chickens replaced turkeys due to time constraints.

The students currently are studying vitamins and trace minerals and will analyze the dinner as part of their class work. They typically spend class time sitting at a desk, not standing at a stove.

Many are first-time Thanksgiving chefs. They might even bring the lesson home with them.

“It would be nice for the students to put the meal together before break and hopefully it will help them prepare dinner for their family,” says Jeannie Padgett, who teaches the Nutrition 295 class.

The kitchen opened in August and is part of the also new Department of Nutrition and Food Studies in the College of Health and Human Services.

The students posed with Buffett, center, and Mason finance professor Robert Johnston, far right, during their visit to Omaha. Photo courtesy of Robert Johnston

Twenty Mason MBA students recently had a chance to meet with a real American business tycoon: Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. On Friday, Oct. 21, the students met with Buffett for a question-and-answer session and luncheon at the Berkshire Hathaway corporate offices in Omaha, Neb.

This is the third time that Mason MBA students have had the opportunity to meet with Buffett. Coleman Raphael, dean emeritus of the School of Business Administration (now School of Management), facilitated an initial meeting for Mason MBA students with Buffett in 2007. Mason MBA students were invited back in 2009 and again this year. Students from seven other universities were also invited to the October meeting.

Finance faculty member Robert Johnston accompanied the Mason students, who were chosen from the MBA 643 Financial Management class based upon their academic ranking. The group flew out to Omaha on Thursday, Oct. 20, and returned home on Friday evening following the event.

Mason student Sanut Chongthanavanit and Buffett mugged for the camera. Photo courtesy of Robert Johnston

Four Mason students had a direct interaction with Buffett.

“I asked him a question about the global economic crisis,” says graduate student Seetha Sankaran. “He elaborately answered students’ questions with wisdom and enthusiasm.”

Students praised Buffett for taking their questions seriously and using examples from his own experiences to help them understand his answers.

“I asked him his views on America’s ability to innovate and what the government’s role should be in protecting innovation,” explains student Tyler Summers. “He answered that America has been a great environment for innovators, but innovation isn’t uniquely American. He told of a trip he took to China a number of years ago with Bill Gates [to illustrate the point].”

Buffett fielded questions about his views on the current global and national economies and infrastructure projects, as well about more personal matters, to the delight of the students attending.

“I had expected to be inspired by his intellect, but I had not expected how emotionally moved I would be,” Summers continues.

“Meeting Warren Buffett was the most impressionable experience of my MBA at Mason,” says Gaurav Khantwal.

Student Colette Banet was thrilled to be seated next to Buffett at lunch. Photo courtesy of Colette Banet

Colette Banet, another student, had a special opportunity to interact with Buffett.

“Being selected to drive with Warren Buffett in his car and sit next to him during lunch was the most memorable experience of my academic career here [at Mason],” she says. “Despite his celebrity status, he was extremely personable and seemed very interested in our conversation. It was like being out to lunch with an old friend.”

The students say they are appreciative that the School of Management  funded the trip, adding that they were inspired by Buffett’s insights.

“I owe my sincere thanks to Professor Robert Johnston for organizing and the School of Management for sponsoring this trip,” says Sankaran.

The Green Machine's members are as eclectic as the music they play. Photo by Evan Cantwell, Creative Services

They’re flashy, enthusiastic and immensely talented. But first things first: Don’t call them “just” a marching band. While Mason’s Green Machine pep band doesn’t march, yet, they certainly rock, as more than 1.5 million YouTube viewers have discovered.

A video of Director of Athletic Bands Michael “Doc Nix” Nickens leading the Green Machine in a medley of Rage Against the Machine’s songs “Bulls on Parade” and “Killing in the Name” garnered widespread attention after its debut on the popular video sharing site last February.

The medley, which was arranged by Jeremy Freer, assistant director of athletic bands, is a creative mash-up of two songs by the rap-metal group, transformed into an ensemble piece. The video was shot by a Green Machine booster on his iPhone and uploaded to YouTube. Viewers weighed in with comments praising the band’s inventiveness and the enthusiasm each member showed.

“Doc Nix creates an open environment. When you form a group based on inclusiveness, people respond,” explains Freer.

The Green Machine’s approximately 100 members represent more than 50 different areas of study, with about half representing the School of Music. Participants include undergrads and graduate students, as well as community members seeking a creative outlet.

Music majors can use their participation for course credit in their major, while non-music majors can use it to fulfill a fine arts general education requirement. Some students even receive scholarships for the role they play in the Green Machine.

Students from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia also flock to campus to perform in Mason’s world-class drumline, the Mean Green, which performs at special events alongside the Green Machine. Others are involved with the Mason Declaration Color Guard, which will re-start this year. But no matter where they fit into the organization, the Green Machine members all have the same drive, determination and attitude.

“The number one thing we look for in a member is attitude. We want good people and positive energy,” says Freer.

Musicians of all levels of experience and instrument specialties are welcome. The only positions that require auditions are in the rhythm section (guitar, bass, keyboard, vocals and drum set). This inclusive approach is really what sets the Green Machine apart from other school bands, Freer says.

“Doc has always had an open, inclusive outlook,” Freer says. “It makes my job harder as an arranger, but I love the fact that no one gets left out if they have a great attitude and are willing to work a little and play a lot.”

That inclusiveness has brought bassoon players, string players and vocalists, which are rarely seen in athletic bands, to the Green Machine. This welcoming attitude is a great benefit for the group, as evidenced in their newest piece.

The Green Machine, along with the Mean Green and Mason Declaration, performed their own version of LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” at the 2011 Mason Madness event in October that celebrated the beginning of basketball season.

The charismatic "Doc Nix" has an inclusive approach to managing the Green Machine pep band. Photo by Evan Cantwell, Creative Services

Masonette dance coach Michelle Chin choreographed the first ever combined performance with the Green Machine, Mason cheerleaders, Masonettes dancers, several basketball players and the student break-dancing group Urbanknowlogy. Each group had their own moment in the spotlight, but what made the performance so special was the way in which every organization blended together seamlessly to dazzle the crowd.

The Green Machine has been a fixture at home football and soccer games, where they pump up the crowd with their repertoire of classic standards and converted hits. Their current playlist includes Kanye West’s “Power,” a new mash-up of Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing”) and Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind.”

However, they do more for Mason than energize its sports crowds. The Green Machine plays at admissions events and open houses to show prospective students a dynamic side of campus life. They also appear frequently with the Mason cheerleaders, the Masonettes and the Mason mascot, the Patriot, at campus events such as Welcome Week to spread their Mason spirit to the rest of the student body.

And while the “Rage” video broadened the Green Machine’s audience, the band has always had some notable fans in its corner. Chief among these are long-time Washington Post sports blogger Dan Steinberg and actor Bill Murray, who was on hand at the ESPN Charleston Classic in November 2010 where the Green Machine appeared with Mason’s men’s basketball team. After listening to the band throughout the first half of a game, Murray strolled over to offer his admiration. He even took a turn at conducting with Doc Nix’s emerald-topped cane.

The Green Machine is a tight-knit group that is committed to the school and the community. Alumni presence is large, with former members often dropping in at games to perform. Band members take care of every aspect of traveling and performing, from maintaining instruments to washing uniforms and coordinating meetings.

“It’s a family,” says Freer.

Nickens, the charismatic director, set the tone for the band when he joined Mason in 2006, bringing a unique style and boundless enthusiasm. Although he is currently on study leave, he is still directly involved in Green Machine activities, and he was on hand for the October Mason Madness performance. While on leave he is writing music, touring and performing on the tuba — and dreaming up new and exciting opportunities for Mason’s athletic ensembles.

The Mason men’s basketball season kicks off on Friday, Nov. 11. The Green Machine will perform at all home basketball games and will perform in support of the women’s volleyball team on Saturday, Nov. 12.

What songs will be performed this season? Freer is tight-lipped.

“We’ve been working on some new stuff. You’ll just have to come out to games to see what we have in store.”

Changwoo Ahn, professor in the Department of Environmental Sience and Policy, at the wetlands area he created on Mason's Fairfax Campus. Creative Services photo

If you drive behind the intramural fields on Mason’s Fairfax Campus, you may notice a fenced-in grassy area with numerous big black tubs planted with various kinds of wetland vegetation.

The scientific experiments being done in this outdoor facility are the products of Mason ecological engineer Changwoo Ahn and his students.

An associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, Ahn studies human-created wetlands that mimic the benefits of ecosystem services of natural wetlands.

As more and more natural wetlands and habitats are destroyed due to human development and construction, it is vital for ecological engineers like Ahn to determine the best way to recreate these habitats to maintain diverse, healthy and productive wetlands, thus minimizing the impact of climate change and other environmental hazards.

The Ahn Wetland Ecosystem Laboratory compound on Mason’s campus is just the beginning of what Ahn hopes to accomplish here. As a graduate student at Ohio State University, Ahn helped in the creation of the Wilma H. Schiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, a long-term, large-scale wetland research facility in Columbus, Ohio. With that experience under his belt, he hopes to continue to build and expand upon the outdoor research possibilities at Mason.

“My intention is really to maximize the use of this facility for students and allow them to have this amazing outdoor experience,” says Ahn.

Ahn's mentoring student, James Jang from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, records water levels. Creative Services photo

The wetlands complex has been fully functional for two years and not only provides valuable opportunities for students to learn, but also allows for externally funded scientific research. The facility focuses on the type of wetlands found in Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay area.

“What if a coastal area is flooded with a hurricane or storm? What if we receive an extreme drought for a longer period of time than we expected — how would that affect communities in coastal areas or near wetlands? We can do that kind of experiment here in the compound with confidence,” says Ahn, who is the associate editor and book review editor for Ecological Engineering: The Journal of Ecosystem Restoration.

A mentor and a teacher as much as a researcher, Ahn is committed to bringing scientific experiences to students. He participates in Mason’s research apprenticeship program for undergraduates and has been a mentor for Project SEED at the American Chemical Society. Through these mentorships and internships he provides voluntarily at the wetlands lab, he is able to bring high school students to Mason to work directly with wetlands research projects and gain valuable hands-on learning experiences.

His students monitor and record water levels, help plant and harvest the various mesocosms in the facility and work closely with him to interpret results. This spring, Ahn will teach a new undergraduate course, Ecological Sustainability (EVPP 378/BIOL 379), that will utilize the resources of the outdoor compound. The course has already been designated as a Green Leaf course by Mason’s Sustainability Office.

Ahn and his team of students are currently conducting a biodiversity study that looks at how the diversity of plants affects the productivity of a human-created wetland.

“There is a question in ecology: Is productivity better or diversity better?” says Ahn. “If we restore a wetland, is it better to have just one single plant that does really well reintroducing carbon back into the soil and fights against global warming, or is it better to have another system that has a bit less productivity but a higher diversity of species and therefore provides more diverse habitats for a variety of organisms?”

As financial experts weigh whether to diversify their portfolio or invest all their money in one single stock, the ecological engineer has to determine if it would be more beneficial to add variety to a human-created wetland or put all their resources into one species of plant. Both are beneficial — though neither one compares to a natural wetland that has been working in harmony for 100 years.

“Through work we’ve been doing, we’ve seen there is an age trajectory in wetlands. Meaning that older restored wetlands behave more like natural wetlands in terms of organic materials, soil processes, etc., that are important in delivering ecosystem services,” says Ahn. “However, younger created wetlands are still very different from natural wetlands. Time is certainly necessary to this, but we want to facilitate and speed up that process — and these types of studies help to give us more information.”

Next year, Ahn plans to participate in the Fourth International EcoSummit, which will focus on restoring Earth’s ecosystem services.

Mason linguistics professor Steven Weinberger sits at a computer in a small room reading a 69-word paragraph from the computer’s large monitor. It’s a short paragraph that he and his research assistants devised using virtually every English sound. Weinberger is a linguistics czar.

In 1999, he developed the Speech Accent Archive, an online database of accents from around the world. What began as a simple idea of compiling accents online for one of his class projects has turned into an often-visited website, getting close to a million hits a month.

“It became a great learning tool. It gave the students fieldwork experience, recording experience, linguistic analysis experience — and it was good for the community as well,” Weinberger says.

Weinberger assembles a team of research assistants, transcribers, graduate students and students from various linguistics classes each year. Each team member has a specific role, ranging from taking recordings to transcribing and analyzing submitted samples.

The team gathers high-quality recording samples using portable digital recorders in addition to the submissions they receive online from around the world on a daily basis.

The archive is used as a teaching and research tool for linguistics teachers, researchers, engineers, phoneticians, speech pathologists and even actors looking to hone an accent. Users can browse more than 1,500 different accents by language, region and dialect.

“It’s been popular beyond my expectations. It was just a nice idea that kind of took off,” Weinberger says. “I don’t think you find many sites that have been around for 12 to 13 years.”

Weinberger foresees the archive growing tremendously over the next few years as technology continues to evolve. With the help from team member and fellow Mason linguistics professor Charlie Jones, the archive is nearing its release of an iPhone app that will allow users to record and submit their samples almost instantaneously using a smartphone.

“You don’t really need a computer, you don’t need to be at a desk,” Weinberger says. “The smartphone has everything you need. It has Internet, a microphone and software.”

For more information about the Speech Accent Archive, see the website.

Mason’s Aspiring Scientists Summer Internship Program (ASSIP) wrapped up its fifth year in August with final presentations highlighting all of the original research projects completed through the program.

ASSIP provides hands-on research experience to high school juniors, seniors and college undergraduates interested in exploring science and medicine.

This summer, the 48 students put in eight 40-hour weeks at Mason’s Prince William and Fairfax Campuses as they worked benchside with their dedicated Mason faculty mentors ― 33 in all ― from disciplines such as chemistry, biochemistry, proteomics, genomics, neuroscience, biodefense, bioinformatics, computer science, nanotechnology, physics and environmental science.

Through regularly scheduled meetings with their mentors, as well as program-wide lab safety training, career workshops and guest speaker seminars, students received exposure to levels of science that many aspiring researchers will not see until they enter the workforce.

Research projects this summer included investigations into such health challenges as cancer, HIV, tuberculosis, Alzheimer’s disease and illnesses resulting from biothreat agents.
 

Making ‘Significant Advancements’

Following their final presentations, where students explained their research findings to an audience of interested Mason faculty and staff members, students and community members, Amy VanMeter, director of ASSIP, spoke of the powerful work these students have completed.

“Every year, I am moved to tears by something these students have accomplished,” VanMeter says. “One of the students said to me, ‘We are finding the pieces of the puzzle to cure disease.’ And that’s what each and every one of these students is doing ― they’re making significant advancements in their areas of science, and I’m so very proud of them.”

Lance Liotta, co-director of Mason’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine and one of the founders of ASSIP, urged those present to “remember the names of all of these students” since audience members would see those same names in print as award finalists, as authors of publications, as holders of patents and, eventually, as famous researchers and CEOs of biotechnology companies.

“We have high hopes that discoveries from this summer will end up as new treatment strategies for infectious disease or cancer ― or will provide new clues for developmental biology or how the brain works,” Liotta said.

Liotta’s hopes are well-founded. ASSIP alumni have had their findings published in academic journals, and one former student even has a license pending for a first-of-its-kind, noninvasive diagnostic test for Lyme disease.

Boosting Confidence and Skills

Preparing the next generation of science leaders is a key goal of this program. Take Trish Ike, a two-time ASSIP alumna and graduate of Stonewall Jackson High School in Manassas, Va., who is now attending Duke University. She credits the program with boosting her confidence and skills.

“I think one of the most important things I have learned is to definitely take the initiative,” says Ike, who researched alcoholic liver disease using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis with Mason faculty mentor and assistant biochemistry professor Robin Couch.

“Because of this program, I’m more confident in my science classes when approaching new ideas and topics because I know the right questions to ask and the right techniques to uncover the answers,” Ike says.

Other aspiring scientists and their projects this summer include:

• Chandler King, a junior at Osbourn Park High School in Manassas, Va., and the Governor’s School @ Innovation Park, located on the Prince William Campus, who spent his summer identifying protein biomarkers for lung cancer in order to locate lung cancer cells in the early stages. His mentor was proteomics researcher and faculty member Claudia Fredolini in the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine.
• Annalise Schoonmaker, a sophomore at Cornell University and a three-time participant in ASSIP, who studied a gene that could potentially inhibit replication of the Rift Valley Fever Virus, an emerging infectious disease that affects both livestock and humans. Her mentor was Kylene Kehn-Hall, assistant professor in Mason’s National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases.
• Alex Chen, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., who worked with Jason Kinser, associate professor in the School of Systems Biology, to design a new process to combine queries of many different types of data simultaneously. This tool was used to combine speech and facial recognition. Alex will be presenting his work at the Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop in Washington, D.C., in October.

ASSIP is funded by corporate and personal donations. The 2011 ASSIP was supported by donations from Micron Foundation, Lockheed Martin, Prince William County Economic Development, Fisher Scientific, CellSignaling Technology, Corning, SCHOTT, Invitrogen, Applied Biosystems, Eppendorf, Aushon Biosystems, McGraw Hill, Dako, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Applied Scientific, USA Scientific and Northern Virginia residents.

For more information on the program, visit the ASSIP website.

Dance students in a Vodun dance class in Guantánamo with their instructor, Conjunto Babul. Photo courtesy of Jim Lepore

On the streets of American cities, it would be quite a sight to see a group of people dancing away to the sounds of a nearby band. In many parts of Cuba, where music and dance are one and the same, this is just a typical occurrence.

Several Mason students recently experienced this lively culture when they visited three eastern Cuban cities: Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Baracoa. Led by Jim Lepore, a professor in Mason’s School of Dance, 16 students — five Mason dance majors, seven Mason general education students and four students from other universities — participated.

The trip, which took place June 24 through July 5, was one of the first academic trips to Cuba since former President George W. Bush restricted certain types of travel to the country in 2004. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama lifted many of those travel restrictions.

“Cuba is one of the few places you can visit where music and dance are part of the people’s everyday lives,” says Lepore, an avid lover of Cuban culture. “Although they don’t have a lot of personal belongings, they see their culture as their inheritance and they make every effort to preserve it.”

During the 11-day trip, the students spent most of their time dancing, either in a formal classroom setting or informally on the city streets. It wasn’t uncommon, notes Lepore, to encounter either a large group of people or simply two or three people dancing in the streets at some point during the day.

“This experience was truly life changing,” says Rachel Klein, a junior dance major. “As a passionate dancer, for me the best part of the trip was learning different dances in the classroom and then having the opportunity to use the things we learned every night when we would go out dancing.”

<p>Dance students with some of their Cuban teachers. Photo courtesy of Jim Lepore</p>

To understand Cuban music and dance, however, one must understand the rich cultural traditions of this Caribbean country.

The Cuban music and dance that is prevalent throughout the country today dates back to the late 19th century when large numbers of African slaves and European immigrants brought their own diverse cultures to the island.

The fusion of these different traditions resulted in what is the dominant influence found in the country today — Afro-Cuban. In fact, Afro-Cuban traditions can be traced back to specific ethnic groups in Africa.

To learn more about the music and dance that reflects the Afro-Cuban heritage, the students worked with two dance companies during their visit: Ballet Folklórico Cutumba in Santiago de Cuba and Babul Folkloric Ballet in Guantánamo. Much of the musical-dance heritage of the country, they learned, is steeped in religious and folkloric traditions.

In daily lessons with the companies, students were introduced to popular dance, music and song ranging from gagá to rumba to son (also known as salsa). Choreography was filled with distinctive steps and rhythms, and sensuous movements.

According to Lepore, the Cuban dance style is very different from ballet and modern dance. There is more fluidity in the torso, movements are kept close to the body, and the music and rhythm go hand-in-hand.

“It’s intended to put you into a trance so you’re one with the music,” he says.

The students also worked with several Cuban musicians on call and response techniques, which are used extensively in religious Cuban music. A call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases, usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct response to the first.

“Being in Cuba was like stepping into a brilliant story about a magical people living in a strange magical land,” says Lynn Poe, a junior dance major. “This trip excited me about taking future cultural expeditions where I can experience how music and dance are woven into the tapestry of our global cultural history.”

Lepore plans to take another group of students to Cuba in January 2012.

Ralph Lattanzio, a former director of global recruiting for Exxon-Mobil, leads a popular career class at Mason. Photo by Evan Cantwell

If you could enroll in a one-credit class and come out at the end with your dream job, wouldn’t you? This kind of thing happens all the time in Ralph Lattanzio’s University 400 class, College to Workplace, making it one of the best-kept secrets at Mason.

“The best class I took in college,” says gainfully employed Mason alumnus David Phillips, BA History ’08. And Phillips isn’t the only former student to sing Lattanzio’s praises.

“I attended one of Ralph’s behavioral interviewing workshops, and it was really good,” says Luke Fiorio, BS Economics ’11, who is also happily employed. “He let me force-add [his class] since it was full, and that ended up being one of the better decisions I made in my job search.”

Since 2006, Mason executive in residence Lattanzio has helped more than 200 Mason students find their place in the working world. For almost 25 years, Lattanzio worked in human resources and recruiting for Mobil (later ExxonMobil) before shifting gears, unpacking his suitcase and coming to Mason. As director of global recruiting, one of his last posts at ExxonMobil, he oversaw the company’s recruiting strategies in 120 countries.

“Ralph is a truly amazing person who has discovered a passion for teaching and coaching Mason students,” says Pat Carretta, assistant vice president for University Life. Carretta directed Mason’s University Career Services for 26 years and says, “His extensive background in human resources has proven extremely valuable to the students, faculty and staff with whom he interacts.”

How does Lattanzio work his magic? The central topics that Lattanzio tackles in his course are competencies and behavioral interviewing.

“My expertise is in the selection process,” says Lattanzio, who did postgraduate work under David C. McClelland at Harvard University, where these recruiting techniques began. “ExxonMobil was the first company to use these techniques on a worldwide basis.”

While ExxonMobil was leading edge at the time it began using the techniques, Lattanzio says about 80 percent of the companies that recruit at Mason now use them. So it is important that students understand them.

“What I find in class and in workshops is that people have never heard of [behavioral interviewing] before,” he says. “If you don’t know how it works, you aren’t going to do well.”

Presenting their "elevator speech" to classmates gives students practice for interviews. Photo by Evan Cantwell

Behavioral interviewing is designed to discover if a candidate has the traits or skills needed for a job by inquiring how the person acted in specific employment-related situations in the past. Lattanzio has found that interviewing practice does indeed make almost perfect, and he has the data to prove it. In addition to his coaching, Lattanzio does research in a number of career-related topics including motives and narcissism. His research has shown that about five hours of behavioral interviewing practice makes a difference.

“Everything I teach my students is a skill that they can get better at if they practice,” he says. “If there are only two or three companies you are interested in working for, this is critical. Once students are familiar with the process, they are much more competitive for the higher-level jobs.”

What happens in University 400 stays in class, or more accurately, it doesn’t leave the University Career Services conference room, where the class is held. This is one of Lattanzio’s rules. He strives to create a comfortable environment where students can really work on these competencies.

Students in the College to Workplace class will be the first ones to tell you their least favorite thing was giving their elevator speech, or 30-second pitch, as Lattanzio calls it, to their 19 classmates. They are expected to practice on each other and refine the pitch. Then Lattanzio sends them into the crucible ― one of the university’s job fairs.

If the soon-to-be graduates don’t come back with a certain number of interview appointments or didn’t get an interview with one of the companies they were targeting, it is back to the drawing board. Lattanzio works with them one-on-one to hone their pitch until they are getting the interest they desire from potential employers.

While pitches are the least favorite thing for students, many find personality testing, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment, transformational.

“That’s where they begin to understand who they are and what type of environment they should look for,” he says. “You can’t imagine how many students I get who are, for example, an accounting major, but they find they hate accounting. So we work on what they can do with an accounting degree.”

He adds, “I want students to like what they are going to do because they are going to be doing it for a very long time.”

Lattanzio is also a big advocate of informational interviewing and shadowing people in certain professions for a day. The students then report back to the class how it went.

Phillips is in many ways a perfect example of how Lattanzio’s techniques work. Phillips loved history but didn’t know what to do with a history major.

“I appreciated having someone push me, and I learned how to use all the resources,” says Phillips, who now works at SAIC. “I think the class should be required because it prepares you for the real world.”

Many of the students find out about Lattanzio through word of mouth. As a result, his classes are always full. He also works with certain schools and colleges, such as the School of Management, which are looking for specific types of coaching. Lattanzio is teaching two sections of University 400 this fall; the university is offering six sections of the class altogether.

Lattanzio also maintains a Facebook page to keep in touch with his students as they progress through their careers. “When my students are successful, that’s my reward too.”

By Catherine Ferraro

"We hope the new partnership will become an example to other youth sports leagues around the country and inspire them to examine their own safety policies and help ensure a safe playing environment,” says Mason professor Shane Caswell.

As concussions and other injuries are on the rise, Mason’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) is joining forces with the Central Loudoun Youth Football League (CLYFL) in Loudoun County, Va., and the National Sports Medicine Institute. The partnership will work to improve youth sport safety through on-site medical care and professional expertise from athletic trainers and physicians who will help craft future league safety policies.

Graduate students and faculty from CEHD’s Division of Health and Human Performance, as well as from the Sports Medicine Assessment Research and Testing (SMART) Laboratory, will be on hand at select CLYFL games to provide consultation and medical coverage to youth athletes.

“We are very excited to be partnering with the Central Loudoun Youth Football League because of their dedication in becoming a leader in player safety at the youth level,” says Shane Caswell, associate professor of athletic training and director of the SMART Laboratory. “We hope the new partnership will become an example to other youth sports leagues around the country and inspire them to examine their own safety policies and help ensure a safe playing environment.”

Caswell has been working with CLYFL to improve the league’s education program for coaches, revise and update its concussion policy and procedures and review its injury surveillance processes.

As part of a graduate assistantship program beginning this month, Mason alumna Ashley Ausborn, BS Athletic Training ’11, will work with CLYFL to provide first-line treatment to youth athletes on the sidelines of the league’s games that have the greatest risk for injury. As a Virginia licensed and nationally certified athletic trainer, Ausborn is currently pursuing a master’s degree in exercise, fitness and health promotion at Mason.

Ausborn will be working alongside David Johnson and Timothy Johnson, physicians from the National Sports Medicine Institute and approved clinical instructors in Mason’s athletic training education program.

“Central Loudoun Youth Football is very excited about our partnership with Mason,” says Roly Rigual, CLYFL president. “Shane Caswell and Rickie Atkins, CLYFL’s director of safety, have done a wonderful job updating the league’s safety policies, providing training for the coaches and creating an advanced injury reporting system that will help us track and follow up on injured players. Our goal is to provide a fun and safe environment for our players and cheerleaders. We hope this program will continue to grow and become an example for other youth sports.”

The CLYFL is a nonprofit organization that provides a formal sports program for boys and girls in the central Loudoun and Leesburg areas. Its mission is to teach good sportsmanship, teamwork and leadership skills.

The SMART Laboratory serves as the primary research facility for faculty and students in Mason’s Division of Health and Human Performance. The laboratory strives to enhance the quality of life for all physically active individuals through the development and improvement of methods for the prevention, recognition and treatment of injury and disease.

In today’s fast-paced society, many successful and active business leaders are looking to advance their careers even further, but need the flexibility to make it happen.

In response to this growing need, Mason’s School of Management has expanded its Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) programs to offer an online Global EMBA and National Defense EMBA.

At the same time, the school continues to offer both programs in a traditional classroom setting at the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon, Va.

“It is very exciting to open our programs to a larger audience by offering this innovative online delivery option,” says Roy Hinton, associate dean of executive programs in the School of Management. “The curriculum of business fundamentals and core management tools is the same whether one takes part in the program on campus or online.”

The EMBA program allows experienced professionals to earn a degree while working full time, and students are able to put what they learn into practice immediately.

The 54-credit Global and National Defense EMBA online programs offer students valuable hands-on experience through a content-specific residency program and opportunities to gain experience by developing solutions to real-world business challenges.

The online Global EMBA program includes an eight-day international residency in which students will learn from and consult with successful business leaders in locations such as Asia, Europe and South America. The online National Defense EMBA program includes a weeklong residency in Washington, D.C., where students will sharpen their skills as leaders and managers in the U.S. defense industry.

“Today’s business world demands new kinds of leadership, whether competing on a global stage or working in the national defense industry,” says Hinton. “Mason’s School of Management is proud to offer this specialized management education designed specifically for executives looking to expand their knowledge, enhance their leadership and management skills and advance their careers even further.”

All degree programs in the School of Management are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

Applications for the online fall 2011 start date are due by Sept. 23, 2011. More information about the EMBA programs can be found on the website.

By Dave Andrews and Catherine Ferraro

A growing number of companies and government organizations have dealt with recent cyber attacks, among them Sony, the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Senate. Those responsible for the safe, secure and efficient operation of such computer systems must be prepared with not only a technical background but also an education in policy and business.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia recently approved Mason’s new Master of Science in Management of Secure Information Systems for launch in the spring of 2012.

The new degree will provide professionals in business, government and nonprofit organizations with the necessary management skills to address the specific technology and policy challenges of maintaining secure information systems.

As the only program of its kind to be offered in the Washington, D.C., area, the multidisciplinary program draws on the expertise of faculty members within Mason’s School of Management, School of Public Policy and the Volgenau School of Engineering.

“As cyber security threats continue to rise in today’s society, the demand for professionals that have a blend of technology, management and public policy expertise has increased significantly,” says Roy Hinton, associate dean of executive programs in the School of Management.

“The new Management in Secure Information Systems program will allow students to seamlessly connect their studies in management, policy and the technical aspects of information security with the current needs of business and government,” he adds.

The 36-credit program, which is structured for working professionals, can be completed in as little as 14 months, with classes held on weekends to accommodate work schedules.

In addition, the program’s established network of partnerships within the Washington, D.C., region allows students to form relationships with business and government leaders who serve as valuable educational and networking resources.

The global residency component of the program provides valuable opportunities for students to gain insights and hands-on experience of practices and procedures in other business cultures. Residencies in locations such as South America, Europe, Asia and Africa are offered every year and include meetings with foreign businesses and government agencies.

As a leader in the field of cyber security education, Mason is the only university in Virginia and one of only two universities in the Washington, D.C., region that has been designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education and a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research.

Mason is currently accepting applications for the program, with a deadline of Oct. 1, 2011. More information about the program can be found on the website.

By Catherine Ferraro

High in the snow-capped Andes Mountains of Southern Peru is the small agricultural community of San Isidro near Compone, where several Mason faculty members, students and alumni visited last month. They were there to implement a water storage system for the village of 100 people, mostly subsistence farmers dependent on the water supply for farming and drinking purposes.

The Mason team is part of a new organization called Engineering Students Without Borders (ESWB), and is housed in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering (CEIE).

Though not yet an official student chapter of the nonprofit Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA), their mission is the same — to address people’s basic needs by providing sustainable solutions for clean water, power, sanitation and education.

Putting Academic Learning into Practice

Mason-UMD team members meet with San Isidro community members to discuss plans for the new water storage system. Clockwise from bottom left are Trevor Hughes, member of the Mason team; Anibal Cabrera, president of San Isidro; Dimas, president of Compone; a San Isidro villager; John Guenther and Sean O'Bannon, members of the Mason team; a San Isidro villager; Barry Liner, Mason engineering professor; Neel Sanghvi, member of the UMD team; Katty Overcash, member of the Mason team; and Luis Cabrera, vice president of Compone. Photo by Jim Milliken

As faculty advisor for the group, Mason engineering professor Barry Liner understands the significance of this organization. Director of CEIE’s International Engineering Programs, Liner has more than 20 years of experience developing sustainable solutions for issues faced in developing countries. In addition, he serves as the director of the Water Science and Engineering Center at the Water Environment Federation in Alexandria, Va.

“Our [ESWB] program exposes students to issues and problems that are being faced internationally,” says Liner. “Most important, by putting their academic learning into practice, students participate in hands-on engineering experiences in countries all over the world.”

Instead of waiting to become a formal chapter of EWB-USA, Mason’s team joined forces with the University of Maryland’s (UMD) EWB student chapter on the project in the Andean village.

Last summer, Liner and Mariana Cruz, BS Civil Engineering ’11, traveled to San Isidro to assess the structural damages in the community’s irrigation network and existing water storage tank, which had resulted in severe water shortages for the entire community.

When the team returned to the United States, UMD’s team began work on improving the irrigation system, while Mason took on the challenge of developing a water storage system.

Mason team members Trevor Hughes, Sean O'Bannon and Katty Overcash work with San Isidro villager Vicente Cruz on the water tank. Photo by Jim Milliken

Senior engineering student Sean O’Bannon is Mason’s team project manager and led the team, which included several other civil engineering students who graduated this year: Jim Milliken, Trevor Hughes and John Guenther.

In addition, local engineering professionals worked with the team as mentors: Joanna Vivanco, MS Civil Engineering ’07, from ECS Mid-Atlantic; and Katty Overcash, BS Civil Engineering ’09, from the Prince William County Service Authority.

Considering the needs of the community, cost, availability of materials, impact on the environment and ease of construction and maintenance, the team decided the most viable option was to install two new plastic water tanks.

With the help of the San Isidro community, the team tracked down a water tank supplier near the village that would deliver the tanks directly to the work site. Each tank holds about 10,000 liters of water and can withstand all types of weather conditions.

“During the planning and design phase of the project, we drew from the problem-solving and analytical skills we have learned in class, while also ensuring that the system met the area’s needs,” says O’Bannon, who will serve as ESWB president next year.

“The entire experience was very eye-opening, and we learned a lot about the cultural implications of working with rural communities,” he adds.

Fund Raising, Too

Once the design was finalized, the team turned their attention to raising funds to cover their return trip to San Isidro, as well as building materials. They hosted a variety of fund-raising activities and received generous support from Mason’s Civil Engineering Institute, the CEIE Department, the Office of the Provost and the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services.

In the end, the students secured more than $15,000 for the project and returned to San Isidro last month to install the new water tanks.

“When we arrived, we were overwhelmed by the response from the community, who were so willing to be a part of this project,” says Milliken. “Some of these people didn’t have running water and couldn’t care for their farmlands. You could tell right away how much they appreciated our help and the fact that we considered their input throughout the process.”

For two weeks, the ESWB team worked with the community to demolish and dispose of the old tank. Then, each of the new 500-pound tanks was hoisted up the side of a mountain to the installation site, where they were connected to the existing water system fed by a natural spring. The water is stored in the tanks overnight and released to the community during the day for farming and human consumption as needed.

The rest of the trip was spent educating the community about how to maintain and operate the tanks using locally available hardware, thus ensuring a sustainable solution.

“The experiences one receives from being a part of Engineering Students Without Borders can’t be taught in a classroom,” says O’Bannon. “In real life, things go wrong; the plan doesn’t always go the way it was envisioned. Being able to adapt to your surroundings and fix things on the fly is what separates a true engineer from an academic.”

Professor Paul Gorski says classes dedicated solely to animal rights are rare at universities. Photo by Nicolas Tan

In one grainy movie clip, cows are shocked with electric prods to get them onto a truck. In another, stressed-out chickens are thrown into small crates as they’re being prepared for a trip to the slaughterhouse.

Gaining knowledge is not always for the squeamish, as is sometimes the case in one of Mason’s summer courses: Animal Rights and Humane Education.

As the name suggests, the class explores — sometimes through difficult-to-watch films like the one described above — the movement to protect the other members of the animal kingdom. This is the first time the class is being offered at Mason.

Taught by Paul Gorski, an assistant professor of integrated studies in New Century College, the class touches on the testing of products on animals, the use of animals in entertainment, veganism and animal fighting, as well as how animals are treated at large factory farms.

“I don’t see my role as preparing activists,” says Gorski, who is teaching the class as a section of NCLC 395 Special Topics in Experiential Learning. “I just see [animal rights] as a conversation in society that people are really interested in.”

This intensive two-week class is split into two sections. The first week takes place mostly in the classroom and includes guest speakers and field trips. During the second week, students spend much of their time working on class projects and meeting with Gorski online.

So far this summer, the class has visited a Maryland sanctuary for farm animals. There were also plans to attend the Taking Action for Animals conference in Washington, D.C.

During one recent class, a representative from the Humane Society of the United States spoke about the brutal conditions some farm animals endure and the increasingly popular trend of “Meatless Mondays,” where consumers forgo meat for one day a week.

On the same day, students also watched “Meet Your Meat,” a short film narrated by actor Alec Baldwin filled with hard-to-watch clips of the maltreatment of animals at some unnamed factory farms.

“I want to go home and throw everything out of my refrigerator,” one student says moments after watching the film.

Katie Isaacman, a senior majoring in integrated studies and a member of the class, has been a vegetarian since age 6. She says she avoids meat for ethical reasons, as she is a strong believer in animal rights.

“It was tough to watch,” she says of the film. “But it’s important to show people what is going on.”

Gorski, a social justice scholar, has focused much of his previous scholarly work on the more human-centric topics of gender, poverty and racism. He is the founder of www.EdChange.org, a coalition of educators and activists who develop free social justice resources.

To prepare himself for teaching the animal rights class, he read extensively on the subject and took courses on animal protection offered by the Humane Society.

He says classes dedicated solely to animal rights are rare at universities. Those that do offer similar courses, he explains, usually do so through their philosophy departments.

He hopes his class will at least “incite interest” in students to continue studying animal rights.

“I think this class will put animal rights as a potential field of study on the radar screens of some students,” he says.

And if it goes a step further and spurs some into becoming full-fledged animal rights activists, then, “that would be great, too,” he says.

William S. Consovoy, JD '01. Photo courtesy of School of Law

Come this fall, a group of Mason law students will be assisting on cases before the most powerful court in the land.

In a partnership with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Wiley Rein, Mason’s School of Law will launch the Supreme Court Clinic, a program that will offer pro bono legal representation for clients attempting to have their cases heard by the high court.

Over two semesters, a dozen law students will work alongside Wiley Rein attorneys, learning the ins and outs of Supreme Court litigation. Heading up the program on Wiley Rein’s end will be two Mason law school alumni, William S. Consovoy and Thomas R. McCarthy.  Consovoy once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, and McCarthy clerked at the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District. Both now work in Wiley Rein’s Appellate Group.

“George Mason was an obvious choice for us,” says Consovoy, who, along with McCarthy, graduated from law school in 2001. “We wouldn’t have done this with any other school.”

Thomas McCarthy, JD '01. Photo courtesy of School of Law

What will these fortunate students do? For starters, they will identify cases of interest and draft legal briefs, such as a petition for certiorari, which is a request to the Supreme Court to decide a case, and a merit brief, a formal argument presented to the court after it has agreed to accept a case.

In addition, students will receive classroom instruction, research legal issues and attend at least one Supreme Court argument per semester.

High pressure, yes. But according to Daniel D. Polsby, dean of the School of Law, this is what these future attorneys signed up for.

“Our students eagerly seek field experiences,” he says, “and this program will give them new opportunities to observe and participate in the business of the highest court in the land.”

With the promise of working hands-on with real cases, the clinic is designed for advanced students, according to McCarthy.

“Many of them will be a year away from graduating,” he says. “We received 50 applications, and we accepted 12 students … these are high-caliber students.”

Consovoy says the cases the students will be assisting on will run the gamut, including those involving civil and criminal law. And the students will have a say in which cases they take on. “We want them to do things that they are excited about,” he says.

According to both attorneys, though, the type of cases are secondary to what they hope the students will take away from the clinic, including an education in federal litigation, an appreciation for Supreme Court advocacy and a better understanding of the direction they may want to take their careers in the future.

“Each student will take away something different,” Consovoy promises. “But we know it will be rewarding in many different ways.”

By Catherine Ferraro

Mississippi Rep. Gregg Harper with Mason LIFE students. Photo courtesy of Mason LIFE Program

From inside the House of Representatives, Kia Hill listened closely to the passionate voices of Republicans and Democrats swirling around her. She never imagined she would be witnessing a debate that would influence the country’s financial reform legislation.

Hill, a recent graduate of Mason’s Learning Into Future Environments (LIFE) Program, was listening to the debate as part of her internship on Capitol Hill in the office of Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly.

Hill and several other Mason LIFE students have participated in a unique internship program that gives young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities the opportunity to work in congressional offices.

“The congressional internship program has helped me grow as a person,” says Hill. “I was honored to even have the opportunity to work on Capitol Hill, something most people don’t get to do.”

A Stepping Stone to Employment

The internship program was established by Mississippi Rep. Gregg Harper, whose own son has a genetic condition called Fragile X syndrome. According to Harper, his son’s dream has been to attend Mississippi State University.

While helping Mississippi State develop its own program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the congressman crossed paths with Heidi Graff, director of the Mason LIFE Program, through the assistance of Stephanie Lee, policy advisor at the National Down Syndrome Association.

Harper and Graff, along with staff from the House Administration Committee Republican office, launched a pilot internship program in spring 2010 with three Mason LIFE students and six congressional offices.

The mission of the program, they say, is to foster a greater sense of self-confidence and independence in students with intellectual disabilities, as well as make them more visible to people who don’t have prior experience working with these individuals.

“Students with intellectual disabilities often face many challenges in becoming gainfully employed. This program offers students valuable experience working on Capitol Hill that can be used as a stepping stone when they apply for full-time employment later in life,” says Harper.

“We are also confident that this experience will benefit these students’ venture to meaningfully engage in typical career settings upon leaving college. I am so honored to be a part of this program, and I want to thank George Mason University and the members of Congress who have helped facilitate this,” Harper adds.

On-the-Job Training

Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers with Mason LIFE student Ryan Gutkowski and his brother, Kyle. Photo courtesy of Mason LIFE program

Because of the success of the pilot program, the organizers decided to expand the program this summer. During the summer session, which runs until July 29, nearly 20 congressional offices are participating. Each participating office welcomes a Mason LIFE student for a two-hour session on Monday and Friday mornings and afternoons.

In addition to fulfilling their weekly office responsibilities, interns have the opportunity to tour the U. S. Capitol buildings and the Library of Congress, as well as the Smithsonian museums.

Along the way, students are learning valuable life skills — how to use public transportation, exchange money during lunch in the House cafeteria and effectively communicate with others.

“This program has made an amazing difference in the lives of everyone involved,” says Graff. “Not only are our students learning skills that will be vital to them as they start their own careers, but people, especially on Capitol Hill, are beginning to realize what these individuals are really capable of.”

In addition to the House offices, many Senate and legislative branch offices have expressed interest in being involved in the internship programs.

Experience for Graduate Student ‘Assists’

The internship program also provides hands-on experience for graduate students in Mason’s special education and recreation, health and tourism programs.

A Mason graduate student, called an employee assist, accompanies each intern to their congressional office on Capitol Hill. The employee assist helps the intern navigate transportation, provides on-the-job support and serves as the liaison for the intern and the congressional office.

Mason graduate student Surender Raut, an employment instructor with the LIFE Program, has been an employee assist for several Mason LIFE students since the program began. The internship program has been a rewarding experience for Raut as well.

“I feel that my job is very important because I am helping the students acquire the skills they need for employment,” says Raut, who is pursuing a master’s degree in special education. “They start to become more independent and learn how to be active members in the community. The best reward comes when I see the pride they show at their job sites.”

Confident About the Future

Kia Hill’s internship experience with Rep. Kelly, as well as with Wyoming Rep. Cynthia Lummis during the pilot program, have left her feeling confident about her future. She has several job opportunities this summer in Washington, D.C., and plans to spend most of her time at Fairfax County’s Therapeutic Recreation Services working with children with disabilities.

“It is difficult to measure the difference this program has made in the lives of our students, but we see it every day in their faces,” says Graff. “They are so proud to call themselves Capitol Hill interns, and this experience is something they couldn’t find anywhere else.”

For more information about the program, contact Graff at 703-993-8036 or hgraff@gmu.edu.

Professor T. Mills Kelly leads his historical methods class on a field trip to the Woodyard family cemetery. Creative Services photo

Night was coming on fast, so history professor T. Mills Kelly spoke quickly. His class needed to get some critical field work done in the fading midwinter light.

This Historical Methods (HIST 300) class was standing in a parking lot near Bull Run Marina and Yates Ford Road in Clifton, Va., readying themselves for a walk in the woods. The students were on their way to visit the Woodyard family cemetery as part of a new “Dead in Virginia” course Kelly had devised.

But before they ventured into the woods, Kelly handed out topographical maps of the area, showed the students how to interpret them and explained how to find true north. Kelly had brought along a compass and urged the students to do the same.

Tweaking a Required Course to Make It ‘Click’

Over the past few years, Kelly had been looking for a new way to teach historical methods to history majors, and Dead in Virginia is the result. HIST 300 is a requirement for the bachelor’s degree in history; therefore, Kelly’s 20 students were history majors, mostly juniors and seniors.

“[HIST 300] never clicked for me. It is generally not the students’ favorite course to take, and not the faculty’s favorite course to teach,” said Kelly.

So he tweaked it. Inspiration came from his daily commute through Clifton, where he says he passes four or five family cemeteries each day. He also is a Boy Scout leader and familiar with old cemetery renovations because they are popular Eagle Scout projects.

“I thought this would be a great way for students to experience what it is like to be a historian,” he said. He also wanted to incorporate more technology, which interests students.

Plotting the Plot

Students recorded every detail about the cemetery in preparation for their individual research projects. Creative Services photo

The Woodyard family cemetery sits on park land and was renovated recently by an Eagle Scout Kelly knows. There are more than eight headstones and a large tree in the plot. The wrought iron fence enclosing the space is weathered but mostly intact.

The students were expected to figure out the cemetery’s dimensions, record the information on the headstones and even sketch the layout. This activity was a dry run for recording information about a small family plot somewhere in Northern Virginia that each student would select to be the basis for their research.

Junior Kate Herndon found that the class had an added bonus: shaking up her Facebook friends. “When you put up ‘heading to the cemetery’ as your status, you do freak out your friends,” she said.

And her classmate junior Olivia Green joked, “Why wouldn’t you take a weird class where you look for cemeteries?”

After recording all their information about the Woodyard cemetery, the students entered their findings in a database called MyCemetery.org Kelly set up, another practice run to prepare the students to input the data and findings about their cemeteries.

As the students worked at the Woodyard cemetery, Kelly directed their attention to the opening in the wrought iron gate and asked what they could speculate about the original layout of the property. He also told them that before there was a bridge, Yates Ford was an actual ford where people could cross the Occoquan River, so some kind of commerce was likely nearby.

These are the things he expected the students to think about and discover when researching their own cemeteries.

Sharing with a Broader Community

Creative Services photo

Later in the semester, the class visited the Virginia Room at the City of Fairfax Regional Library where the group learned how to look up their people using property records and census data with the help of members of the Fairfax County Cemetery Preservation Association.

To aid the students in their fact-finding journeys, Kelly also purchased memberships to genealogy websites. It was possible that somewhere an amateur historian was working on their family tree and needed the data these students were collecting.

At the end of the course, Kelly opened the MyCemetery.org website to the public to see what kind of information others might contribute. “Cemeteries are things that people care a lot about,” he said.

They are, as evident by the amount of support and interest Kelly has received since first adding the course to the class schedule. Right now, the course is only available to history majors, but in the future, Kelly will consider cross-listing it with other majors and perhaps offering a general section that even members of the community could take in summer 2012.

“This was definitely the most interesting class listed [in the class schedule],” said student Dan Weber. “I know what the students in the other classes are doing. They are reading about stuff and then writing papers. You can take a hundred of those classes. It is far more interesting to apply methods than it is to read about them.”

This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in Cornerstone, the magazine of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Mona Olsen, assistant director of the Mason Small Business Development Center, and Jeffrey Kulick, marketing instructor in the School of Management, teamed up for the benefit of the center and students in Kulick's Marketing to the Nonprofit Sector class. Photo by Nicolas Tan

The nonprofit needed help marketing itself. The marketing class needed, well, a nonprofit to help market. It was a partnership born out of necessity.

This past semester, the Mason Small Business Development Center (SBDC), an organization dedicated to turning start-ups into long-lasting, viable companies, opened its doors to a group of Mason marketing students with a hope that the ambitious academics could find ways for the nonprofit to grow.

Based in a nondescript office building a half a mile from the Fairfax Campus, the Mason SBDC has a staff of two full-time employees and a slew of volunteers from all sectors of business.

Over the course of a year, the center’s volunteers advise more than 400 small businesses — many of them technology companies — on everything from how to devise a business plan, to securing financing, to advertising.

The center’s funding comes from the U.S. Small Business Administration, Virginia’s SBDC Network and the Mason Enterprise Center. Mason also supplies part of the center’s funding. But aside from the occasional Mason graduate, most of the entrepreneurs the center consults with have little connection to the university. And that’s what it wants to change.

Teaching How to Be a Business Consultant

“We have worked with members of the Mason community before but we would love to see more of that,” says Mona Olsen, assistant director of the Mason SBDC.

So, cue Mason marketing professor Jeffrey Kulick and his Marketing to the Nonprofit Sector (MKTG 481) class.

Each year as part of his class’s “capstone” project, Kulick has his students work with a local nonprofit to help improve its marketing strategy. In previous years, his class has assisted the United Way and the ARC of Greater Prince William County, as well an assortment of Fairfax County-based organizations.

The course teaches students to work as a business consultant, a job some will eventually find themselves in.

“It gives students real-life experience working with a nonprofit,” says Kulick, who has been teaching in the School of Management (SOM) since 2001. “It’s also a way to expose Mason to the outside world.”

For the Mason SBDC, Kulick had his class break up into teams, with each one tasked with finding ways for the center to increase its client base within the Mason community.

A Dozen New Ideas

After studying the center’s current marketing strategy, one group suggested the center partner more with professors to tap into their knowledge base.

Working with Mason’s Alumni Association was also suggested, as was engaging more with student business clubs and having a presence at SOM’s annual undergraduate orientation event called WelcomeFest. Other recommendations were that the center have a presence in Mason’s University Career Services office and on Blackboard, a web-based learning environment management system employed at Mason.

In addition, with websites like Twitter and Facebook more essential than ever to businesses and nonprofits alike, several students recommended the SBDC tap more into social media to get its message out. Which makes sense, since “they live in that world,” Kulick says of his students’ interest in social media.

According to Olsen, the center’s staff was thrilled with what the students came up with.

“We got about 10 or 12 ideas presented to us that we hadn’t thought about,” she says. In particular, she praises the idea of working closely with potential future entrepreneurs in University Career Services. “Maybe this is a way to increase our visibility with students.”

The center is currently examining how to implement some of the students’ ideas. Because, according to Olsen, with Mason in its name, it’s important that the Mason SBDC help bridge the gap between members of the Mason community and success in the world of business.

“It makes sense that we would be that connector point to Mason,” she says.

Students (from left) Jerrit Askvig, Leah Bode, Nathan Cushing and Collin Mullery won an award for their River Turbidity Reduction System. Photo by Evan Cantwell

Two student groups from Mason’s Systems Engineering Senior Design course in the Volgenau School of Engineering recently won first-place awards in two different national research competitions.

“This group of students did a fantastic job in our rigorous systems engineering program at Mason,” says Lance Sherry, associate professor of systems engineering and operations research. “Their success in the international design competitions against some of the best engineering schools in the nation is proof of their abilities and the quality of the systems engineering program.”

At the IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SEIDS’11), held at the University of Virginia on April 29, students Jerrit Askvig, Leah Bode, Nathan Cushing and Colin Mullery won first place in the Systems Applications Track for “Turbidity Reduction for the West and Rhode Rivers.”

For their paper, the students developed a computer model of the water flow for two rivers that flow into the Chesapeake Bay, with the goal of maximizing the water quality at the lowest possible cost.

After weighing the options of adding Eastern oysters, adding soft-shell clams or performing living shoreline restoration, the group found that planting and protecting clams is one of the more cost-effective and environmentally safe ways of cleaning up the rivers.

Students (from left) Michael Dupuy, Dan Wesely and Cody Jenkins won an award for their Airline Fleet Maintenance project. Photo by Evan Cantwell

George Donohue, professor of systems engineering and operations research, served as an advisor to the team. Industry advisors also included West/Rhode Riverkeeper, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and Project Oyster West River. Sherry accompanied the students to the conference as faculty advisor.

SEIDS is a student-focused international forum for applied research, development and design in systems and information engineering that features innovative research and alternative solutions to real-world problems.

Other universities participating in the competition included the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Tech, the U.S. Air Force Academy, Southern Methodist University, the University of Istanbul (Turkey) and the University of Venda (South Africa).

The second team of students won its award at the General Donald R. Keith Memorial Cadet Capstone Conference at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.

Students Mike Dupuy, Cody Jenkins and Dan Wesely won Conference Best Poster Award for “Airline Fleet Maintenance: Trade-off Analysis of Alternate Aircraft Maintenance Approaches.”

Paul Kesler of  the Boeing Co. served as an industry sponsor for the group.

For this project, the students developed a computer simulation that compared the current airline industry maintenance approach of preventative parts replacement with two condition-based parts replacement approaches that used sensors to provide electronic information to repair crews at airports.

The team determined that the most cost-effective solution was to implement a condition-based parts replacement system in which repair information is transmitted to ground crews each time an aircraft arrives at the terminal.

The Cadet Capstone Conference allows undergraduates from several universities to present their research to an audience of professors, students, clients and judges.

The participants work with industry and government clients to analyze and tackle real- world problems. Other universities participating in the competition included the U.S. Air Force Academy, Virginia Tech and the U.S. Military Academy. The students were accompanied by Army Lt. Col. John Ferguson, a PhD candidate in the system engineering and operations research program.

More than 7,000 graduates … more than 7,000 wonderful stories of proud achievers. With Mason’s 44^th Commencement set for Saturday, May 21, the University News staff checked in on some members of the Class of 2011 to find out about their educational journey and their plans for the future.

English Major Represents College Students at the State Level

By Aisha Jamil

Blake Silver chaired the Student Advisory Committee for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Creative Services photo

Each year, Mason selects a student to represent the university at the state level to discuss higher education issues. This year, that student was Blake Silver.

Silver also competed against other student representatives to become the elected chair of the Student Advisory Committee for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV).

“I ran for chair of the Student Advisory Committee because I have a passion for higher education, and I can’t imagine a better way to serve my peers,” says Silver, a senior majoring in English with a concentration in folklore, mythology and literature. “This is my opportunity to make sure they are represented at the state level.”

SCHEV is a state agency that makes policy recommendations on higher education to the governor and General Assembly in such areas as capital and operating budget planning, enrollment, technology needs and student financial aid.

“This year, our committee lobbied to support several key bills in the General Assembly that impacted public institutions in Virginia,” says Silver, who also serves as a peer advisor for freshman transition courses. “I was thrilled because this was a chance for me to use my passion for higher education to benefit students across the state.”

Silver, who is a University Scholar, also founded Mason’s club running team and helped revive the Golden Key International Honor Society campus chapter.

“I have been fortunate to meet so many friends and mentors who have truly shaped my time at Mason,” Silver says.

One such mentor is Todd Rose, associate dean of University Life who appointed Silver to the SCHEV panel.

“Blake was an easy pick for me,” Rose says. “He’s smart and can quickly get up to speed on the issues that are relevant to the role on SCHEV. He is also someone who works extremely well with others while advocating for a position, and would represent Mason extremely well. In short, people like working with Blake.”

As for the future, Silver is planning to pursue a master’s degree in higher education at George Washington University in the fall. He hopes to work in student affairs for a university after graduation.

Based on his experience, Silver has some advice to students who will be starting their own journey at Mason.

“Get involved in service and leadership right away during your freshman year,” he says, “because it adds a great deal of experience that has the potential to impact you as much, if not more, than your academic course work.”

Mariana Cruz Is Senior of the Year

By Jason Jacks

Mariana Cruz, a scholarship student, has maintained at least a 3.5 GPA each semester at Mason. Photo by Evan Cantwell

As a prolific volunteer, global learner, and founding president of a minority student group, Mariana Cruz, a civil and infrastructure engineering major, is proof that the pursuit of excellence doesn’t stop when class lets out.

Since she arrived at Mason in 2007, Cruz has excelled. A recipient of the Volgenau School of Engineering’s William and Susan Eddy Soza Distinguished Scholarship, Cruz has earned at least a 3.50 GPA each semester, while maintaining a demanding load of courses and extracurricular activities.

“I guess, early on, I learned how to manage my time,” Cruz says of keeping a busy schedule.

In April Cruz was recognized as Senior of the Year by the Mason Alumni Association at its annual Celebration of Distinction. She was nominated by Volgenau’s alumni chapter.

Cruz’s work with the new student group Engineers Without Borders was among the accomplishments the alumni chapter praised her for. Last summer, Cruz, a native of Peru, spent two weeks in her homeland helping to evaluate irrigation and drinking water strategies for a small village. “It was an opportunity for me to give back to my country,” she says.

She also participates in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program, which helps increase the number of minority students involved in math, science, and technology programs. Cruz is also the founding president of a complementary student program called Mason-AMP.

“Mariana is a multitalented individual with broad interests,” says E. Bernard White, an associate dean at the Volgenau School and a principal investigator in the LSAMP program. “She has devised new programs and services whenever she senses an unmet need.”

Cruz is also regularly called on by the Volgenau School to help in student recruitment and new student orientation events. She also is a peer advisor for the school and a tutor for the athletics department, jobs that inspire her to become a professor someday.

Leaving Mason, she says, will be bittersweet.

“I am closing a really happy chapter of my life,” she says. “But graduation is a time to look to the future.”

Iraq War Veteran Transitioned from Soldier to Scholar

By Aisha Jamil

Iraq War veteran Jeremiah Foxwell will study Arabic on a Critical Language Scholarship this summer. Creative Services photo

Jeremiah Foxwell already has a lot on his plate this summer.

Foxwell, who served two tours in Iraq for the Navy as a petty officer second class in a bomb disposal unit, will graduate this spring with a Bachelor of Individualized Study (BIS) degree focusing on Middle Eastern and North African studies, Arabic and national security.

Soon after, he will travel to the Middle East as a winner of a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. State Department.

Foxwell will study Arabic at the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan, for about eight weeks.

LaNitra Berger, who has coached Foxwell throughout his time at Mason, is proud of the work he has done.

“Jeremiah is one of Mason’s most promising students of the Arabic language,” says Berger, who directs Mason’s fellowship and undergraduate apprenticeship program.

“What I enjoyed most about working with Jeremiah on his fellowship applications,” Berger continues, “was his determination to use his research to improve the lives of both soldiers and those who live in war-torn communities.”

Explaining his decision to attend Mason, Foxwell says, “Leaving the military, I wanted to transition from soldier to scholar. I wanted to take my experiences from Iraq and base my education on what I learned in the military. The BIS program is the bridge for veterans like myself who want to utilize their experiences in their education.”

Foxwell is appreciative of other helpful mentors he has had at Mason, including Alan More, an adjunct professor for BIS, and Omar Salawdeh, an Arabic professor. And he says that simply being at a school like Mason has been helpful to his career.

“The multicultural diversity this school has allowed me to connect with a lot of different nationalities and communities,” he says. “I wish that Mason had a graduate-level Arabic program so I could further my studies here.”

As for his future plans, Foxwell would like to become a national security professional.

“I hope to reshape our foreign policies and methods and focus on the human causes of conflict,” Foxwell says. “Instead of arming the young men and women with weapons, I want to arm them with the education and knowledge of what it means to be a citizen.”

Environmental Issues Draw Couple Together

By Aisha Jamil

Smriti and Sameer Bhattarai have shared and supported one another in their environmental science studies. Creative Services photo

First they earned bachelor’s degrees together, then master’s degrees. Now Sameer and Smriti Bhattarai are both getting PhDs in environmental science and policy.

The Bhattarais, who have been married for almost 10 years, are proud to have pursued their education together this far.

“It feels good to have studied together,” says Smriti, whose focus of study is environmental molecular biology. “We could always have someone to share and support whatever — good or bad — came along during this educational journey.”

The two completed bachelor’s degrees in environmental science at the Tribhuvan University in Nepal, where they also met back in 1999. They married three years later and moved to Alabama, where they received their master’s degrees in environmental analysis and management from Troy University.

“While doing our master’s in the United States, we became interested in pursuing PhD degrees in environmental science so that we could understand more about the linkage between humans and the environment,” says Sameer, whose focus of study is water resource management. “Mason had a research program that matched both of our interests, so Mason it was.”

Both Sameer and Smriti had graduate teaching and research assistantships at Mason. Sameer also received research grants from the Cosmos Club Foundation Young Scholars Program and Mason’s Office of the Provost.

“The research opportunities we received at Mason have enabled us to grow both academically and personally,” Smriti says. “We both have had the opportunity to work with people that are experts in their respective fields.”

Smriti worked with Patrick Gillevet, who is an expert in molecular and microbial ecology, while Sameer worked with Chris Jones, who has worked in the field of freshwater ecosystems for about 30 years.

“Sameer is a very dedicated and conscientious graduate student,” says Jones, a professor and director of the Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center. “He has helped me on numerous research projects as well as in lab and field classes in freshwater ecology. He is always well prepared for teaching and has a lot of patience when working with students.”

For her dissertation research, Smriti investigated the sources of fecal pollution in urban streams and characterized stream microbial communities using molecular techniques.

“Smriti is an independent student that has done great work in the field of molecular ecology,” says Gillevet, a professor in the Environmental Science and Policy department and director of the MicroBiome Analysis Center. “She combined many different aspects of microbiology, and her work tied everything together very nicely.”

Sameer’s dissertation research investigated the response of streams to land use and urban best management practices (BMPs).

“My study found interesting connections between urbanization, BMPs and stream quality, which I believe will have important implications for urban stormwater management,” Sameer says.

As for the couple’s future plans, both are interested in continuing researching and teaching others about environmental science and policy.

“Environmental issues are the biggest concerns of our time, and we hope to make a small contribution in making our world a better place by addressing them,” Smriti says.

Champion Speaker Will Give Student Commencement Address

By Tara Laskowski

As a member and co-captain of Mason's Forensics Team, Quincey Smith earned national champion honors at the American Forensic Association National Individual Events Tournament. Photo by Evan Cantwell

Mason has the best young speaker in the nation giving the student Commencement address on May 21.

Quincey Smith, a graduating communication major, was recently named the national champion at the 2011 American Forensic Association National Individual Events Tournament.

Smith has been the co-captain of the nationally acclaimed George Mason Forensics Team for the past two years, working closely with the team’s director, Peter Pober.

Smith won the national championship in Communication Analysis, placed fourth in both Informative and Persuasive Speaking, and was a quarterfinalist in Poetry and Prose.

“I’ve always been into performing arts, and this led naturally to an interest in public speech,” says Smith.

In his Commencement address, Smith says he’s going to “celebrate the achievements of both students and the university. I am so proud to be associated with George Mason University and so proud to be a part of the Class of 2011. I am so honored and thankful to get to speak at the Commencement ceremony.”

Smith, who is also a Dean’s Challenge Award scholar, says Mason’s Forensics Team really made a difference in his college career.

“Being part of the Forensics Team has transformed my life,” says Smith. “I’m blessed with wonderful teammates and coaches, and thrilled to be at a university that supports forensics.”

Smith, who has a minor in legal studies, spent much of his college career working in a variety of capacities for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality. As a member of the university Honors Program, Smith wrote his thesis on transgender student inclusion in health services on campus. In 2010, he interned at the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization working to achieve equality for LGBT individuals. He also created a new campus publication called Outloud Magazine that celebrates the LGBT community at Mason.

After graduation, Smith is moving to New York City, where he hopes to work for a nonprofit that advocates for these issues as well.