College of Education and Human Development

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) approved the School of Education, the School of Kinesiology, and the School of Sport, Recreation, and Tourism Management. Read more...

Dean Mark Ginsberg announced the addition of six new instructional faculty for the 2019-20 school year. Read more...

Graduate students learn ways to mix music, dance, and drama into curriculum. Read more...

Counselors Without Borders founder reflects on time at Mason. Read more...

CEHD faculty, students test data-collection process with ‘dry run’ at Mason’s Child Development Center. Read more...

Counseling professor Fred Bemak recommends culturally responsive model of psycho-social support Read more...

The George Mason University Board of Visitors today unanimously voted to appoint former Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton as the university’s interim president. The appointment will take effect August 1. Read more...

Drops in students pursuing teaching profession worry former education secretary. Read more...

Dean Ginsberg announced that sixteen faculty members received promotion and/or tenure. Read more...

Spring break program explores Assistive Technology in South Korea. Read more...

Tourism and events management student helps promote Mason Dining through Starship delivery robots. Read more...

Rita Chi-Ying Chung and Frederic Bemak are two of just five at the university to receive Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence. Read more...

Mason Researchers Contribute to Award-Winning Paper on Adaptive Teaching. Read more...

This annual award recognizes excellence in advising across campus. This year, 793 nominations were submitted for 108 different advisors, representing every undergraduate Mason college/school! Read more...

Education and transportation officials say traffic gardens are one creative way to teach the next generation of pedestrians and cyclists. Read more...

Hunter Hautz's training manual for firefighter candidates in Prince William County was so valuable, the Mason master's student received a letter of commendation from the fire chief. Read more...

Wiley multimedia gives online special education students unprecedented access to case studies. Read more...

For the past year, Mark Helmsing has been intensely studying the Holocaust. His research focuses on the affective and emotional dimensions of history — how people feel about the past, and how the past makes them feel in return. Read more...

The College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) has recently made a strong showing in a trio of prestigious rankings, each of which uses different metrics to rank schools and programs against others in the U.S.—and in one case, around the world. Read more...

CEHD faculty members Seth Parsons and Allison Ward Parsons, in addition to doctoral students Melissa Gallagher and Melissa Pierczynski, received the AERA Review of Research Award. Read more...

Dancers’ medical needs, as athletes, have long been underserved. Jatin Ambegaonkar, an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development, has made it his goal to change that. Read more...

In the spirit of collaboration—and self-reflection—two professors from the College of Education and Human Development gave a talk about an innovative new assessment model to a visiting group of nearly two dozen teachers and faculty from schools in China. Read more...

Andy Gilbert teamed up with colleague Kathy Ramos, who had an idea: to put together a dual program focusing on both English as a second language (ESOL) and science instruction. Read more...

How do you know a community values your involvement? It steps up financially to keep your program running. That is what happened in Prince William County, Virginia, which this academic year budgeted $180,000 to continue a George Mason University program that provides athletic trainers to nine of the county’s 16 public middle schools with athletic programs. Read more...

Patricia Kelshaw has been immersed in George Mason University’s Athletic Training Education Program for as long as she has been at the university. Kelshaw’s research endeavors to establish more specific baseline measures for children participating in sports to better manage concussions. Those measures could also enhance the Child Support Concussion Assessment Tool, a standardized evaluation instrument that helps assess whether concussions have occurred and informs care throughout recovery. Read more...

Don’t worry Virginia teachers, Amy Hutchison feels your pain and is here to help. The associate professor at George Mason University and director of Mason’s Division of Elementary, Literacy and Secondary Education understands that teaching the new mandatory Standards of Learning for computer science in Virginia’s public schools can seem daunting to those who do not have a computer science background. Read more...

Mason LIFE focuses on academics, employment, independent living, and community integration for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Life Sherpa is an app that aims to help students with disabilities become more independent in employment settings by creating routines for the students to follow while offering help, if needed. Read more...

Given a chance to use role-playing to solve real-world problems, middle schoolers who might be overlooked for advanced academic programs can perform just as well as their high-achieving peers, research by George Mason University assistant professor Anne Horak has shown. For the third consecutive year, the curriculum written for that research has won an award. Read more...

Fred Schack’s colleagues at the College of Education and Human Development described him as “steady,” “consistent,” and “dependable.” If there was work to be done, he would volunteer to do it. He was also remembered for always being on time, pitching in with colleagues, and always supporting students. Basically, “he was there,” says Rich Miller, a professor of kinesiology at Mason. Schack, who retired from his position as a professor of kinesiology and physical education this past June, died in September following a short illness. He was 76. More than half of his life was spent as a faculty member at George Mason University. Read more...

Fostering Student Computational Thinking with Self-Regulated Learning is a new $3.5M (over 5 years) NSF-funded STEM+C grant that will advance research and development of new transdisciplinary approaches to computational STEM teaching and learning. Read more...

Anna Evmenova, Kelley Regan, and Amy Hutchison won a $2.5M award (over 5 years) for “WEGO-RIITE: Writing Efficiently with Graphic Organizers - Responsive Instruction while Implementing Technology Effectively” funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of Education. Read more...

A new NSF award was granted to Amy Hutchison and colleagues for a project that brings together faculty from George Mason University and Old Dominion University, the non-profit group CodeVA and Norfolk City Public Schools (NCPS) to broaden participation in Computer Science in Virginia. Read more...

For the past four years, Seth Hunter has been researching teacher evaluations and teacher observations in Tennessee. Before coming to Mason just a few months ago, Hunter worked in partnership with the Tennessee Department of Education while he was a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University. It was his extensive work with Tennessee education standards that brought him back to the state in July, when Hunter was invited to a Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA) summit to discuss his research findings. Read more...

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...

Thanks to digital technologies such as laptops, smartphones and tablets, students are creating personal learning environments in which they choose the tools, times and methods by which they learn. Institutions should help students make the best use of those technologies, George Mason University professor Nada Dabbagh said. Read more...

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 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...

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...

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...

Pablo Ramirez Uribe, a master’s student at George Mason University studying secondary education and English, said it was quite a revelation when he learned how to really be successful as teacher. More than planning, more than constructing assignments, is the ability to connect with students. “It’s go into a school and help these people grow,” Ramirez Uribe said. That was Ramirez Uribe’s takeaway from a program called “Through Students Eyes,” developed by George Mason education professor Kristien Zenkov. Read more...

In March several faculty members from the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at George Mason University had the opportunity to travel to a rural area of Puerto Rico with a small team from Counselors Without Borders. Among the people they met was a 25-year-old who had begun withdrawing from society before Hurricane Maria hit the island last September. After the storm wreaked its devastation, his condition worsened. Read more...

One of the College of Education and Human Development’s youngest programs has completed the accreditation process, providing further proof that the new classes are equipping students with the tools they need to succeed in the field of athletic training. The Master of Science in Athletic Training (MSAT) program at Mason, housed on the Science and Technology campus, recently received accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education, or CAATE. Read more...

More than 20 adjunct faculty from colleges and disciplines across the university—as well as an equally diverse group of facilitators—met on March 5 to talk, share their visions, practice as educators, and begin to design a self-study teacher research project. After brief introductions by the facilitators and warm welcoming remarks by College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) Dean Mark Ginsberg and Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning (SCTL) Director Shelley Reid (sponsors of the project along with Faculty Affairs and Development in the Office of the Provost), participants formed critical friend teams to create and share the initial sketching of a personal-situated teaching inquiry to improve their students’ learning. Read more...

For Arne Duncan, the key to successfully educating and preparing students for career paths is relevance. “Students want to know what they are doing in the classroom is relevant in the real world,” the former U.S. Secretary of Education said. “Kids should know that if I take this class I can get this internship, and this internship will lead to a real job. If we can get to that point, we’re going to be in great shape.” Read more...

Fred Bemak remembers all the hugs and tears. They inevitably come, he said, when his Counselors Without Borders team is on location helping hundreds—sometimes thousands—of people healing from the emotional scars of a disaster. “It’s the person who is grabbing and hugging you, thanking you for being there,” the George Mason University professor said. “That’s huge.” For 13 years Counselors Without Borders has traveled the world into areas devastated by floods, wildfires and storms, offering culturally responsive humanitarian counseling in post-disaster situations. Read more...

One student questioned her father about his conservative views on gay rights. Another approached a friend from camp about their divergent opinions on President Trump. And a third pressed his cousin on his ardent support for guns. In a climate of political and social divisiveness, when social media often doubles as an echo chamber, educators issued a challenge to 12th-graders at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria that seemed, at once, simple and extraordinary — find someone different from themselves, with whom they disagree on a foundational issue, and talk. Read more...

The 2018 Winter Olympics have officially begun in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and top athletes from around the world are currently competing in 15 events over more than two weeks. But there’s more than just sport at this worldwide mega event—there’s also diplomacy. Read more...

Fred Bemak, a professor and academic program coordinator of George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development counseling and development program, is a recipient of a 2018 Oustanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). Bemak, in the College of Education and Human Development, is one of 12 recipients selected from 83 nominees, and the 21st George Mason recipient since the award’s inception in 1987. Read more...

If you’re an enormous social media company looking to adapt some of your technology for younger children, you want to make sure you’re creating a fun user experience—but also a safe one. That’s what Facebook was recently looking to do. While preparing to put together what eventually became Messenger Kids, which launched in late 2017, the company consulted with experts on children and media. One of those experts was Kevin Clark, CEHD professor and director of the Center for Digital Media Innovation and Diversity. Read more...

As the scope of potential short- and long-term damage from brain injuries in football becomes clearer every day, the mad scramble is on to try to address the crisis, which threatens the very existence of the sport. And while the leading chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, research at Boston University has made the most headlines, two scientists at George Mason University have been working on a potentially groundbreaking diagnostic tool that could change the way we test for and treat brain injury across the sports world and beyond. Read more...