Schar School News September 2021

Panel: Women and Minorities in the Workforce and the Way Ahead

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 15:12:34 +0000

Panel: Women and Minorities in the Workforce and the Way Ahead Andrew J Schappert Wed, 09/22/2021 - 11:12

The Schar School of Policy and Government’s Gender and Policy (GAP) Center and LMI, a Tysons, Va.-based consultancy, will host “Today’s Workforce and the Way Ahead,” a panel discussion exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and minorities in the workforce. The panel will cover policy and personal well-being perspectives, as well as examine the future of a hybrid workforce.

The discussion begin Tuesday, September 28 at noon. Registration is not required. Those interested should simply follow this link on the date and time aforementioned.

The panelists include:

Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center. Prior to joining NWLC, Martin served as deputy director of the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Maryam Ovissi, a trauma-informed yoga and wellbeing specialist and collective care educator at Beloved Yoga’s Yoga Therapy program. Ovissi serves on the board of the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art and the Southgate Community Center and is on the advisory board of the Gender and Policy Center.
Ahkesha Murray, principal for change management, culture, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEI&A) at LMI. Murray oversees all aspects of LMI’s DEI&A strategy and programs and acts as the organization’s recognized change management and culture authority.

The panel will be moderated by Schar School associate professor and associate dean of student and academic affairs Bonnie Stabile. She also serves as the director of the Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) program and is founder and director of the Gender and Policy (GAP) Center at the Schar School.

The panel is sponsored by LMI’s Minorities & Ethnicities (ME) Affinity Group, LMI Women’s Forum Affinity Group, and LMI Research Institute’s Academic Programs in collaboration with the Gender and Policy Center at the Schar School.

Topics

Schar School News September 2021

Schar School Kicks Off Learning Communities with Appearance by President Washington and a Scavenger Hunt

Andrew J Schappert — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:18:46 +0000

Schar School Kicks Off Learning Communities with Appearance by President Washington and a Scavenger Hunt Andrew J Schappert Tue, 09/21/2021 - 11:18

In This Story

Searching the stacks: The scavenger hunt took Schar School undergrads into the Fenwick Library.

The Schar School of Policy and Government instituted three new “learning communities” for its undergraduate students for the fall of 2021: the Democracy Lab, the Undergraduate Research Community, and the International Relations Policy Task Force. In late August, the Democracy Lab students, who will share experiences on- and off campus, heard ��AV President Gregory Washington deliver a stirring inaugural address on racial justice. Also in August, all three communities participated in a whimsical-if-competitive scavenger hunt.

Schar School students, many of them in their first year at Mason, were split into nine teams and given clues that sent them all around Mason’s Fairfax campus to complete different tasks. The clues guided students to fun, but also important, places on campus.

Students learned their way around campus and discovered some of the many resources available to them at Mason and the Schar School. They learned what the oldest buildings on campus are as well as where the newest one is; they learned where to find Mason’s president’s office (he wasn’t in), the library, the bookstore, and the writing center.

Students also discovered where they can go to find academic advisors, professors, or anyone in the Schar School who can provide answers to their questions. Some of the faculty were at the event to introduce themselves to the students—including learning communities faculty directors Peter Mandaville, Eric McGlinchey, and Heba El-Shazli—with the idea of making students more comfortable and therefore more likely to engage with and utilize their support team.

Democracy Lab resident advisor Molly Reed displays her scavenger hunt findings.

“The event was a great way to meet professors and students in Schar School in an informal way,” one sophomore participant commented. “I got to make friends with people that I have classes with but would not have been confident in speaking to them. My overall take away from the event was the importance of community and group members. The fact that we were divided into groups made the event more fun.”

One of the biggest appeals of learning communities is the genuine community students build and the relationships formed with other students and faculty. The scavenger hunt kick-off was a good way to introduce students to the community as an initial step to becoming closer and to bolster success.

Topics

Democracy Lab

Undergraduate Research Community

International Relations Policy Task Force

Campus

Schar School News September 2021

Democracy Lab Learning Community

Mason’s new tech initiative is set to be an automatic game changer

Mariam Aburdeineh — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 18:57:24 +0000

Mason’s new tech initiative is set to be an automatic game changer Mariam Aburdeineh Mon, 09/13/2021 - 14:57

In This Story

David Rehr

David Rehr, Mason alumni, and other industry professionals discuss careers in the RPA industry as part of Mason's new RPA Initiative. Photo provided.

David Rehr said he has spent his entire life thinking about how government can be more efficient and effective.

The ��AV alumnus and director of Mason’s Center for Business Civic Engagement at the Schar School of Policy and Government spent 25 years as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill. Before that, he was a child growing up in the Midwest, the son of a hardworking postman who didn’t attend college.

His time in government, he said, made him a bit cynical, feeling that citizens’ hard-earned tax dollars, like his father’s, weren’t being used the most resourcefully.

Rehr said he learned about Robotic Process Automation (RPA)—what he believes could be the key to solving government and public sector inefficiencies—when he met someone from global software company UiPath in 2020.

That led to Rehr co-founding Mason’s RPA Initiative, in partnership with UiPath, in January.

“This gives Mason a really unique opportunity to help the public sector, and to make programs work better for citizens,” said Rehr, who earned a PhD in economics from Mason in 1998. “We’re the only university I could find that has such a program.”

“Mason has a history of innovation, technology, and studying public policy,” said Bobby Patrick, UiPath CMO. “We believe the partnership is a great fit and will benefit citizens seeking greater value in public-sector programs and initiatives.”

Rehr spoke over the phone about the initiative and its benefits.

What is RPA and how is it used?

RPA is an easy-to-use, commercial off-the-shelf technology that can automate repetitive, rules-based tasks.

During COVID, RPA greatly reduced the time it took to receive COVID test results. Another application analyzed photos of infected lungs…the robotics could determine within about a minute if you were going to have a complication.

There’s a digital assistant where if you have to fill out HR paperwork, you can scan your driver’s license and all your paperwork is filled out for you. For W-4 forms that multiple people have to sign, RPA can automatically send it to your supervisors, who are signaled by the technology that they have something to approve. It’s continuous from there.

Tell us about Mason’s RPA Initiative.

At the Schar School, we’re always focusing on how we can be innovative in our teaching and make an impact in the world.

The mission of the initiative is to research, educate, and communicate how the adoption of technologies can improve productivity, operations and service delivery for traditional and novel challenges of the public sector.

What can we look forward to with the initiative?

We’re hoping to be able to hire more students to work on projects, to further educate through webinars and instruction, do research, and communicate the benefits of RPA to the public sector.

The [School of Business] also has an RPA class. We’re hoping to take a multidisciplinary approach: how can we use all the Mason resources to make sure our students are aware of the opportunities and get hired when they graduate.

Will RPA replace human labor?

There’s not a substitution effect; there’s a complementary effect. This technology will help programs work better for people and more efficiently. It liberates workers from mundane things, which don’t appeal to their imagination. Using RPA will allow people the freedom to think about high value work priorities and unleash greater economic growth, greater prosperity, make everyone’s lives better, and help people have more fulfilling lives.

Where can people go to learn more about RPA?

The initiative produced a paper aimed at non-IT workers in June that’s been picked up around the world. We include examples of what’s happening globally with RPA, and explain the technology in a non-technical way. Those interested in getting involved can visit the RPA Initiative website.

Topics

Schar School

Schar School Faculty

robotic process automation (RPA)

Alumni

Business

Costello College of Business

Center for Business Civic Engagement

innovation

Campus News

Schar School News September 2021

Faculty experts reflect on Sept. 11

Colleen Rich — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 18:00:30 +0000

Faculty experts reflect on Sept. 11 Colleen Rich Thu, 09/09/2021 - 14:00

To mark the 20^th anniversary of Sept. 11, we reached out to our colleagues at the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security and the Schar School of Policy and Government for their remembrances. Many of them have worked in the intelligence and policy communities and each has a unique perspective on a day that changed our world.

Larry Pfeiffer
Director, The Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security
I remember driving down MD Route 32 on my way to work at the National Security Agency—it was a beautiful clear sunny day—when I heard the reporters on the radio talking about a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers. Odd, I thought. Moments later, they reported the second tower had been hit. With that, I knew the United States was under attack. I rushed to the office, where I helped manage the NSA’s relationships with foreign intelligence services. My chore that day was to get a message to all of our foreign partners that we were under attack and needed their help. At some point we sent everyone home, fearing an attack on our headquarters in Maryland. As I was completing the message to our partners, by myself in the office, a security guard came in waving her service revolver around asking why I was still there. I asked her to put the gun down and give me a few more minutes to finish what I was doing. The mission of the U.S. intelligence community changed dramatically on that day as we retooled to fight a global war on terrorism. I had the privilege of working alongside some incredible men and women through the rest of my career, doing what I could to avoid a repeat of 9/11 and to keep America safe.

Ronald Marks III
Former CIA case officer
Visiting term professor, Schar School of Policy and Government
On 9/11, I was about to leave home for a meeting at Army Intelligence when I saw on television the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Immediately, I called my wife who worked at CIA. I could not reach her. After a very long hour, she arrived home shaken, but safe. I hugged her for a long time. 9/11 destroyed the pretense any nation state had impermeable borders and boundaries in the 21st century. And that America, a 20^th-century nation, must quickly adjust to the new realities.

Ellen Beth Laipson
Director, Center for Security Policy Studies
The attacks of Sept. 11 transformed the national security priorities of the United States in fundamental ways. Defining terrorism as the greatest threat to our security led to many structural and legal changes. In hindsight, many of those actions appear to be an overreaction, or steps where the costs outweighed the benefits. Those costs are not just financial. They are human, in the war zones, and social, in the delicate balance in our system between basic rights and civil liberties and government's requirements to prevent terrorist attacks. This 9/11 anniversary is a sober one as we try to assess the long-term impact of our engagement in Afghanistan, and the residual threat that al-Qaeda may still pose to Americans at home and abroad.

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. Photo by Getty Images

Edward Rhodes
Professor, Government and International Affairs
I was blithely at home writing a lecture about American foreign policy when my sister-in-law emailed me. I turned on the television just in time to watch the first World Trade Center tower collapse, and then the second tower. l don’t remember how long after that it was before the screen shots came in from Arlington, showing a gaping void in the part of the E-ring of the Pentagon, where I had once worked. The next day, from my fifth-floor office windows, 30 miles from Manhattan, I watched the plume of smoke still rising from the spot on the horizon where I used to see the tops of the towers. All of these are unforgettable images, burned in my brain. But it’s this last image, of the plume of smoke, that is probably most telling. Metaphorically, for the last 20 years, we have all been watching that plume of smoke, unable to look away. Sadly, we’ve never succeeded in understanding the human fire that caused that smoke; as a nation, we’ve never really understood the fuel, the oxygen, or the matches that create these fires, and despite enormous effort, we’ve certainly not understood how to put them out or prevent them from starting. Perhaps now, though, with our withdrawal from Afghanistan we can complete our grieving process and put our anger behind us, and turn our attention to the collective, constructive tasks we are called upon to undertake, to come together as a diverse national society and to preserve a livable world.

Ming Wan
Professor, Government and Politics
Associate Dean, Schar School of Policy and Government
I remember 9/11 as if it were yesterday, in slow motion. I was working in the basement of my Fairfax home, when my elder brother called me from New York City to say he was okay. “Why should I think you are in danger working in Wall Street?” I asked. He replied, “Turn on the TV.” Shortly afterwards, my younger brother and sister-in-law knocked on the door. They were dropping by after seeing her parents off at Dulles Airport. They had been in the dark about the attacks. We found out together on CNN that the plane that had crashed into Pentagon was the one their parents were on. My wife, who worked in a building not far from the White House, was somewhere trying to reach home. A real estate agent called out of blue to see if we would be interested in selling our house. The houses in our neighborhood had apparently been selling like hotcakes. “Shame on you,” I yelled. I cancelled my class for the next day.

A. Trevor Thrall
Associate Professor, International Security
Twenty years ago, a small group of hijackers shocked the United States and taught Americans to fear terrorism. I will never forget how we saw the best in our country as people rallied together to recover. Sadly, however, the events of 9/11 also unleashed America’s violent side. Instead of focusing on Al Qaeda, the United States launched a global war on terror under the illusion that terrorism was something that could be defeated militarily—at a staggering cost in lives and national treasure. Now that American troops have come home from Afghanistan, the United States can honor the victims of terrorism while starting a new and more peaceful chapter of our history.

National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial, dedicated in 2008, honors 184 people killed at the Pentagon and on American Airlines flight 77 when the Pentagon was attacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Brien Aho

Colin Dueck
Professor, Government and Politics
In the years just before 9/11, I used to see the World Trade Center from my apartment window in Brooklyn. The events of that day were not only shocking, they reoriented U.S. foreign policy toward a new counterterrorism posture around the world. Over time, that posture involved many frustrations and mistakes. But we would do well to remember that Salafi-jihadist terrorists have not given up on their ideology or their ambitions. On the contrary, they see themselves as having succeeded in pushing America out of Afghanistan. The challenge for the United States will be to find a path moving forward that protects U.S. citizens and allies from terrorist attack, without exhausting the American public and its elected leaders.

Richard Kauzlarich
Distinguished Visiting Professor
U.S. Ambassador (ret.)
It is impossible to express my feelings of loss—for friends whose brother died in New York on 9/11, and people I do not know living that day over and over in their memories. In part, we saw the legacy of that day play out with the recent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan and Bosnia and Herzegovina, I worry about how the rest of the world will see those two events impacting on the U.S. role in the world.

Mark N. Katz
Professor, Government and Politics
After I finished teaching my 9 a.m. class on Sept. 11, I walked across the Fairfax Campus to the Aquatics and Fitness Center on what I thought was an especially beautiful morning to do some exercise. There was a big screen television in the lobby with more than the usual number of people watching, but I didn't pay any attention to what was on. While riding an exercise bike, though, I could see in the lobby that more people had gathered to watch. I went to the lobby and learned the awful news. I walked back to my office with the sense that this was the beginning of a new, more ominous world. One of my students, an Army reservist, came by my office to say he expected to be called up and wanted to arrange to do his course work on an accelerated basis. I would also learn that one of my former students working in the Pentagon that day had survived. The sense of security that followed the collapse of communism in 1989-91 was gone.

Gen. Michael Hayden shared his thoughts on the Hayden Center website.

Topics

Campus News

Schar School of Policy and Government

Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence Policy and International Security

9/11 anniversary

Schar School News September 2021

Michael Morell: A witness to history

Colleen Rich — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 16:59:25 +0000

Michael Morell: A witness to history Colleen Rich Thu, 09/09/2021 - 12:59

Michael Morell. Photo by Ron Aira/Creative Services

Michael Morell is the only person who was with President George W. Bush on Sept. 11, 2001, when the 9/11 attacks occurred, and with President Barack Obama on May 2, 2011, when Osama bin Laden was killed.

Morell, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at ��AV’s Schar School of Policy and Government, is still one of the country’s leading national security professionals.

During his 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, he served as deputy director for three years and twice served as acting director.

He received the Presidential Rank Award for exceptional performance—the nation’s highest honor for civilian service. He also received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, CIA’s highest award, for his role in the bin Laden operation.

Today, he is a senior national security contributor for CBS News and hosts the popular CBS News podcast, “Intelligence Matters.”

His book, “The Great War of Our Time: An Insider’s Account of CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism—From al-Qaida to ISIS,” was published in 2015 and was a New York Times bestseller.

We are grateful to Morell for taking the time to share his memories and insights with The George.

Photo by Getty Images

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, what sticks with you the most, both emotionally and visually?

There are a couple of moments that are etched in my memory. One is on Air Force One on Sept. 11, President Bush looking me in the eye and asking me, "Who did this?" I told him I thought that when we got to the end of the trail, we’d find al-Qaida and bin Laden. I told him I was so confident in that that I would bet my children’s future on it.

I also remember getting back to the CIA that night. I remember dozens and dozens and dozens of people at the gate. Some of them were current workers who had been sent home earlier in the day because George Tenet, then the director of Central Intelligence, had evacuated the building fearing a plane might hit it. And these current workers were saying, "Hey, we want to come back. We want to work. We want to help. We want to do anything we can.” And what was even more moving was former employees, people who had retired years earlier, standing at the gate saying, "I want to come back. I want to help. I’ll do anything."

Fast forward, I remember in August of 2010, when the head of our Counterterrorism Center said to [CIA Director Leon Panetta] and me, after a routine meeting, "I need to see the two of you alone." So we went back to the director’s office and he told us that “We found a guy that we call Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who we believe is a courier for bin Laden. And we found where he lives.” When you saw this place, with 12- to 18-foot walls topped with barbed wire, and all sorts of other security features, and no television and no phone and no wi-fi, and families that don’t leave the compound, kids don’t go to school, they don’t put the trash out. I remember the hair on the back of my neck standing up as the first real possibility that I had seen that maybe, just maybe, we had found bin Laden.

I remember the day that we got bin Laden. But I remember even more, to bring us full circle here, President Obama, knowing I was with President Bush on 9/11, asking me to go to Dallas after the bin Laden raid and brief President Bush on it. So I took with me the lead analyst to tell the intelligence story, and I took with me the lead military planner for the raid, to tell the raid story. We spent two and a half hours with President Bush, and he was like a kid in a candy store. He wanted to know every single detail. And at the end he got up and walked over to his desk and pulled out one of his challenge coins; the military has these challenge coins that they share with each other, different units. And he slapped it in my hand and shook my hand, and I could see closure in his eyes. And when I looked at the coin, it was his Commander in Chief challenge coin, which he had never given to me before.

You were part of an extraordinary event. How did you balance the intensity of doing your job with the surreal aspect of the moment?

The surreal is happening all around you, literally. I remember getting back to Air Force One from the school [in Sarasota, Florida, where President Bush had been speaking]. Air Force One was ringed with Secret Service officers with their weapons out. Not their handguns, but with their long guns. It looked like soldiers on a battlefield. I had never seen that before. Everybody’s bags were being searched. They searched my top-secret briefcase. I didn’t say a word.

As we were landing at Andrews [Air Force Base] that night, the president’s military aide was looking out the windows on the left side of the aircraft as we were approaching. He called me over and said to look out. There was a fighter jet on our wingtip. He said, “That’s an F-16, and there is another one on the other wing tip.” The F-16 was so close you could see the pilot. You could see the pilot’s facial features, and you could see the pilot looking at us, and in the distance, you could see the still-smoldering Pentagon. Then he said something to me that still sends shivers up my spine. He asked me if I knew what their mission was. He said their job is if someone fires a surface-to-air missile at us on final approach, their job is to put themselves between that missile and the president of the United States.

So the surreal is all around you, and it’s happening, and it feels surreal. But you have a job to do. I had multiple interactions with the president that day. And while you feel the surreal, I don’t think it in any way got in the middle of me doing my job. In some ways it motivated me even more.

Photo by Getty Images

The narrative was the CIA at that time was, and I know you’ve heard this phrase, “asleep at the switch” when it came to the attacks. Is that a fair assessment?

It’s not fair. The CIA was created to prevent strategic surprise. And I don’t think in its entire history that CIA has ever done a better job providing strategic warning than it did on al-Qaida and bin Laden prior to 9/11.

We first identified bin Laden in 1992 as a financier of terrorism. By 1996 we identified him not just as a financier, but as a terrorist himself, as the leader of this group called al-Qaida. We told people he wanted to drive the United States out of the Middle East. We told people he wanted to depose Sunni rulers he saw as puppets of the United States and replace them with Islamic leaders. We told people that his plan to accomplish all this was to attack us anywhere he could, in particular in the Homeland. And even as early as 1996 we told people he wanted to acquire weapons of mass destruction in order to do that. And those warnings just got louder and louder and louder.

So quite the contrary to conventional wisdom, I don’t think there’s ever been a time where CIA has spoken more loudly and more repeatedly about a threat than it did about al-Qaida and bin Laden prior to 9/11.

Where does the next great terrorist threat come from, a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan or from domestic terrorists?

We are far safer today than we were on Sept. 10, 2001, from foreign terrorists. They have been degraded. We do a good job of watching them with precision intelligence, and when they start getting stronger, the United States has routinely acted militarily to keep them degraded. And we’re going to have to do this in Afghanistan going forward. So much safer today.

There are groups in the world I’m currently worried about. Al-Shabaab in Somalia, ISIS in West Africa, ISIS in Iraq, and Syria is starting to bounce back. And we’re going to have to watch al-Qaida in Afghanistan because the Taliban is going to give them safe haven, and they are going to try to reconstitute.

But the question about domestic terrorism is a great one. As we sit here right now, I’m more worried about a significant domestic terrorist attack similar to the Oklahoma City bombing than I am about a 9/11-style attack from foreign terrorists.

Photo by Getty Images

What do you believe will be the legacy of 9/11?

Every president believes that their fundamental job is to protect the American people, job No. 1. The gap between job one and job two is not even close. And so the fundamental goal of President Bush after 9/11 and President Obama and President Trump and President Biden was and is to protect the American people, and from that perspective, the legacy is that we were amazingly successful after 9/11.

Despite attempt after attempt after attempt by al-Qaida to conduct another attack in the Homeland, they failed to do so until only very recently, the attack in Pensacola by the Saudi Air Force pilot who was training there. We’ve had internal attacks of radicalized people, so-called lone wolf attacks, but from the outside that’s the first attack. So, again, we have been wildly successful ensuring that multiple presidents now have done their fundamental job.

But I think there is some truth to the idea that America is weaker today as a result of all of this. The Iraq war wasn’t necessary, and it really cost us. It divided America politically; it still divides America politically. And I think about a series of wrong policy choices in Afghanistan by multiple administrations and the trillions and trillions of dollars spent and a significant loss of credibility. We lost the war. We lost another war. And the way it ended, even more lost credibility. I think there’s some truth to the idea that what bin Laden did on 9/11 has damaged us.

And the other thing to think about is that for 20 years we were fighting counterterrorism and a related counterinsurgency wars, and we weren’t focused on our peer competitors, China and Russia. And during those 20 years, China was catching up economically, and both countries were catching up to us in terms of conventional military capabilities—so much so that the last National Defense Strategy Commission, on which I served, came to the conclusion that if we had to fight a war today against China or Russia in their backyard, that we would struggle to win and could well lose that war because of what’s happened the last 20 years.

So I think there is an argument to be made that we are weaker.

What gives you hope?

You know, we’re in a pretty dark place right now, specifically politically, we’re in a pretty dark place. Our democracy is not functioning, let’s not kid anybody here. That’s the bad news. The good news is that America has shown itself over and over and over again to be resilient. And I do two things today in my retired life that drive that home to me.

One is I spend a lot of time with startups, particularly high-tech startups that offer something to the national security community. And when you spend time with these startups you are blown away by the entrepreneurship, the innovation, the creativity, the success of these companies. There’s nobody else in the word that has this kind of entrepreneurial capability.

The other thing I do is I spend time in college classrooms, and I’m blown away by the students. I’m blown away by how smart they are. I’m blown away by their passion for the country. I’m blown away by their belief, which I want to feed, that they can make a difference.

Those two things give me hope. Those two things are examples of our resiliency. So do I think we’re doomed? No, I don’t. I think we’ll bounce back, but it’s going to have to be done by this new generation, and it’s going to have to be done consciously. It won’t happen any other way.

Topics

Campus News

Schar School of Policy and Government

9/11 anniversary

Schar School News September 2021

Saving Lives: Mason Researchers, 3M Recognized with a Major Award for Disrupting Counterfeit PPE

Andrew J Schappert — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 12:29:25 +0000

Saving Lives: Mason Researchers, 3M Recognized with a Major Award for Disrupting Counterfeit PPE Andrew J Schappert Tue, 09/07/2021 - 08:29

Louise Shelley: ‘This collaboration with 3M represents a new research model that combines policy and technology in support of American industry and human life.’

Health care and consumer goods corporation 3M was recognized by the World Trademark Review (WTR) with its 2021 North America Team of the Year Award for its role in keeping more than 52 million counterfeit medical respirators out of the legitimate supply chain. WTR is an independent news and information and intelligence service reporting on trademark issues.

In accepting the award, Collette Durst, the chief trademark counsel of 3M, acknowledged the role a multidisciplinary team of researchers at ��AV played in preventing the fraudulent PPE devices from reaching first responders and medical personnel.

“We entered into a partnership with ��AV which has played a key role in helping us ‘connect the dots’ with our global cases,” she said.

The research, which combines the expertise of scholars at Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government and the Volgenau School of Engineering, is funded by a five-year National Science Foundation grant that started in October 2020.

“This award recognizes our critical contribution to getting counterfeit medical masks out of circulation in the United States and globally,” said Louise Shelley, founding director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) and a University Professor at Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government. “We are proud of our role in helping remove these dangerous counterfeits from the medical supply chain. This is research with a powerful human impact in saving lives.”

The scope of the problem is enormous, Shelley said.

Edward Huang

“Whereas supply chains for normal consumer goods have been disrupted globally during the pandemic, this harmful counterfeit trade has expanded exponentially,” she said. “Many producers of consumer goods shifted to counterfeit mask production and moved hundreds of millions of counterfeit inferior masks through global supply chains. In the worst cases, the confiscated masks examined by our team at Mason consisted of just covered tissue paper stamped with the 3M logo.”

The WTR award recognizes the importance of a multinational Fortune 100 company collaborating with research scientists in providing advanced data analysis in order to save lives internationally during a global health crisis, Shelley said.

The 3M team and Mason researchers were cited for helping law enforcement officials in seizing more than 52 million counterfeit respirators. The teams’ work also contributed to the removal of more than 23,900 fraudulent e-commerce offerings; removing more than 23,200 false or deceptive social media posts; and the take down of more than 365 deceptive domain name addresses.

Mason research and data analysis was also used in the prosecution of those allegedly responsible for the fraud. “This project has required many long nights as the team worked on time-sensitive data,” said Shelley.

Layla Hashemi

As an example, Shelley pointed out that 2 million bogus medical facemasks were removed from circulation before entering into the supply chain for those treating COVID-19 patients in a state wracked by the pandemic thanks to a ruling by a federal judge after reviewing insights developed by the Mason team.

The Mason team includes University Professor Shelley as principal investigator (PI); co-PI Edward Huang, an associate professor at the Volgeneau School of Engineering; postdoctoral researcher fellow Layla Hashemi of the Schar School; and cybersecurity undergraduate, Ahna Mohiuddin.

“This collaboration with 3M represents a new research model that combines policy and technology in support of American industry and human life,” Shelley said.

The research was conducted under the NSF grant D-ISN: Collaborative Research: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding, Modeling, and Disrupting Drug and Counterfeit Illicit Supply Chains (Grant No. 2039779).

Topics

Schar School News September 2021

Meet the Government Major Who is Vice President of the Student Body: Veronica Mata

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 19:01:21 +0000

Meet the Government Major Who is Vice President of the Student Body: Veronica Mata Andrew J Schappert Wed, 09/01/2021 - 15:01

Veronica Mata: ‘I have always taken my leadership opportunities as a way to advocate for others, and being vice president is the perfect way to do that for me.’ Photo by Shelby Burgess/Creative Services

In a short period of time, Veronica Mata has accomplished much as a ��AV student. This semester she begins one of her crowning achievements, serving as vice president the student government.

Mata, a senior who is double-majoring in Government and International Politics at the Schar School and Integrative Studies at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, came to Mason specifically to study in the Washington, D.C. area. Immersing herself in the school enhanced her experience and inspired her to become more involved.

“Throughout my time here I really fell in love with the campus and the organizations I was a part of,” she said. “Because of that excitement I had for the campus, I decided to join student government.”

She teamed up with fellow Schar School student Natalia Kanos in her successful campaign to be student body president.

“I have always taken my leadership opportunities as a way to advocate for others, and being vice president is the perfect way to do that for me,” said Mata.

Mata’s record of student involvement demonstrates her passion for leadership and academic service. At Mason, she has served as secretary, panhellenic delegate, and new member educator of the international women’s fraternity, Alpha Omicron Pi. She also served as for two years as clerk and government and community relations chair and co-chair of the ad-hoc Committee on Recruitment, Reorganization, and Representation.

Mata has worked as a research assistant at Mason and has conducted research for projects including Black Lives Next Door, which investigates the racial inequities that shaped community life on the outskirts of the Fairfax campus during the formative years of Mason.

When asked what her biggest takeaways from her experiences at Mason will be, Mata, who hopes to pursue law school after graduation, said, “Apart from the knowledge I have gained from my government classes, I think the greater lessons they have given me, combined with the leadership qualities I have been able to develop through student government, will give me the confidence I need to be successful in the future.”

Topics

Vernonia Mata

student government

Leadership

Schar School News September 2021