Category: News

One area where 4-VA@Mason has made a profound impact is in degree completion, specifically in the development of the Bachelors of Applied Science (BAS) degree program. Launched ten years ago with just one student and two available concentrations, it is now flourishing as a popular and effective education option with almost 300 students enrolled. 

The degree was designed to help shepherd students graduating with applied associate degrees at community colleges to concentrations that fulfill requirements for a four-year degree at Mason. Today the BAS program is open to several community colleges and has ballooned to nine concentrations across several colleges within the university. 

Together with the ADVANCE program which 4-VA@Mason also helped to build, students moving from a two year degree to Mason’s four-year programs now have a robust selection of pathways to get to the finish line.

“Although we had high hopes for the BAS effort when we began – carefully aligning courses and curricula, appointing student advisors, and building concentration tracks, we never imagined such remarkable outcomes.  The results have been very rewarding.” admits Janette Muir, Vice Provost Academic Affairs, and the Campus Director of 4-VA@Mason. 

Muir also credits the BAS success to the specific concentrations selected for the program, “We had an opportunity to look strategically at those jobs that will be in demand in the future for Metropolitan Washington DC, as well as all of Virginia, and build our degrees around them, integrating corresponding skill sets into the curriculum.  Thanks to our strong relationships with area business, industry, and government leaders, we have been able to create a pipeline of talent to fill those needs.”

The BAS program now offers these concentrations:

• Applied Conflict Analysis and Resolution
• Cyber Security
• Cloud Computing
• Data Analytics
• Health, Wellness and Social Services
• Human Development and Family Science
• Legal Studies
• Managerial Leadership
• Technology and Innovation

One person to witness this growth from the ground level is Krystal Dains, who, in 2014, started with the Mason BAS program as an advisor and today serves as the program’s Director.  While Dains was working her way through her roles in the program, she watched the enrollment numbers rise.  She notes particularly the jump when the Cyber Security concentration was introduced in the 2014-15 academic year.  She also saw a boost during the pandemic.  “Because of our extensive online offerings, we attracted a surge of students when in-person learning was discontinued in March 2020,” she says.

Dains explains another reason for their success, “We’re built on flexibility — even the approach to constructing the degree pathway is nimble. We get the correct people around the table.  We decide the learning outcomes and which classes support them.  We develop the curriculum and submit it to Undergraduate Council (UC).  For BAS, once UC approves it, we are good to go.  We are perfectly positioned to put a new program in place quickly so we can be on the cutting edge.”

As BAS grew, especially in Cyber Security, Dains needed to grow the faculty. And she needed just the right match.

BAS Expansion. The ‘Right Place at the Right Time.’

Mason alum and adjunct professor, Jen Deavers was recommended as a perfect fit for the program. Deavers holds an undergraduate degree in Decision Science Management Information Systems, and two master’s degrees also from Mason.

While life, work, and a young family kept Deavers away from teaching for a few years, she jumped back in 2019 when Muir suggested she teach the BAS Cyber Security class and, specifically, address the two-semester research capstone project.  Muir wanted a hands-on approach for sections 492-493 allowing students to gain practical experience and build their resume.  

Deavers got to work.  “First off, we wanted the capstone project to be flexible, but to provide practical experience.  It could be an internship; it could be self-study; it could be to learn a programming language,” she says.  Also, Deavers wanted students ready for the work force, guiding them to create a resume. “We get them to The Writing Center and Career Services and start building a professional portfolio,” Deavers notes.

For Deavers, who describes herself as passionate about connecting people, ‘connecting’ is the cornerstone of the capstone project. She has a requirement that students attend networking events and ‘put themselves out there.’  However, she points out, “Networking can happen anytime, anywhere.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be in person – it can be on a Slack channel, on Discord, and through Meet Up groups — most have a digital format.”  Deavers does encourage her students to attend the two Mason Innovation Forums held each semester and target two or three professionals from industry to talk with about their career, job interests, and internship opportunities. “There are humans behind these computers,” Deavers explains.  “We just need to bring our students together with people in the workforce.”  (See “Connecting for a Dream Job.”)

After teaching the Cyber Security focused capstone class for eight semesters, it was time to grow the program again.  “I started out teaching 10 students per section and we’re up to 30 students per section,” Deavers explains.  Deavers enlisted one of her own former students, Hanna Westover, to take on teaching the second semester class.   “We are going to tag team,” Deavers says. “Cybersecurity interviews are tough. Hanna is taking it one step further and will really ‘drill’ our students for interview prep.” 

Deavers expects that the BAS Cyber Security concentration will continue to boom, “We’re in the right place at the right time.”  Adding, “We’re also going to see people coming through for Cloud Computing – that’s another hot program right now.”

Knocking Down Barriers and Adding Masters Programs. Two More Steps Forward.

With BAS concentrations filling the need for students and Virginia businesses and government, Dains has an eye toward expanding the reach of student population.  Her goal?  To remove the barriers for students matriculating into the BAS degree. As the program often assists traditionally underserved populations including veterans, adult learners, and first-generation college attendees, Dains wants to give students greater access to a great education.  Already enlarging the base, the BAS program now welcomes students from Laurel Ridge, Germanna, and Tidewater Community Colleges.  Dains hopes to expand that pool to more schools in the future.

Also on Dains ‘to-do’ list is adding to the growing number of accelerated master’s degrees aligned to the program.  Qualified students currently have access to an Applied Information Technology MS, Digital Forensics MS, and the Management MS programs if they are in the Applied Science, Cyber Security Concentration. Qualified students in the Data Analytics concentration have the option of obtaining an accelerated Applied Information Technology MS, or Data Analytics Engineering MS. Concludes Dains, “Our goal is to give our students the best options for success – in their education, their careers, and their lives.”

Connecting for a ‘Dream’ Job

Jen Deavers believes in connections and doesn’t give up a chance to bring her students together with anyone in the cyber industry.  Whether formal events or chance meetings, she takes full advantage of building relationships. 

She relates one experience when she had a potential student reach out and ask about what track to take in the BAS program.  After some back and forth, she learned that the potential student was currently in an internship with Disney in Cyber Security.  “I immediately asked, ‘Would you come in and talk to my class?’ What an opportunity to hear from someone in Disney cyber work!” she exclaims.

She concedes she often gets pushback from her students about the networking requirements in the capstone project.  She understands that it’s uncomfortable and ‘students feel vulnerable putting themselves out there.’  However, Deavers does not send them out without a good deal of preparation.  “I have them craft questions for the professionals they meet, and I go over the questions and their materials and approve them in advance,” she explains. “But I tell them: ‘Do not leave without getting a name and a number!’”

However, Deavers says the dividends are worth every bit of angst the students fear.  “When I read my students’ reflection papers, I realize that it’s making a difference,” says Deavers. Students have been thanking her for pushing them to go to the Innovation Forum, which is traditionally held at the Army Navy Country Club near Mason’s Fairfax Campus.  One student wrote about her experience, noting “I’ve never been to someplace so fancy!  I was nervous just showing up.  But when I sat down, I met a person from the industry.  They said they were fine with me calling them later in the semester for an interview!” 

Deavers recalls another former student, Mallorie Debarr, “She is exactly who I want to teach,” says Deavers.  “She has enthusiasm and was willing to do the tasks assigned in 492-3.”  DeBarr recently emailed Deavers with this exciting news:

I want to thank you for pushing me forward in my career; even though they were just assignments, they’ve been extraordinarily valuable in navigating the job-hunting process. This brings me to my fantastic news; I just landed my dream job! Well, the first of many steps in my career progression. I just accepted a position as an Information Assurance Analyst at a small but growing tech startup in Loudoun that starts on June 6th. Additionally, they want to put time into training me to be a Security Consultant and travel to meet clients. (AMAZING!)

This year, George Mason University is celebrating 50 years as an independent university, separating from the University of Virginia in April of 1972. A lot has happened in those 50 years. Since our humble beginnings holding classes in the old Fairfax High School, Mason has grown into the largest public university in Virginia operating four campuses in the commonwealth – Fairfax, Arlington, Front Royal, and Prince William, and one in Incheon, Korea.

That’s a lot of education innovation.  But that’s always been the George Mason University way.

Since 4-VA@Mason launched a dozen years ago, we have followed in those same footprints. Moving from humble beginnings in 2010, when we were established upon the recommendation of the Governor’s Higher Education Commission and the Governor’s Commission on Economic Development and Job Creation, we’ve grown from four founding schools — Mason, James Madison University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Virginia – to eight, including The College of William and Mary, Virginia Military Institute, Old Dominion University and Virginia Commonwealth University. Our growth has reaped rewards for students, education, and Virginia.

4-VA Growth Marked with Collaboration and Efficiency

In 2010, we began by offering unique niche classes between the partner schools, via then state-of-the-art Telepresence Rooms, providing more options for students at the schools, while saving other universities the cost of developing and delivering classes with smaller enrollments.  From there, we’ve never stopped innovating.

The core purpose of 4-VA is to find ways to improve efficiencies in higher education institutions, promote cross-institution research and build collaborations that leverage the strengths of each partner university. We know that by working together we can grow that spark of a great idea into bright results and reduce the redundancy that sometimes results from working in separate silos. Our programs support four program areas – Collaborative Research Grants, Course Sharing, Course Redesign, and Degree Completion.  Importantly, 4-VA represents the breadth of higher education backgrounds; monitoring trends in education and learning; and allowing each of our endeavors to evolve and change as necessary.  One overarching tenant of the 4-VA foundation remains constant, however, to embrace emerging technology to achieve our goals.

Happy Big 5-0 George Mason University and here’s to another dozen years of 4-VA@Mason success stories!

4-VA@Mason is offering ten $4,000 grants to support faculty interested in developing and piloting alternative assessment strategies for online learning.  The goal of the effort is to examine student evaluation practices and help bolster student engagement, encourage academic integrity, and reduce tendencies toward academic outsourcing.  To ensure broad representation from all disciplines, proposals for the grants are encouraged from all ten colleges within the university. 

The grants are being offered under the direction of The Stearns Center, which will provide 1:1 instructional design support for the accepted proposals.

“When we pivoted to remote learning in March, through the Instructional Continuity Working Group, we quickly heard that faculty were struggling with academic outsourcing and other integrity challenges,” said Charles Kreitzer, Executive Director of Online Operations.  “Through these grants, we want to work together to develop strong, tested models for assessment.”

The proposals are due November 20. The planned timeline builds out the assessments in the spring, with pilot programs running in the summer and fall.  From there, each program will go through data analysis to closely examine impact before they are introduced for use. 

“One of the pillars of our mission at 4-VA@Mason is to identify and grow innovative ideas in teaching and learning,” explains 4-VA Campus Coordinator and Associate Provost Janette Muir.  “This effort to reimagine online assessment practices clearly supports that goal.”

For more information, contact your school’s Instructional Continuity Working Group representative.

Nine Mason faculty members were recently awarded 4-VA funding for research projects spanning colleges throughout the university.  Each of the lead researchers plan to collaborate with at least one of the other partner 4-VA schools. 

“The 4-VA@Mason Collaborative Research Grants provide opportunities for our faculty to work in conjunction with colleagues at other schools to advance their study of a particular issue,” said Janette Muir, Associate Provost for Academic Initiatives and Services and the 4-VA@Mason Campus Coordinator. “These grants capitalize on the importance of partnerships and avoids researching in ‘silos’.  What’s more, 4-VA collaborative efforts offer the ability to leverage the strengths of each partner university in order to accomplish more than any individual university could achieve alone.”

Recipients of the 20-21 4-VA@Mason Collaborative Research Grants are:

• Sabine Doebel – College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Applied Developmental Sciences              

Does Social Understanding Support the Development of Executive Function in Early Childhood?

(with UVA)

This project will examine ‘executive function’ in children — the ability to regulate thoughts and actions in the service of various goals. Because much remains unknown about how the change in executive function occurs, this team will test the hypothesis that as children become aware that others evaluate them (a form of self-awareness), they become increasingly capable of engaging executive function to accomplish goals. The team plans to identify promising ways to support executive function in preschoolers.

• Pei Dong – Volgenau School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering              

A study on the ultrahigh salt adsorption capacity of an energy-efficiency water desalination technology

(with UVA)

To relieve a growing water crisis worldwide, much emphasis has been placed on the effective desalination of salt water, as 97% of the earth’s water is held by the oceans. The goal of this collaborative research grant is to design next-generation electrode materials to advance the energy-efficient capacitive deionization technology.

• Olga Gkountouna – College of Science, Department of Computational and Data Sciences

Is AI capable of identifying meaningful patterns in the temporal behavior of solvated macromolecules?

(with JMU)

This team will investigate Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodologies that enhance the analysis of solvated macromolecules time evolution. They plan to implement a convergence system bridging the temporal and spatial evolution of molecules and macromolecules in liquid environments to visible patterns of behavior, aggregation, and networking evidenced by data analysis. The resulting information will be fundamental for finding solutions for drug delivery at the nanoscale, environmental pollution, skin and nerve remediation, among other applications of nanoscience.

• Wenying Ji – Volgenau School of Engineering, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering   

Modeling of Stakeholder Communication Network in Disaster Response

(with UVA and VT)

Effective communication among stakeholders is necessary to facilitate efficient coordination and targeted planning following disasters, thereby enhancing community resilience.  The research objective of this proposal is to derive a quantitative model to represent stakeholder communication networks and evaluate communication efficiency among all parties.

• Laura Lukes – Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning                

Energizing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Production in Virginia through the Development of a Regional Community of Practice for SoTL Faculty Developers

(with UVA, JMU, VT and VCU)

Through this grant, a Community of Practice model of support for faculty developers engaging faculty in Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) will be established and produce open access planning resources for faculty developers. The goal is to ultimately improve the research competitiveness and dissemination success of faculty at Virginia institutions in the area of SoTL research projects.

• Kelly Schrum – College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Higher Education Program

Reimagining the History of Higher Education in The Digital Age

(with VT)

The objective of this collaborative research grant is to redesign a core course on the history of higher education in the United States to include a focus on historical thinking, digital literacy, and research skills.  The team will also create an open educational resource (OER) on the history of higher education.

• Xiaoyan Tan – College of Science, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Accelerating the Discovery of Novel Polar Thermoelectric Materials with Density Functional Theory Calculations

(with UVA and JMU)

This project will study polar thermoelectric materials, which transform heat into electricity. Because the fundamental mechanisms that govern the thermoelectric properties are not fully understood, the team hopes to identify a series of materials to better predict novel polar thermoelectrics with tailored properties. This could lead to turning large sources of waste — released by spacecraft, motor vehicles and industrial plants – into electricity.

• Girum Urgessa – Volgenau School of Engineering , Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering

Scaled Testing of Projectile Penetration in Conventional and High-Performance Concrete Targets

(with VT)

This 4-VA team will design and conduct small-scale testing of projectiles penetrating high-performance concrete targets.  The outcomes of the experiments will allow the ability to model/predict projectile penetration depths across a variety of concrete strengths and types, and address questions surrounding the underlying penetration mechanics in next generation cementitious materials.  This information will be valuable for military analysts and decision makers responsible for infrastructure vulnerability assessment.

• Monique van Hoek – College of Science, National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases

Computationally designed antimicrobial peptides against antibiotic-resistant bacteria

(with UVA)

Through years of excessive use or misuse of antibiotics in humans and livestock, bacteria have developed many resistance mechanisms. There is an urgent need to identify new compounds to kill these antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial peptides are small strings of protein that target bacteria by binding to the bacterial membranes, and then kill the bacteria. The objective of this research is to computationally design and then test novel antimicrobial peptides for antibacterial activity against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Each of the 4-VA@Mason Advisory Board members which reviewed and approved the grants noted the breadth and depth of the timely proposals.  “Our Board was clearly impressed with the value of the research being put forth,” said Muir.  “Thanks to 4-VA, we’re advancing some important research in a thoughtful and efficient manner.”

Established in 2010 upon the recommendation of the Governor’s Higher Education Commission and the Governor’s Commission on Economic Development and Job Creation, 4-VA grants are offered in four broad areas—collaborative research, course redesign, shared courses and degree completion.