Buzz McClain

On a blustery, gray day in February, 60 people learned how to “color their personal brand.” That was the theme for the Spring 2019 Learning Community, an event that challenges Organization Development and Knowledge Management master’s students to become instructors for a day.

Sheena Saydam admits she didn’t see herself in real estate while studying national security policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government. Nor did the 2009 Master of Public Policy graduate imagine that she would be helping to support a modified trailer that dispenses free showers to the homeless in Baltimore.

The Schar School of Policy and Government released a report on March 6 that examines the significance of a “cultural turn” in international development that began in the 1980s.

An audience of more than 120 students, faculty and staff members, and others interested in the topic of “Can Women Save Democracy?: Women Political Leaders in the Time of Trump and #MeToo” attended the inaugural Pennino Panel on Gender and Policy at George Mason University’s Founders Hall auditorium in Arlington Wednesday night.

For 32 years the Almanac of Virginia Politics, a comprehensive compendium of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s legislative actions, has been available in print only.

Lisa Anderson was the president of the American University in Cairo in 2010 when the anti-government uprising known as the Arab Spring began in Tunisia. Anderson’s Egyptian faculty members told her “this could never happen in Egypt” because of the vast cultural differences between Tunisia and Egypt.

Nearly 70 students visited 19 would-be employers on Wednesday during the Graduate Career and Internship Fair at the Arlington Campus.

It was an early departure—7 a.m.—and the weather was cold and icy—in fact, the rest of the university was on a delayed opening until 11 a.m. But still, some 40 George Mason University undergraduate students piled into a chartered bus and departed the Fairfax Campus for the two-hour journey to Richmond to meet with state legislators.

While other students spent the middle of January combating the worst of winter weather and dealing with post-holiday blahs, a cadre of 12 Schar School students basked in the dry sunshine of Vietnam for eight days and learned about the country’s fate in a rapidly changing Southeast Asia.

At the Schar School of Policy and Government we are often asked, “What is political science?” For the definitive answer, we turned to—who else?—political science professors who study, interpret, and teach the art of governing. Here is what they had to say.