College of Education and Human Development

When the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture began planning its sports gallery, the first call museum director Lonnie Bunch made was to Dave Wiggins. Wiggins, a professor of sport history at George Mason University, is Bunch’s longtime friend. But he is also an acknowledged authority on the African American experience in American sport. Read more...

For the past 25 years, Gregory Baldwin has seen his work in Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) as a calling—and an opportunity to pay it forward to his students. The city of Alexandria recently recognized Baldwin’s passion with its second annual Champions of Children Award, which he received in June. Read more...

For Shelley Wong, an associate professor of multilingual and multicultural education at George Mason University, music is an important tool in the teaching of languages. “It’s a way to lose your inhibitions,” she said. Music, or songs, to be more precise, are central to the proposal Wong used to win a Fulbright Fellowship, which will allow her to travel to the West Bank in Palestine, where she will teach grammar to students majoring in English and instructors at Birzeit University in Ramallah and also engage them in discussions about justice, peace and reconciliation. Read more...

Problem-based learning is useful in identifying high-ability middle school students from underserved populations who historically are left out of honors, advanced and gifted programs. That is the conclusion being drawn by Project ExCEL, a five-year study led by Anne Horak, an assistant professor in George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development. Read more...

Dennis Nolasco’s parents immigrated to the United States from El Salvador. His father reached the 4th grade before dropping out to work on the family farm. His mother had never seen a school until she came to the U.S. Years later, Nolasco used his family’s experience as inspiration to get his license to teach English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Read more...

Leading scholars and education policy practitioners from George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) and the Schar School of Policy and Government will help students understand how education policy is debated, created, and implemented in a new master's level program this fall. The graduate-level emphasis area, Education Policy, is offered in the Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree program and is spearheaded by CEHD associate professor Spiros Protopsaltis, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education and senior Senate aide, and former Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton, now a visiting professor at CEHD and the Schar School. Read more...

Every morning, Mason alumnus Dan Reichard starts his fifth-grade class at Kate Waller Barrett Elementary School in Stafford, Va., with a secret handshake—27 of them, to be exact, one for each of his students. Reichard said it took about two weeks to memorize the handshakes he asked his students to invent at the beginning of the school year. And the students cut Reichard little slack if he forgets even the tiniest nuance. Read more...

On April 4, Andy Jacks was sitting in a meeting with the associate superintendent of Prince William County Public Schools when his secretary called and said there was an emergency in the cafeteria. Jacks had been discussing the power of good leadership with the associate superintendent. Later, Jacks realized that his colleague was engaging in a bit of creative deception. Read more...

George Mason University’s Kate Dunn had just begun high school when she first realized that coaching football was what she was always meant to do. Her passion for the game runs deep. “I love the teamwork and the dedication that is required,” she said, “and that you never know everything. You can always get better.” Dunn joined a panel of accomplished women who coached men in sports during the “Breaking Gender Roles: Women Coaching Men” Symposium on April 18, hosted by Mason’s Division of Sport, Recreation and Tourism and the Center for Sport Management. Read more...

In a career focused on learning design that has spanned decades, Shahron Williams van Rooij, associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development’s Instructional Design and Technology program, has come to a realization: professionals in the world of education who want to make the jump to business often struggle. Read more...