College of Humanities and Social Sciences

A former member of George Mason's 1993 NCAA national runner-up women's soccer team, George Mason alumna Hollis Kosco has turned her athletic experience into a global profession in sports management and operations.

During her final semester at George Mason University, Sophia Colby put her environmental policy training into action. Colby traveled to Capitol Hill as part of the Rachel Carson Council’s National Environmental Advocacy Day, where she met with federal lawmakers to discuss climate legislation and community resilience.

As a freshman, George Mason University Honors College student Marley Oare chose the Global Affairs Program because she pictured herself working for the CIA or the United Nations. That quickly changed when she took a natural science course in her first semester.

George Mason University global affairs major Noella Mongony has received second prize in the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics essay contest, the Elie Wiesel Foundation has announced.

George Mason University senior Silas Fransen plans to pursue a career as a museum curator. And thanks to the university’s Office of Student Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR), the art history major already has one exhibit to his name. 

George Mason alumna Ashley Fortner, BS Integrative Studies ’17, is the caretaker of the new baby elephant Linh Mai at the National Zoo.

George Mason University professor and poet Vivek Narayanan and alumna Jessica Anthony, MFA Creative Writing ’04, have been named 2026 Guggenheim Fellows. 

This year, Graduate Student Life and Graduate and Professional Student Association (GAPSA) created a brand new award to recognize the individuals, offices, and organizations across the university who work tirelessly to advance graduate student success and well-being at George Mason University. The purpose of the Graduate Student Champion Awards is to celebrate the champions who support the success and well-being of graduate and professional students at George Mason and to cultivate and elevate a university-wide culture of graduate student support and success.to cultivate and elevate a university-wide culture of graduate student support and success.

Rania Zaied is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication at George Mason University and the 2025 winner of the university’s Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition. Her research focuses on media representations of marginalized communities, with a particular emphasis on how Muslims are portrayed in comedic media. Her dissertation examines the impact of these representations on Muslim audiences—work she successfully distilled and presented during the 3MT competition at Mason, and at the Council of Southern Graduate Schools Regional 3MT Competition.

George Mason University is equipping a new generation of archivists, scholars, and museum professionals with hands‑on digital preservation skills as part of a national effort to make hidden artifacts of Black history accessible to the public.