����AV

Before completing his degree from the College of Education and Human Development, Sami Saghir was working with the Cirque du Soleil ECHO show. This experience was counted toward the internship period of Saghir’s degree before he entered his career with Cirque Du Soleil post-graduation.

Students from ����AV’s Competitive Cybersecurity (MCC) club have dominated in multiple national competitions. The team got 1st place in the 2024 VMI CyberFusion and 2nd place in the 2024 Spring National Cyber League. Next, the students will be competing in the inaugural DistrictCon Hacker Conference on February 21-22.

����AV bioengineering student Andy Gomez is a busy guy. Not only is he working on a year-long internship with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), he is also a part-time clinical research assistant at the Inova Schar Cancer Institute.

When Daksha Magesh came to ����AV as a freshman in 2021, she already had an impressive resumé. The Honors College student was working for federal prosecutor Manka Dhingra of the 45th District from her hometown of Seattle, Washington. Magesh says that’s where her interest in law comes from.

Graduating computer science major Dhyeya “Dee” Padhya worked in the University Career Services office during his time at George Mason and was featured on the cover of this year’s Career Readiness Guide.

Graduating psychology student Caroline Little said she grew up at ����AV. “I have grown from a child to an adult at George Mason in ways I could have never thought possible. I came here a teenager, and left here a married mother of two,” said Little. Little, who will travel from Alabama to address her fellow graduates as the 2024 Winter Commencement Student Speaker, will welcome her second child, Isabella, this winter. 

Darius Jack came to ����AV with a passion for systems engineering and for flying. He’s been able to maintain his flight hours while earning a bachelor of science in systems engineering this May and an accelerated master's in systems engineering, his second degree from George Mason, in December.

Mason Community Arts Academy has been named one of the Best Summer Camps by  Northern Virginia Magazine every year since 2021. This summer, the program broke multiple records including the number of student participants at just under 1,900. The Acting for Young People program also broke its attendance record with 950 students.

����AV senior Katarina Benson has had five different majors throughout her college career. “Choosing what to study [was] very difficult for me, because so many fields interest me,” said Benson. Benson previously majored in agribusiness, film and video, among other subjects, before choosing and completing an English degree with a concentration in cultural studies.

����AV associate professor Gabrielle Tayac’s course, HIST 397 Public History in Action, looks at how indigenous communities interact with our student population through community-based engagement and projects.