News

• News & Notes

  News February 25, 2013 at 3:54 pm Comments are Disabled

  CHSS Panel on Obama’s Second Term The College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) will be hosting a panel entitled “Obama’s Second Term: Impact on the Global Community” on Feb. 27, at 7:30 p.m. in the Meese Conference Room in Mason Hall. The panel will feature three experts from the fields of journalism, politics, history, and national security. They will focus on how the Obama administration may impact the United States and its place as one of the major world powers. One of the speakers, Bill Schneider, Mason faculty member and political journalist from CNN and Politico, will talk about the United States’ economic situation and what Americans can expect in the economy this coming year.   New dean of CHSS The College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) recently appointed Deborah Boehm-Davis as its new dean of CHSS. Boehm-Davis has been serving as the associate dean of the school and has been serving as University Professor in the department of psychology since 1984. She holds degrees in psychology from Rutgers University and University of California, Berkeley. An author of several scholarly articles, Boehm-Davis also serves as president of both the Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology divisions of the American Psychological Association […]

   

• College cohort has higher stress levels than other generations

  News February 25, 2013 at 3:47 pm Comments are Disabled

  College students are no strangers to stress and trying to manage it. Between studying for classes, having a job, extra curricular activities and trying to manage a social life, stress is an ever present factor of college life. When looking at the stress levels of freshmen in college, freshmen aremore likely to be stressed because they are trying to find the healthy balance in their lives. “Since it was my first semester, everything was stressful,” freshman Nilou Kazemzadeh said. “I didn’t know how to study for my classes. I started studying differently for each class and I got scared that I wasn’t studying enough and I wasn’t studying the right way.” It’s easy to say that the stress levels college students experience are normal, however, these days they might not actually be and not just for college students, but for the entire Millennial Generation. According to the study titled Stress in America, released on Feb 7 by the America Psychological Association, the Millennial Generation (ages 18-33) are experiencing increasingly high levels of stress with 39 percent of Millennials reporting an increase of stress from the previous year. Compared to the other generations survey in this study, Generation X (ages 34-47) […]

   
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  Jewish students take sponsored trips to Israel

  Featured, Multimedia, News February 25, 2013 at 3:06 pm Comments are Disabled

  Ten-day Birthright trip provides once- in-a-lifetime experience and memories  College is a time that many use to explore their heritage in the hopes of discovering their identity. For some Jewish students, this may involve the exploration of their religious or cultural roots, for which many look towards Israel. As the world’s only Jewish state, Israel is the cultural and religious center of Jewish heritage, and for this reason, many Jewish students choose to go on 10-day Birthright trips to Israel. “Birthright is an opportunity for Jewish students between the ages of 18-26 who have never travelled to Israel on a peer trip before,” said Mason’s Hillel Director Ross Diamond. “It’s an opportunity for students to travel to a country that’s talked a lot about in the news, and to experience it for themselves.” Diamond stated that while the trips generally differed based on organization, most generally included the holy sites in Jerusalem, Israel’s national cemetery Mount Herzl, the Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem, visiting a Bedouin community, the city of Safed, a night out in Tel Aviv and the famous fortress Masada. Sophomore Carleigh Ladden-Stirling noted that the many hours on the trip that had been spent travelling from one location […]

   

• Mason’s changing identity impacts retention rates

  News February 25, 2013 at 2:43 pm Comments are Disabled

  Initiatives to reduce the number of students who leave after sophomore year  The univeristy’s identity has changed over the past few years; from local alternative and commuter school to having one of the biggest on-campus student presence in Virginia, Mason is creating a new identity that is evolving everyday. With Mason’s identity, a trend had been for students to attend Mason for two years and then transfer to another university. “We do a pretty good job at keeping students their first and second year. We drop a little bit second to third year, so the sophomore level,” said Jeannie Brown Leonard, dean of student academic affairs, advising and retention. The Institutional Research and Reporting has a report on Persistence and Graduation Rates for First- Time, Full-Time Baccalaureate Degree-Seeking Cohorts which shows the retention rate for each cohort, meaning the percentage of an enrollment group (one- year, two-year, etc.) that enrolls for the next year. The report shows that in 2002, the percent of the two-year cohort, consisting of mostly sophomores, was 72.8 and dropped to 69.2 in the three-year cohort (mostly juniors). In the latest report in 2009, the two-year rate was 79.4 and the three-year rate was 75.2. A […]

   

• Pitch Mason 1.0 sparks ingenuity

  News February 25, 2013 at 2:22 pm Comments are Disabled

  Student entrepreneur startup program leads to unconventional careers  In today’s economy, people are constantly looking for new forms of employment. Many have turned to social entrepreneurship. Particularly, more and more college students and young adults are entering the field. “I think most people in college get caught up into the thinking of ‘finding a job,’ rather than even exploring the idea of creating jobs or coming up with a new innovative idea. In my opinion, college is one of the best places for that to occur because a lot people are here to help you,” said Ibi Pashaei, a sophomore at Mason studying kinesiology and business. David Miller, director of entrepreneurship at the Mason Center for Social Entrepreneurship (MCSE), noticed this phenomenon, and recently started “Pitch Mason 1.0” as a way to engage more people in entrepreneurial work. “We are trying to create a network of Mason students, alumni, faculty, staff and community members who are interested in entrepreneurship, and a place where they can go to pitch their ideas, gain feedback, and eventually start-up,” said Miller, an entrepreneur himself, who is also a faculty member in Mason’s School of Management as well as a Ph.D. candidate at Mason’s School […]

   

• Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

  Editorials, News February 25, 2013 at 2:17 pm Comments are Disabled

  A few weeks ago, I received an email from Nicholas Ugrin, a student-veteran who was battling with the university over his status as a domicile, or in-state, student. Even though he has lived and worked in Virginia for some time, Ugrin is being charged out-of- state tuition because of a mistake that happened somewhere along the line during registration. Ugrin does not hold anyone in particular accountable for the mistake, which may have happened on his application, however, he is upset that the school has been unwilling to work with him to resolve the issue. I was surprised to hear that the university was reacting so coldly and formulaically over such a potentially life-changing subject, especially in relation to veterans. I was even more surprised to see a similar story on the Washington Post Nova blog last week. On Feb. 21, Tom Jackman broke the story about Stephanie Kermgard, another student-veteran at Mason who is being charged for classes as an out-of- state student. Though Kermgard’s story varies in many details from Ugrin’s, their core is the same. For some reason, Mason is repeatedly denying domicile status to in-state students, both veteran and citizen. Ugrin told me that he cannot afford the […]

   
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  Photo of the week: Last second win over William and Mary

  Featured, Multimedia, News February 24, 2013 at 6:47 pm Comments are Disabled

  A last-second jump shot from Erik Copes won the game for Mason versus William and Mary on Saturday, with a final score of 60-58. Cope’s shot from the free throw line went through the net and left just .5 seconds on the clock. Freshman Patrick Halloway was the leading scorer for Mason with 15 points from a career-high 5 three-pointers.

   
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  Photo of the week: Mumford and Sons comes to Mason

  Featured, News February 21, 2013 at 4:27 pm Comments are Disabled

    Coming off their victory at the Grammys for Album of the Year, Mumford and Sons performed two sold-out shows at the Patriot Center. Acts Haim and Ben Howard opened for the London-native quartet this past Wednesday and Thursday. Broadside was able to get exclusive access to the event and bring you these photos.   (Photos by Jenny Krashin/Broadside)          

   

• AE Green updates sustainability with new initiatives

  News February 21, 2013 at 12:57 pm Comments are Disabled

    Healthy vending machines, water bottle filling stations now available   Auxiliary Enterprises (AE), the umbrella group for departments such as Parking & Transportation and University Services at Mason, has recently released its AE Green Second Quarter Update, which details the practices Mason is implementing to have a more sustainable campus environment. A few of the more immediate changes include: Elkay water bottle filling stations, 2bU Healthy Vending Machines, exterior recycling bins and charging stations. The Elkay water bottle filling stations are currently installed in the JC only, but will be moving to the HUB, Skyline, Sub I, the RAC and the Field House. “This is my second time using it. I love it. It only takes one hand, which makes it 100 percent better, quicker and easier,” senior Paul Laudiero said. For many, it was the first time using the water bottle filling station. “That’s incredible. It’s cleaner than using water fountains. I think it should keep people from buying so many plastic bottles, and it saves water too because the regular water fountain is always a hassle and sprays wasted water all over the place,” sophomore Krystin Thorson said. The general consensus is that the Elkay station is […]

   
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  Journalist Kevin Sites talks wars, lives of soldiers, PTSD

  News February 21, 2013 at 12:55 pm Comments are Disabled

  “War’s most cunning trick, was the war it seeded in me.” Kevin Sites explained to students last Tuesday. The author of In the Hot Zone and, most recently, The Things They Cannot Say, Sites has spent ten years of a twenty-year journalism career in warzones. What inspired Sites to write his most recent book was the simple concept of storytelling that he said was a process of healing. But Sites’ discussion did not focus solely on his most recent publication. Instead, the conversation was guided towards the moral ambiguity surrounding journalism and, more specifically, journalism in warzones. While not a soldier himself, Sites faced the same issues many soldiers face today. “Was I a bad person, or just that way in war?” he asked himself. What it all boiled down to was something called moral injury. When the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) did not fit his symptoms, Sites stated that “it wasn’t what I witnessed that was haunting me; it was the guilt over walking out.” The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) describes moral injury, in the context of war, as “a construct that describes extreme and unprecedented life experience including the harmful aftermath of exposure to such […]