The Mason Spirit

Mason doctoral student Blake Klocke has been interested in amphibians for as long as he can remember. He talks about growing up in Minnesota, where he shared his bedroom with a few dozen frogs, snakes, and geckos, as well as the insects he cultivated to feed them.

Continue Reading Blake Klocke, Environmental Science and Public Policy

From the streets of Iran to the housing complexes of Fairfax, Virginia, civil engineering doctoral student Pouya Gholizadeh sees one thing universal to construction sites at both: the safety of the workers.

Continue Reading Pouya Gholizadeh, Civil Engineering

For Mason PhD student Ricardo Sanchez, international aid is part of the job. Since he joined Counselors Without Borders in 2013, Sanchez has been selected to travel to his native Peru, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico as a graduate counselor to assist with post-disaster emergency situations.

Continue Reading Ricardo Sanchez, Counseling and Development

As a former anti-war organizer and nonviolence trainer during the Iraq War, Sarah Rose-Jensen’s decision to enroll in Mason’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution to study social mobilization against forced evictions in Cambodia was personal.

Continue Reading Sarah Rose-Jensen, Conflict Analysis and Resolution

History PhD candidate Stephanie Walters took her childhood love for history with her all the way to her dissertation, where she started with a single question: Were there loyalists in Virginia at the time of the Revolutionary War? Modern historians believe that only a few hundred loyalists, then called Tories, existed across the state.

Continue Reading Stephanie Seal Walters, History

Last year, Mason senior Noah Shoates helped serve more than 70 students in his role as one of the student directors of Mason’s Patriot Pantry. “It’s more than just a pantry,” he says. “It’s a community.”

Continue Reading Patriot Profile: Noah Shoates

Mason alumna Franziska Moeckel came to the United States as an international student from Germany, searching for a university that would be the perfect fit for her. While she was accepted to several schools, Moeckel says Mason was her top choice because it allowed her to be part of a community.

Continue Reading A Road Map for the Future of Health Care

Of the nine nursing institutes in Oman, Mason alumni lead four of them—three are deans and one is a director. There soon will be a fifth. “Forty years ago, Oman had one hospital and 20 beds. Now there are 60 health care facilities in Oman,” says Kevin Mallinson, assistant dean for PhD and research programs in Mason’s School of Nursing. “Mason has had a big impact on Oman wherever in the country [these alumni] serve.”

Continue Reading Mason’s Nursing Leadership Pipeline to Oman

When Mason global affairs major Donna Imadi was still a senior in high school, she came up with the idea of a centralized community-based mentorship program that could offer support for high school students facing linguistic, socioeconomic, and other challenges outside of school. A year later, as a college freshman in Mason’s Honors College, she turned her idea into the nonprofit organization InvestinYOUth.

Continue Reading Patriot Profile: Donna Imadi

Growing up in Bangladesh, Shaquib Chowdhury knows firsthand the effects of rising sea levels due to climate change. Bangladesh is a low-lying country prone to flooding, and citizens from coastal towns are constantly relocating to the capital, Dhaka, already one of the world’s most densely populated cities. Chowdhury has decided to do something about it.

Continue Reading Student Profile: Shaquib Chowdhury