Sarah Holland

Checking in to a “suite” internship with Marriott International

Sarah Holland — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:34:55 +0000

Checking in to a “suite” internship with Marriott International Sarah Holland Wed, 01/15/2025 - 09:34

When business major Kyle Samuel went to ��AV’s Fall 2023 Career Fair with a list of companies to speak with, he didn’t realize he would land an internship that would kickstart his career.

With a legacy connection to Marriott hotels through his father, who worked for Marriott at the property level, a chat with the Marriott representative led to securing a competitive spot as a finance HQ intern with Marriott International.

Now, in addition to completing a summer internship with Marriott, Samuel is working part-time for the hotel company and making plans to return in summer 2025 for a second internship.

Kyle Samuel (left) with Marriott founder's grandson, David Marriott. Photo provided.

Why did you choose George Mason?

There are a couple of reasons why. First, it’s close to home and within my culture we try to live with our parents even after we’re 18. So that was important to me. Affordability was a major aspect, too, because staying home saves some tuition. George Mason’s Costello College of Business is also great and well-established, especially compared to other schools in the region.

What inspired your interest in finance?

In junior year of high school, one of my uncles recommended the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. And that opened my eyes to how much personal finance matters in your life. I started reading more, like The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William N. Thorndike, Jr., and my interest just took off from there.

How did you find out about the internship at Marriott?

Through the career fair at George Mason. I went into the fair with notes about each company I was interested in, and Marriott was on the list. I spoke with the representative, and we really connected. She told me about the internship—I didn’t know that Marriott offered internships—and she recommended that I apply.

It’s funny, whenever someone asks me about the career fair, I tell them I have a 100% track record, because I went to one fair and got an internship from it!

What did you do during your summer internship with Marriott?

Some of my major projects were conducting reviews of around 50 capital expenditure budgets from Marriott Select brands to ensure compliance and accuracy, checking the integrity and translation of data from Excel sheets to visualizations, and helping a senior manager send out revenue share allocations to select brand owners.

I also participated in a competition with the other interns where we were given a real-life business challenge that Marriott is facing, and we had to design a potential solution. So we brainstormed ideas for improving Marriott Bonvoy sign-ups among the Gen Z demographic.

One of the things I really appreciated about my internship is that I wasn’t just doing internship work that wouldn’t go anywhere once I was done: I was doing projects with impact.

How have your experiences at George Mason prepared you for your internship?

Many classes gave me the foundations I needed to succeed at my internship. BUS 210 Business I and BUS 310 Business Analytics II were really helpful because it allowed me to strengthen my Excel skills, and BUS 103 has helped improve my professional development skills.

University Career Services also played a monumental role. They helped me establish my resume, create my LinkedIn profile, and prepare for the interview with Marriott.

Kyle Samuel (right) with Anthony Capuano, current CEO of Marriott. Photo provided

What would you say is the importance of an internship?

School does prepare you for the workplace, but there’s really no substitute for actually experiencing a workplace. Understanding office culture, learning the hierarchies, networking; you can only really learn those soft skills through being in the workplace. And networking is so valuable. I’ve had a meeting with the CEO of Marriott because I was able to network with the former intern, who connected me to the right people.

Where do you hope to be in ten years?

My long-term goal is to become the CFO of Marriott. I’m minoring in real estate, so working for Marriott combines my interest in finance with my interest in real estate. I love the culture; I feel like they really put people first and work together as a team. And there’s a lot of potential for them to grow in the future.

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George Mason’s recreation program is helping bring parks to the people

Sarah Holland — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 18:12:27 +0000

George Mason’s recreation program is helping bring parks to the people Sarah Holland Wed, 01/08/2025 - 13:12

One of the special things about Northern Virginia is its blend of thriving city life with vast green spaces. Visitors and residents can enjoy more than 12,000 acres of parks and recreation areas across three counties and three cities thanks to the work of NOVA Parks. This fall, a brand-new park opened in Ashburn, Virginia, with a few familiar faces from ��AV at its helm.

Photo provided.

Reservoir Park is a 600-acre park around Beaverdam Reservoir. Built and operated as a partnership between NOVA Parks and Loudoun Water, the park has conservation and education at the forefront of its design. From plants that filter water runoff into the reservoir, to butterfly roofs that drain water down a singular center path onto rocks to avoid excessive soil erosion, to sustainable build materials, the park preserves the landscape while educating visitors on the lifecycle of a drop of water. Educational installations along the trail also give visitors tactile lessons: a hand pump that demonstrates the amount of force required to bring water from the reservoir to a faucet, for example.

“Most parks are built up over time, with facilities developing as community needs change,” said Paul Gilbert, executive director of NOVA Parks and the executive-in-residence of the recreation management program at George Mason. “I've never seen a park like this one, where everything is designed intentionally with a clear purpose and story in mind. It’s both beautiful and thoughtful.”

The benefits of parks are immense: increased property values, opportunities for physical activity, and mental health improvements, to name a few. “Numerous studies show that the benefits of exercise in nature far exceed exercise indoors,” Gilbert said. “It enriches lives, and it will continue to enrich lives, not just for this season but for generations to come.”

For George Mason students, the benefits of NOVA Parks extend to their education and, for some, even their careers.

Paul Gilbert (left) and Bella Trimner. Photo provided.

“There’s a strong connection between NOVA Parks and George Mason,” Gilbert said. “Through NOVA parks, students have access to internships, practicums, and careers. We help make their education not just academic but very actionable. And in return, we get high-quality employees excited to work in the parks they’ve grown up around.”

One shining example is Bella Trimner, a winter 2024 graduate with a degree in recreation management.

Trimner has a long history with NOVA Parks. She started working at Fountainhead Regional Park as a junior park ranger at 17, quickly rising through the ranks to site supervisor. “I absolutely loved it and realized that this was something I could see myself making a career out of,” she said.

Her supervisor at Fountainhead Regional Park David Deem, a current George Mason student, recommended George Mason for her education because of its nationally recognized recreation management program.

When Trimner made the decision to get her degree and make a career out of parks management, she told the park operations superintendents that she hoped to become a parks specialist in the future.

“My plan was to take that role in five years. Instead, when I had that conversation, they said, ‘Well, we’re actually building a new park that will be similar to Fountainhead. It might be exactly what you’re looking for.’”

It was. Within a year, Trimner became the first parks specialist for the new Reservoir Park. Her days are varied—from running chainsaws for trail clearing, to being an ambassador for the park, to planning park programming—but she believes her education has directly impacted how quickly she has acclimated to this new managerial role.

“I have used assignments from my classes as starting points for programming plans and shared templates with my staff. When we formalized the 8-mile trail around the reservoir, I directly referenced what I'd learned about trail planning and grading from my classes on land acquisition, resource management, and accessibility. We’re implementing an interpretational signage plan that is directly influenced by the course taught by Dr. Ellen Rodgers. There’s so much from my courses that I’m using every day in every aspect of my job,” she said.

Trimner, Gilbert said, is a rock star. “When you step into a manager position at an existing park, you’re improving upon existing procedures, programming, and facilities. But as part of the management team of a brand-new park, Bella is creating all those things. We gave her a blank slate to work with. And she’s done an amazing job.”

As a fellow George Mason graduate, Gilbert firmly believes in the great contributions George Mason offers the community. “NOVA Parks relies heavily on the recreation program at George Mason, and it’s great to have such a strong program with great talent right in our backyard,” Gilbert said.

Trimner agreed. “Seeing George Mason on a resume is a green flag for us."

From left: Recreation management faculty Laurence Chalip, Ellen Rodgers, Brenda Wiggins, Hung-Ling Liu, and Sammie Powers pose with Bella Trimner (far right) and Paul Gilbert (back center). Photo provided.

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Honors College alum spearheads professional development program

Sarah Holland — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:11:36 +0000

Honors College alum spearheads professional development program Sarah Holland Mon, 12/09/2024 - 11:11

When preparing for college, prospective students and parents often ask about career readiness. How is the university preparing its students for the workforce? What’s the rate of job placement? Do the students succeed in their respective careers?

��AV has a strong track record of preparing students for careers. And the Honors College is working to make sure Honors students are ready to shine in a competitive job market.

Jeff Shen provides opening remarks at the roundtable. Photo by Cristian Torres/Office of University Branding

“These are incredibly motivated students. I am beyond impressed with their enthusiasm and intellect. And they’re ready. They have all the tools to succeed in the workforce, they just need the knowledge of how to find the right opportunity,” said Jeff Shen.

Shen, who graduated from what was then known as the Presidential Scholars Program in 1996 with a degree in decision sciences, is president of Red Team Consulting and a member of the Honors College Advisory Board. Last year, he came to Dean Zofia Burr with an idea for how to prepare Honors College students for their careers: a roundtable for students to meet with professionals in government contracting, supported by the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting.

“I spoke with some students during graduation,” Shen said, “and in asking them about their post-graduation plans and job opportunities, I realized that these really bright and promising students were missing some of the foundations for approaching the job market: how to network, where to look for opportunities, and so on. So I thought, there must be some way we can address that gap.”

The idea for the roundtable coincided with plans to develop the Honors College Professional Development Fellows program. As part of the program, the roundtable was one of a series of workshops that help students in the program craft their resumes, build their LinkedIn profiles, practice interviewing, and otherwise prepare for internship and career opportunities.

The first roundtable event in Spring 2024 featured 12 George Mason alumni, all of whom are major executives at government contracting companies. The first was such a success that Shen and the Honors College decided to host a second event in Fall 2024.

“In government contracting, you can be a writer, a clinical researcher, a health care professional, you can be in sales: It does not matter the background, there’s going to be a position in government contracting for that person,” Shen said. “I wanted students to see the world of possibilities in terms of what they could do with their degrees.”

Students had the opportunity to speak with each executive in small groups, gaining valuable insights and advice on how to prepare for their career.

Jessica Taylor, studying music technology with a minor in computer science, was one of the fellows in the spring. “As a music major who wants to go into software engineering, I have an untraditional background that needs to be particularly explained and presented when I’m introducing myself to potential employers,” she said. “The fellows program taught me that my variety of creative experience is actually one of the things that makes me stand out.”

Photo by Cristian Torres/Office of University Branding

“We received [the mentors’] personal emails, offering the opportunity to follow up on potential career opportunities and further discussions,” said Monica Amaya, a management information systems major with a minor in computational and data sciences. Amaya attended the roundtable in Fall 2024. “The entirety of the Professional Development Fellows program has given us valuable networking opportunities to build meaningful relationships with successful government contracting leaders in the area.”

“I learned a lot about what it takes to build a business,” said cyber security engineering student Cameron Portis. “Hearing some of the stories about how these leaders overcame difficulties and changed their plans really inspired me to keep pushing toward my goals no matter what.”

The program continues to grow. In Spring 2025, the roundtable opportunities will expand to two new fields: Health administration and leadership, organized by Inova Health System’s Loren Rufino, BS Health Services ’12, and arts/performing arts nonprofit leadership, organized by Deb Gandy. Both are members of the Honors College Advisory Board.

And for Shen, opening doors for students is only part of the mission. “This is a great way for alumni and community members to get involved with George Mason,” he said. “I’m hoping this opens the door for them as well."

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“When one door closes, open another”: This Costello student is making his way in music industry

Sarah Holland — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 15:57:59 +0000

“When one door closes, open another”: This Costello student is making his way in music industry Sarah Holland Wed, 12/04/2024 - 10:57

Cody Salenga has been making music since he was a teenager. Performing under the name Steph Cody Music, he’s got a growing fanbase on Spotify and co-launched an independent record label this year. So when it came time to look for a summer internship, Salenga knew he wanted something in the music industry.

That’s how Salenga, one of Costello College of Business’ graduating business majors with a concentration in marketing, found himself running social media for Capitol Dystrikt Music in Washington, D.C.

“It combines my two passions in music and marketing,” he said, “and it’s my dream to work in the entertainment industry. The chance that one day I’ll be listening to a song on the radio, or on Apple music, and realize, ‘hey, I’ve been in the studio when they were making that song’ is really cool.”

In addition to managing social media and communications for Capital Dystrikt Music, Salenga works to build relationships between the artists and the studio to increase the studio’s presence. Building name recognition is at the core of his work, and that idea led to one of his major projects: the Graveyard Smash concert, hosted right here in the Johnson Center on Fairfax Campus on the eve of Halloween.

“I really wanted to put on a concert, so I pitched the idea of a concert sponsored by Capitol Dystrikt Music to the Student Centers using the Plaza Palooza (named after the Lollapalooza festival) as a template. And we had a great turnout,” he said. “It really just came together into a beautiful thing that I could find so much pride in.”

Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

Capitol Dystrikt Music saw 200% more web traffic this month than previously, which Cody attributes to the event. “Tables in the Johnson Center were filled throughout the festival,” he said. “We probably had roughly 200 attendees.”

Salenga sees strong similarities between building an album and building a marketing campaign. “You work tirelessly on something for a long time, and you want people to see it and be moved by it, whether that’s an album or a product launch,” he said. His work speaks for itself, having grown the studio’s impressions by 113,780% or 5,694 impressions within a 30-day period, and 3.1k accounts reached in that same timeframe too.

Diving into the industry hasn’t been without challenges. “It’s a tough learning curve, figuring out how marketing works in the music industry, what’s going to land well, what will produce results, and so on,” he said. “But the classes like Digital Marketing and other foundational marketing classes I’ve taken at George Mason have given me a really solid marketing foundation.”

He cites the hands-on learning experiences in his marketing electives as being particularly impactful. A simulation tracking social post-performance and SEO, for example, gave him important insights into the mechanisms of marketing that he’s applying to both his professional and personal social presence.

“When it comes to George Mason, the stereotype that I’ve heard employers have of us is that we’re hardworking and gritty, and we don’t take things for granted. That's what we bring to the table in interviews that makes us different,” he said. “So when one door closes, don’t wait for something else to open: make a new opportunity for yourself.”

Salenga, left, performs on stage at Graveyard Smash. Photo provided

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Real-time feedback is part of a holistic approach to helping new teachers succeed

Sarah Holland — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 19:13:51 +0000

Real-time feedback is part of a holistic approach to helping new teachers succeed Sarah Holland Mon, 11/18/2024 - 14:13

When you think of uses for bug-in-ear technology, futuristic communications or covert operations are probably the first to come to mind. Teaching is almost certainly not the first, or second, or perhaps not even the hundredth thing.

Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

But at ��AV, faculty members are always looking for unique approaches and innovative solutions to challenges. Challenges like sharing real-time feedback with education interns so they can best serve their students.

Supported by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), the Dynamic Coaching Outreach Program in Special Education: General Curriculum (DCOP) through the College of Education and Human Development and the Kellar Institute for Human DisAbilities helps facilitate a “more dynamic coaching and feedback cycle” throughout the teaching internship experience through the use of technologies like bug-in-ear, video conferencing, and more. Specifically, the program supports those interns pursuing their master of education (MEd) in special education.

The special education graduate students have different needs than other MEd students, in that they are often working full-time in the classroom with a provisional license while completing their studies. Because they are provisionally licensed, they do not have mentor teachers in the classroom with them as traditional, pre-service interns do; they rely more on university supervisors during their internship to give feedback. DCOP was designed to provide new pathways for that feedback in order to address these unique needs.

When the program was originally developed in 2012, it was almost exclusively about the use of bug-in-ear technology to provide immediate live feedback to special education teacher interns in the classroom. In the past five years, the program has expanded into a three-pronged approach: using technology to enhance supervision, developing a novel eCoaching process, and incorporating professional development for both interns and supervisors.

“The eCoaching model takes a nonevaluative approach,” explained Kelley Regan, professor of education and the principal investigator (PI) on the VDOE grant. “It’s encouraging, supportive, and flexible.”

The goal of an internship for any teacher is to have the opportunity to practice what they’ve learned in a live classroom environment. ECoaching has the additional benefit of more structured feedback loops from supervisors to interns to provide high-quality and more instantaneous feedback at a much greater frequency.

“You can observe a classroom over Zoom, then immediately send an email with feedback, for example,” Kristen O’Brien, associate professor of special education and co-PI, said.

But as Peggy Weiss, associate professor and co-PI, explains, it’s not just about the technology: “It’s about how they use the technology to support teacher interns in reaching the goals established with their supervisors.”

And sometimes, the most valuable techniques are the simplest. Cheryl Temple, one of the supervisors in the program, once had two interns in different schools facing the same challenges in their classroom. A facilitated video call with the three of them gave the interns an opportunity to learn from each other and brainstorm possible solutions.

Shilpi Patel, adjunct professor at George Mason and internship supervisor for DCOP, utilizes weekly virtual eCoaching sessions to provide continuous nonevaluative feedback, reflection, and goal setting for her interns. For two of her interns, she used data from classroom observations to track their progress in implementing a behavior management system; both showed marked improvement.

From left to right: Kristen O'Brien; Margaret Weiss; and Kelley S. Regan. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

“Beginning teachers enter one of the few professions where they are expected to perform at the same level as experienced veterans from the very start,” Patel said. “ECoaching provides essential support for novice teachers, helping them refine their instructional practices and positively influence student achievement. And it has consistently proven to be a powerful method for enhancing teacher efficacy.”

And that efficacy could be a key to keeping teachers in the classrooms. As school districts continue to grapple with teacher retention, self-efficacy and perseverance are, according to associate professor Pam Baker and co-PI, key ways to improve retention rates.

For Susan Jennings, MEd ‘23, a learning disabilities teacher at Herndon High School, that sense of confidence and self-efficacy were two of the greatest outcomes of her internship experience. When asked what she recalls as being the most helpful part of the internship, it wasn’t the technology itself, but how Patel, her internship supervisor, utilized it to give Jennings the tools she needed to succeed.

“I continue to use many of the strategies Ms. Patel shared for scaffolding lessons for learners with disabilities in my classroom,” she said, “including the lesson planning template for more engaging learner-centered lessons.”

At the end of the day, DCOP demonstrates that it’s not just about the technology: it’s the human on the other side providing the support and investment in growth that helps these teachers succeed.

“Our coaches prepare our interns to be self-reflective in developing strategies for growth and overcoming challenges,” said Regan. “It equips them to be successful when that coach is no longer in their ear.”

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George Mason’s English language teacher development program has worldwide impact

Sarah Holland — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:15:46 +0000

George Mason’s English language teacher development program has worldwide impact Sarah Holland Wed, 11/13/2024 - 11:15

English is a global language used in multiple international contexts, from science to economics to diplomacy. Because of this, many countries start English language instruction as early as kindergarten and continue mandatory instruction through grade 12.

Teachers from Uzbekistan visit Fairfax Campus on a Fulbright visitor's program. Photo Provided.

But to know English and to know how to teach English are two separate skills. That’s where the Global Online Teacher Education Center (GOTEC) in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at ��AV comes in.

“There are teachers who are proficient in English, who have studied it, but they don’t necessarily know how to teach children or teenagers using the most recent approaches,” said Joan Shin, associate dean for faculty success in CEHD and director of GOTEC. “Our goal is to provide education and tools to teachers on those critical pedagogical skills like children’s learning and development, classroom management, effective communication, developing lesson plans, and so on.”

After the Teaching English to Young Learners program receiving its first grant in 2017 from the U.S. Department of State, its continued growth allowed for the chartering of GOTEC in 2021. They have secured more than $4 million in externally funded projects, all focused on teacher professional development outreach to international communities. The program has served more than 42,000 teachers from 135 countries, providing instruction in how to teach children and teenagers, as well as integrating media literacy into English language teaching.

“The State Department is very familiar with the fact that George Mason has this specific expertise in these courses,” said Shin. “We develop projects that are going to be successful because they are culturally sensitive, relevant, and sustaining.”

That expertise comes from the diversity of experiences, backgrounds, and academic expertise amongst the team’s leadership, postdocs, and graduate students. “It allows us to build the best professional opportunities for teachers all over the world,” said Anya Evmenova, professor and associate director of GOTEC.

GOTEC offers a variety of professional development opportunities, from massive open online courses to country-specific seminars in places like Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Greece, and, most recently, Turkmenistan. The courses are mostly asynchronous, using Canvas and interactive materials to build community across time zones and borders.

Some projects also include synchronous Zoom webinars, where GOTEC faculty and course participants are able to meet and ask questions.

“They come in with such enthusiasm and excitement, and you can see the lightbulbs go off as they connect ideas,” said Jered Borup, associate professor and associate director of the center.

One instructor, adjunct faculty member Ginny Doherty, noted that what she found participants needed most were examples of activities to keep their students engaged and practicing the language in the classroom. Along with discussion board posts where students can share ideas, techniques, experiences, and activities, videos are crucial to this: Participants can watch videos of Shin and other center affiliates demonstrating the techniques taught in the course.

All the modules are designed to encourage participants to consider how these pedagogic strategies and tools can be adapted and applied to their specific cultural contexts. And the content is meant to be shared. “Materials have been licensed through Creative Commons, with the hope that anyone to be able to access the content and to reuse, remix, and utilize it in a way that makes it as meaningful and relevant to all the teachers in their regions,” explained Shin.

They call this “cascading”—an intentional design choice that encourages participants to share and spread what they’ve learned. Their Uzbekistan project, for example, had core trainers and regional peer mentors participate in the full program. Those participants then engaged with teachers in their local communities, using both the content from the module and additional activities and professional development materials they created independently based on what they learned.

“We want them to learn from each other,” Shin said.

GOTEC’s mission to advance research and pedagogy in online teacher education extends to its own scholars as well. “Our graduate research assistants and postdocs are an integral part of the center,” Borup said.

George Mason alum Woomee Kim, PhD Education ’22, is one example of this. Kim, who began as Shin’s research assistant during her PhD program, is now a postdoctoral fellow with the center. “I got to learn so much from working hands-on on these projects, and I felt empowered to contribute my expertise and knowledge while having ample opportunities to learn and develop as an educator and scholar,” she said. “It’s a great model for what a graduate assistantship should look like."

Even though GOTEC serves educators from around the globe, the sense of George Mason pride and spirit is strong among participants. The courses are particularly popular with Fulbright students, who will often visit George Mason’s Fairfax Campus when in Washington, D.C. GOTEC participants have visited classes on Fairfax Campus to talk with current students about their experiences with international education. One of the coaches in the Uzbekistan program found the course so impactful that they proceeded to apply to CEHD’s PhD program.

Said Shin, “we want them to feel like they are still part of our George Mason community.”

One of the webinars with the Uzbekistan participants. Photo provided.

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George Mason’s Student Body President and Vice President are strengthening campus community

Sarah Holland — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 17:27:17 +0000

George Mason’s Student Body President and Vice President are strengthening campus community Sarah Holland Wed, 09/25/2024 - 13:27

When Student Body President Maria Alejandra Romero Cuesta and Vice President Colin McAulay were looking at universities, ��AV’s proximity to Washington, D.C., and Schar School of Policy and Government’s strong reputation made it a top choice for them both.

Photo by Eduardo Macedo/Office of University Branding

And for both of them, joining Student Government just made sense: Cuesta, an international student, plans for nonprofit work in support of her home country of Colombia, and McAulay dreams of a future in diplomacy.

Now, the two of them are leading with a vision of an empowered and interconnected campus community.

Cuesta, a double major in Government and International Politics and economics and in the Honors College, was inspired by her peers to run for president. “As an active member of the Hispanic Leadership Alliance, Honors College Connects, and the First-Gen+ Center, I got to know what was happening on campus, what students needed, and that understanding inspired me to pursue a pathway of helping other students,” she said. Her connections also gave her a wide platform from which she could launch her political career.

For McAulay, a senior international security and law major, three years in Student Government gave him a strong understanding of the university, its structure, and how to best organize people to accomplish a shared vision. When election season came around, Cuesta and McAulay thought their combination of connections and institutional knowledge made a winning ticket.

Cuesta and McAulay worked hard over the summer to start constructing the groundwork for their term. One word stands at the core of their vision: community.

“We want to build bridges between the diverse organizations at George Mason,” Cuesta said. “We want to set that foundation, not only to create community but to then sustain community so it continues for generations to come.”

Cuesta wants to see a campus where groups are less siloed. “We have so many student groups for a wide range of identities, and we see a trend of students just sticking with their groups. And while we want students to have those spaces, we also want the groups to connect with each other more, to work together to achieve their shared goals and to continue to develop an interconnected and supportive campus community.”

“When I first came to George Mason,” McAulay added, “it was right out of COVID-19, and the community wasn’t able to thrive. But with each year, we’re restoring that sense of community, and it’s important to keep it growing for each new class that comes in."

President Cuesta and Vice President McAulay hit the ground running, starting the semester off with events to bring the campus community together such as tailgating a recent women’s soccer game. Both hope that their lasting mark on the university will be one of community.

“There are many resources here, so many opportunities to socialize, make friends, network, find your community, and build your career,” Cuesta said. “I hope George Mason continues to be a place where students can be authentically themselves and feel like they belong.”

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Satellite imagery could aid in seeking justice for human rights violations in Sudan

Sarah Holland — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 13:26:43 +0000

Satellite imagery could aid in seeking justice for human rights violations in Sudan Sarah Holland Wed, 08/21/2024 - 09:26

On April 15, 2023, intense violence erupted in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum between the state-run military and a non-state militia group. Over the past 16 months, the conflict has continued to expand in scale. Peace negotiations have collapsed. Civilians have experienced catastrophic humanitarian conditions.

��AV’s Daniel Rothbart has for many years investigated the plight of civilians in war globally. He believes that out of the 59 protracted violent conflicts around the world, the civil war in Sudan is among the most horrific.

“This conflict has had catastrophic humanitarian implications,” explained Rothbart, the Druscilla French Chair in Conflict Analysis and Resolution in the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. “There have been an estimated 16,000 fatalities and numerous cities destroyed. Right now, Sudan has the largest number of internally displaced persons in the world at 10.7 million people.”

As peace talks failed and conflict escalated, the Conflict Observatory, managed by the MITRE Corp and funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization operations, approached Rothbart and the Carter School to support an investigation into the human rights violations associated with the civil war.

In areas of violent conflict, scholars like Rothbart must find remote methods of data collection. One such method is through Open Source Investigations (OSINT), where publicly and commercially available information, such as satellite imagery, social media posts, and news reports, are collected and analyzed.

Because the Conflict Observatory specifically requested satellite imagery evidence, Rothbart enlisted a team of researchers from the College of Science’s Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science, including department chair Dieter Pfoser, to gather and analyze the images. Through this method, they can show side-by-side images of the large-scale destruction of civilian areas over the course of the conflict, such as markets, neighborhoods, and health care facilities.

Comparison photos of an area of El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan showcasing the destruction of civilian property as a result of the ongoing civil war, as featured in the Sudan Conflict Observatory Situation Report "Impact on Civilians from Fighting in El Fasher, North Darfur, May 9-27, 2024"

This is a valuable kind of data for understanding the impact and trend of protracted violence, Rothbart said. “It captures the evolution of events over time in a particular region, and the amount of detail these experts are able to gleam from these images has been used to great effect.” As detailed in the report, the experts can distinguish between a building burned and a building bombed: important evidence for building a future case in prosecuting human rights violations.

But satellite imaging only tells part of the story of the destruction and devastation. Other information comes from witness testimonies, which Rothbart and his team gather with the help of the Sudan Human Rights Hub. By combining these two methods of data collection, they can paint a more robust picture of the breadth and depth of violence.

“For example, with both testimonies and open-source intelligence, we have documented that some militant forces have systematically killed civilians, bombed hospitals, and engaged in large-scale gender-based violence, ” Rothbart said.

Through these reports, Rothbart and his team are the primary source of evidence of civilian devastation in the war in Sudan. And while the evidence submitted by the team is under the discretion of the State Department, it could be used to prosecute the perpetrators of the described human rights violations.

The project is also an opportunity for students to gain valuable experience. Current conflict analysis and resolution PhD student Beltina Gjeloshi, and alumnus Mathieu Bere, PhD Conflict Analysis and Resolution ‘22, are both supporting members of Rothbart’s team.

“I’ve learned best practices in open-source investigations, a myriad of new digital tools, and how to capture evidence via different channels, such as satellite images and social media,” said Gjeloshi. “Coupling the training with my human rights and conflict resolution background has allowed me to formulate unique insights and use tools transdisciplinarily.”

“This deliberate violence against civilians requires that the international community takes measures to enforce international humanitarian law, protect civilians, and hold perpetrators accountable. The work that we have been doing in this project contributes to the fulfillment of that moral and legal requirement,” said Bere.

Daniel Rothbart. Photo by Creative Services/Office of University Branding

"On a purely academic and scientific side, we have been using, and hope to contribute to improve, some innovative technological tools, especially OSINT and GIS tools, for remotely monitoring and documenting what is happening in conflict zones, and for conducting real-time conflict research,” said Bere. “For example, we are exploring the possibility of developing an AI model that will facilitate some of the steps of the data-gathering process that may be automated. The project is an interdisciplinary work, which requires collaboration between experts from various disciplines."

Every conflict is unique, but there are repeated patterns in motivations, actions, and strategies. Rothbart hopes that the global peace community can learn from why and how peace talks have been unsuccessful in Sudan to improve their approaches to other protracted conflicts.

“We must be prepared to recognize that under certain conditions human beings can commit horrific acts,” Rothbart explained. “But in every case of protracted violent conflict, we find human beings who show an enormous degree of courageous compassion in the face of horrific violence. And that’s important to keep in mind.”

Find pathways to peace at the Carter School

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Daniel Rothbart

Dieter Pfoser

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Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution

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Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science

Festival management class puts students at the heart of cultural conservation and celebration in Washington, D.C.

Sarah Holland — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 16:00:36 +0000

Festival management class puts students at the heart of cultural conservation and celebration in Washington, D.C. Sarah Holland Tue, 07/23/2024 - 12:00

If you visit the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the last week of June, you’ll be greeted with the sights and sounds of a multicultural celebration at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Music and dance performances, cooking demonstrations, hands-on workshops, and education sessions: Every tent offers a view of the world from a different cultural perspective.

And for ��AV students in the cross-listed Folklore and Festival Management course, it’s the internship opportunity of a lifetime.

Supported by an Office of Student Creative Activities and Research Curriculum Impact Grant and led by Lisa Gilman, professor of folklore and English, Karalee Dawn MacKay, director of the arts management program, and Carole Rosenstein, professor of arts management, the course gives students hands-on, real-world experience in festival management.

Along with a term-length group project to plan their own festival, students also learn from guest speakers from the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH), tour the CFCH offices, and complete applications for summer internships with the CFCH Folklife Festival.

Recently, the George Mason team established a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Smithsonian Institution to formalize the partnership.

“The Folklife Festival is an international, national, and local event: a confluence you’re only going to get in Washington, D.C., where every neighborhood and community is a mix of international, national, and local,” explained Rosenstein. “Being able to leverage the connections of our George Mason faculty to national agencies and institutions all over the region gives our students unique opportunities that will set them up for success.”

“We want the folklore and arts management fields to mirror the populations we work with,” said Gilman. “Mason has this incredibly diverse student body, and through this course and our MOU we are creating real pathways for these students to work in the arts and culture sector.

“This course is only one piece of it,” she further explained. “There’s a lot of potential for collaboration around research and education in the future.”

Arts management and folklore studies are both necessary perspectives in producing this kind of large-scale cultural event. But, as Rosenstein noted, the two fields don’t often interact in an academic setting.

“It’s a unique opportunity for graduate students, in particular,” she said. “As an undergraduate, you know, you’re in classes with a variety of majors all the time. But for graduate students with more focused studies, it’s not often they get to share and learn across areas of expertise. And it’s great career practice, because arts management and folklore professionals will be working together at the same institutions in their careers.”

“We get into deep discussions about how each program would approach these same questions and challenges differently, as well as looking at how we have the same motivations and goals but are perhaps using different terminology or theories,” said MacKay. “It’s amazing to see how much they learn from one another.”

Because of the cross-disciplinary nature of the course, students and faculty engage with all parts of festival production at a much deeper level. Students might consider the theoretical concepts behind ethical and equitable folklore conservation and presentation one day, and the next they’re debating how many bathrooms will be needed for the predicted crowds.

“That’s one of the amazing things about this course and the focus on planning a festival,” said Rosenstein. “It gives them the opportunity to go all the way from high-level theory to what’s happening on the ground at any given minute of the event.”

Everything in the course comes back to building and sustaining relationships. From vendors to sponsors to performers to guests, students learn how proper festival management leads to long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships that support the access and preservation of artistic, creative, and cultural expression.

“This class opens up folklore and arts management students to so many different career possibilities in the arts and culture,” said MacKay.

“It’s an important reminder for students that there are all kinds of creative life and expression everywhere you look,” said Rosenstein. “It’s not just in big art museums or symphony orchestras: you can find it in every community.”

This summer, we spoke with three of the students who worked on the Folklife Festival.

Stephanie Aitken

Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

Master’s student in English with a concentration in Folklore Studies

What are you most excited for about interning with the festival?

Seeing it all come together. We’ve learned so much about it in class, and we’ve heard from so many guests who are directly involved in curating or producing the festival. So seeing it all come together in front of my eyes will be an incredible experience.

I’m not from this area, and I’ve never heard of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival before. Now I’m doing an internship. And I don’t think I would have gotten the internship without this class because of the connections we made to all these people related to the festival.

How did this course and the internship prepare you for a career in folklore studies?

I feel like public-sector folklore has grown more and more, especially with a more modern awareness of being respectful of cultures, reciprocity when engaging with cultures, particularly those of marginalized groups. So preparing students with those skills and that perspective is really valuable, and the opportunities it provides makes George Mason’s folklore program unique.

Chris Esswein

BA English and Economics ’24

What was your biggest takeaway from the course?

I did a dual degree in economics and English with the hope of going to law school. But there was this looming feeling that I was going to go to law school, end up working for a Big Law firm doing work that I hated, only to burn out and leave after a few years. But this class and the internship opened up a whole new world of opportunity to me. I care deeply about the ethics of representation and public folklore festival management. I could see job possibilities in law at the Smithsonian, or any number of other public or private arts programs. Even in the class, I felt like my practical way of thinking was embraced and encouraged: asking about permits, security, costs, etc. There’s a place for economics and law and the practical in the world of the arts, and maybe there’s nowhere that needs it more than those areas.

Noelani Talamoni

Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

Master’s student in English with a concentration in Folklore Studies

What are you most excited for about interning with the festival?

I’m Indigenous Hawaiian, and although I’m very aware of my culture and my background, I haven’t had the opportunity to really work with people in my community. And because the festival theme this year is Indigenous Voices of America, the internship gives me the opportunity to get closer to a part of my heritage that I hadn’t had before, and a chance to uplift my community. It’s also an opportunity to put my research and my classroom experience to use in a very real, tangible way.

What was the cross-disciplinary class experience like?

I feel like we [folklore students and arts management students] learned a lot from each other that we can take into our careers. In our mock festival in class, for example, the arts management students helped me understand these very important, practical aspects of planning, like sound checking for musicians and land use guidelines for where stalls can be placed. And I helped them think through who we were inviting, what communities were being highlighted, how to support unheard voices. Cooperation and camaraderie are a huge part of putting together a festival. In my internship, I’m seeing how experts from multiple fields and backgrounds can work together effectively.

Study the tales and traditions of the world in the folklore program

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College of Humanities and Social Sciences

folklore

Summer Internship

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College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) Arts Management Program

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“I will respond to your email when I return”: Psychology professor explores how to be better at taking vacation

Sarah Holland — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 16:41:16 +0000

“I will respond to your email when I return”: Psychology professor explores how to be better at taking vacation Sarah Holland Wed, 07/10/2024 - 12:41

With schools out and summer in full swing, many of us take advantage of ��AV’s location to spend some vacation time at the nearby beaches, local mountains, or even just at home. For most of us, it’s relaxation. For Lauren Kuykendall, it’s research.

Kuykendall, an associate professor of industrial-organizational psychology at George Mason, is working to define the relationship between out-of-office availability and organizational culture in order to help employees and employers be better about taking restful, recuperative vacation time.

She started her research last year with a survey of away messages.

Lauren Kuykendall. Photo provided.

“We wanted to see how people signal availability, and how that aligns with their perceptions of the norms of their team or work group,” she explained. “Most people don’t want to check emails on vacation, but if this is normalized in your work group, you start to worry about what others will think if you’re gone for two weeks.”

They found evidence that people in groups with high expectations for responsiveness, for example, were more likely to avoid setting firm no-contact boundaries in their away messages.

This inspired Kuykendall to design a more robust research model. During summer 2024, she will be conducting more comprehensive surveys with research participants before and after their vacations to better understand how workplace social dynamics impact vacation experiences.

As an expert in employee well-being, burnout, and work-nonwork balance, Kuykendall believes that “people do things because they are desirable and because they are feasible. Vacations are desirable, but they don’t always feel feasible because of the repercussions: hundreds of emails, working long hours right before in order to be able to go on vacation, so on and so forth. So people sometimes choose not to bother. They don’t see the net positive of it.”

But she believes there are ways employees can set up themselves and their teams for vacation success. First, through forming habits around recuperative and restful behaviors. “Habits are essentially self-controlled behavior, and it’s funny to think about leisure as a self-controlled behavior,” she said. “But it’s important for us to have these leisure activities that are habits for us to create that separation between work and nonwork. It’s a great protection against burnout.”

Second, Kuykendall emphasized that a group’s culture of work-nonwork boundaries is established through modeling. “The leaders, supervisors, and organizations as a whole have a crucial part to play in making it easier for people to set and maintain the balance,” she said. “And there are practical things that teams and leaders can do, like encouraging their team to plan for expected absences.”

She uses the phrase “pausing requires planning.” People don’t go on vacations because there is a fear that taking time away doesn’t feel feasible, whether you’re working on complex projects, running interdependent research, or supervising employees or students. But even the act of preparing others for your absence can make a huge difference.

“The sooner you tell people your plans, the more time everyone has to prepare and set up alternative workflows to accommodate,” she said. “And, if you’re in a leadership position, it models for employees that vacations are possible.”

Kuykendall said it’s become more commonplace, now, for colleagues in her department to let others know their upcoming out-of-office dates well in advance, a behavior that was modeled by a former department chair so everyone could plan accordingly for his absence. Several of her colleagues now include their upcoming unavailability in their email signatures.

These practices aren’t just for multi-week vacations. “There’s a place for all lengths of vacations and breaks in our work-nonwork balance,” she said. “Everything from lunch breaks to week-long vacations have a purpose in restoring us.”

Skipping lunch every day but taking a two-week sojourn every six months, for example, isn’t an effective long-term solution for most people. It’s about the total package, Kuykendall said, and how we prioritize healthy work-rest rhythms in both the short- and long-term that will protect us from burnout.

Kuykendall is teaching and researching over the summer. But she also has her own vacation coming up in August to the Pacific Northwest. Talking about her upcoming vacation served as a reminder to for her to send an email with further information about her departure and what to expect while she’s gone.

“It’s PTO,” she joked. “I have to Prepare The Others."

Enhance human potential in the Department of Psychology

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Research

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Psychology

Summer 2024

Sarah Holland

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Festival management class puts students at the heart of cultural conservation and celebration in Washington, D.C.

Stephanie Aitken

Master’s student in English with a concentration in Folklore Studies

What are you most excited for about interning with the festival?

How did this course and the internship prepare you for a career in folklore studies?

Chris Esswein

BA English and Economics ’24

What was your biggest takeaway from the course?

Noelani Talamoni

Master’s student in English with a concentration in Folklore Studies

What are you most excited for about interning with the festival?

What was the cross-disciplinary class experience like?

Study the tales and traditions of the world in the folklore program

Position yourself for a successful career through arts management

See where else George Mason internships can take you

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“I will respond to your email when I return”: Psychology professor explores how to be better at taking vacation

Enhance human potential in the Department of Psychology

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