Office of Military Services

George Mason University honored as a top Military Friendly University

Colleen Rich — Tue, 28 May 2024 15:21:14 +0000

George Mason University honored as a top Military Friendly University Colleen Rich Tue, 05/28/2024 - 11:21

George Mason University’s commitment to the military community was officially recognized with a top designation as a 2024-25 Gold Military Friendly® School in the latest Military Friendly listings.

George Mason was among the 243 schools recognized with “Gold” status for their leading practices, outcomes, and effective programs in the listing of the nation’s top Military Friendly® institutions for the 2024-25 school year.

“This recognition is only possible thanks to the supportive relationships we have built with individual offices, programs, and colleges,” said Jennifer Connors, director of George Mason’s Office of Military Services. “Leadership, faculty, and staff have an unwavering commitment to those who serve. Given our location in the National Capital Region, we have a deep-rooted culture of appreciation. George Mason University is dedicated to ensuring that our military members, veterans, and their families receive the respect and resources they deserve.”

About 10% of George Mason students are current or former military, or military dependents. George Mason’s nursing and education online master’s programs for veterans are Top 20 nationally, and business is top 50. More than 2,000 Mason students using Veterans Affairs education benefits, and more than 100 are using Department of Defense Federal Tuition Assistance. Almost 800 use the Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program.

George Mason also has about 1,000 veterans who are adjuncts, administrative and professional faculty, instructional faculty or research faculty, classified staff, or student or wage employees.

The university’s Military, Veterans, and Families Initiative strengthens bonds and builds community among veteran students, alumni and families, and supports the education, well-being and professional development of veterans.

More than 1,800 schools were evaluated from public data sources and a proprietary survey, with 537 recognized with Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards. The entire list will be published in G.I. Jobs magazine’s May issue and can also be found at militaryfriendly.com.

Methodology, criteria, and weightings were determined by Viqtory, an independent research firm that connects the military community to civilian employment and educational and entrepreneurial opportunities. Criteria included student retention, graduation rates, job placement, student loan repayment, persistence (degree advancement or transfer), and loan default rates for all students and student veterans in particular.

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Military

Office of Military Services

Military Veterans and Families Initiative (MVFI)

Strategic Direction

Virginia recognizes Jennifer Connors with award for military education excellence

Colleen Rich — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 19:48:42 +0000

Virginia recognizes Jennifer Connors with award for military education excellence Colleen Rich Fri, 12/03/2021 - 14:48

Jennifer Connors. Photo provided

From one veteran liaison position and a single cubicle in the Office of Admissions to a full-service standalone resource center, the Office of Military Services (OMS) at George Mason University has grown to support the more than 3,500 military-affiliated students.

The person behind this effort: Jennifer Connors, founding director of OMS.

“Jennifer has been the visionary and architect of everything ‘veteran’ within the Mason community,” said Ryan Barnett, OMS’ associate director.

Connors, a former chief master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, said: “My job for a very long time in the military was taking care of people.”

Connors is the first recipient of the Admiral John Harvey Career Achievement in Military Education Excellence Award, which was presented by the Virginia Department of Veteran Services in September.

This honor is awarded to an employee of an education or training facility who is directly involved in the delivery of military education programs and has worked at least five years with military-related students while demonstrating dedication and leadership in providing quality service, leadership, and innovation.

“Jennifer and her team have created an inclusive, supportive environment for members of the military community in OMS,” Alan Byrd, Mason’s dean of admissions, said. “It makes all the difference in the world for our students.”

Jennifer Connors with her Office of Military Services team. Photo provided

The award is special, Connors said, because it coincides with her 10 years of service at Mason.

“I have an incredible staff and student veteran population that got me to this point,” Connors said. “It’s reflective of our community as a whole.”

Since she was hired in 2011 as the first director of military services at Mason and the first female director of a college veteran center in Virginia, Connors’ role as a servant leader hasn’t faltered.

“She works tirelessly to remove barriers for students and to position them for success at Mason and beyond,” Byrd said.

Connors said her work never feels like a job.

“I'm serving my country by continuing our mission here at Mason to make sure that our veteran population is supported and a part of our community and successful,” she said.

Connors does everything from providing student counseling sessions for benefits and academic support to giving feedback on legislation to Congress.

In November, Connors helped launch OMS’ partnership with Mason’s LGBTQ+ Resources Center. She also aided in creating Mason’s Military, Veterans, and Family Initiative (MVFI), a one-stop shop for Mason veteran support services ranging from mental health resources to legal and recreational support.

Connors said the guiding principle at OMS is “you don’t leave anyone behind.”

Connors enlisted in the Air Force in June 1995, transitioned to the Air Force Reserve in 2010, and retired from the Reserve in July 2020. She became the first female chief master sergeant of the Force Generation Center while serving as superintendent from June 2018 until her retirement.

“Through her tireless efforts, initiative, and leadership, Jennifer Connors sets the standard for military education professionals,” Barnett said.

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Faculty and Staff News

Military Veterans and Families Initiative (MVFI)

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Military

Mason doctoral students selected as this year’s Tillman Scholars

Colleen Rich — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 15:15:28 +0000

Mason doctoral students selected as this year’s Tillman Scholars Colleen Rich Tue, 11/09/2021 - 10:15

George Mason University doctoral students LeNaya Crandall Hezel and Lt. Col. Michelle Ruehl are being recognized for their service work and desire to make an impact. The two are part of the 2021 class of Tillman Scholars, named in honor of Pat Tillman, the former NFL star who was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 while serving with the U.S. Army Rangers.

Hezel is a military spouse and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consultant working on a PhD in sociology, and Ruehl is an Air Force pilot and English teacher working on a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric. The women are two are the 60 scholars chosen from thousands of applicants this year by the Chicago-based Pat Tillman Foundation.

Sociology PhD student LeNaya Crandall Hezel is a Tillman Scholar and a 2021 Stand-To Veterans Leadership Program Scholar. Photo by Ron Aira/Creative Services

LeNaya Crandall Hezel

A classically trained soprano, Hezel is now using her voice to advocate for DEI. During the tumultuous 2020, she started NayceQuest LLC to guide organizations as they discover meaningful ways to be equitable and inclusive.

She said that when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, her husband, who serves in the U.S. Navy, had just returned from a deployment in Djibouti, and at home with her three daughters, she was thinking “How are we going to do this?” She made the decision to step away from her full-time job as the inaugural veterans office director at Georgetown University and be a full-time student.

“Then George Floyd’s death happened, and I couldn't sit on the sidelines and be like, ‘I'm just going to let the rest of the world figure it out,’” said Hezel, who is also a 2021 Stand-To Veterans Leadership Program Scholar with the Bush Institute. “When I recognized where the need and the demands for this work were, I took action.”

Growing up, Hezel had two nicknames, Nay and Ace, which she merged into Nayce for the name of her company. Through NayceQuest LLC, she has been helping organizations move beyond “checking the box” when it comes to implementing DEI in the workplace. For this work Hezel said she is using a sociology lens and institutional ethnography, looking at the differences between “what's being said versus what is actually happening in the day-to-day practices.”

With her dissertation, Hezel again puts the need of veterans and her previous work with the veterans and military community at the forefront as she looks at campus veteran resource centers and whether they have an impact on student academic success, specifically undergraduate student veteran graduation rates.

“My hypothesis is the schools that have the resource center or the dedicated office, they're going to have higher graduation rates,” said Hezel. “But there's no research on that so I hope to fill that gap.”

Writing and rhetoric PhD student and Air Force pilot Michelle Ruehl often taught English as a volunteer during her deployments. Here she is with some of her students in Afghanistan. Photo provided

Lt. Col. Michelle Ruehl

Things move fast in Ruehl’s world, and not just because she is an Air Force pilot. She started her doctoral studies at Mason in 2021 after a year as a White House Fellow where she worked as a speech writer for a number of leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris.

When she found out her next assignment would be at the Pentagon, working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff for three years, she quickly scrambled to get herself in a PhD program. Ruehl has been teaching English and aviation at the Air Force Academy with two master’s degrees, one in English and another in psychology.

“I've taught now in higher ed for eight years, and I would love to keep doing that,” Ruehl said of adding a PhD to her list of credentials. “[The academy] doesn't require pilots to have a PhD, and I realized, when I get out of the Air Force, I will actually have to compete for jobs with the real professors.”

Even before the Air Force Academy gig, Ruehl was finding her way into the classroom. She tells of flying planes over Afghanistan at night and volunteering to teach English during the day.

As the daughter of a musician and the granddaughter of a choir director, she said she also finds teaching English to be an excuse for bringing in other parts of the humanities, including music. Music really made a difference in one of those Afghanistan classrooms in which she was teaching a group of men.

“They want to learn English so badly that they were willing to kind of put up with me,” said the mother of two. “But they wouldn't look at me.”

To break the ice, she brought her guitar to class and sang a song in Dari that she learned online. “Of course, I was butchering it,” she said of the song.

But soon the students were laughing and asking her where she learned the song—and if she could play Michael Jackson.

“Music was able to break down 3,000 years of cultural differences,” she said. “It took a couple of weeks, but then we could get to the writing.”

After her last deployment, Ruehl and her husband started the nonprofit Parwana LEADership Legacy to honor the friends they lost in the war and the people of Afghanistan. They provide leadership programs to veterans and their families.

She also created a camp curriculum for kids that teaches empathy, active listening and service, often using horses. Each camp session is dedicated to a service member who was lost in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“It felt like the only thing I could do when I came back from my deployment was to find a way to keep saying their names,” she said.

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Students

Tillman Scholars

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Military Veterans and Families Initiative (MVFI)

Office of Military Services

Mason’s Ryan Barnett selected as a G.I. Jobs 2021 Veteran Champion of the Year in Higher Education

Colleen Rich — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 20:43:36 +0000

Mason’s Ryan Barnett selected as a G.I. Jobs 2021 Veteran Champion of the Year in Higher Education Colleen Rich Mon, 09/20/2021 - 16:43

As assistant director of George Mason University’s Office of Military Services (OMS), Ryan Barnett helps military-affiliated students at Mason succeed in pursuing a post-military education.

He feels good, he said, “knowing that at the end of the day I’ve made a difference in certain people’s lives that needed it.”

“Ryan’s service to our student veterans and community does not stop at the door nor at the end of a day,” said Jennifer Connors, director of OMS. “He has on more than one occasion accompanied student veterans to court-related appearances, found legal counsel at reduced rates and personally given hundreds of dollars from his personal salary to help struggling veterans.”

An infantry squad leader in the U.S. Marine Corps deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, and Japan from 2001 to 2009, and a Mason alum, Barnett said he always tries to go above and beyond for Mason’s military community, which includes members of the military, veterans and their families.

His services include one-on-one support for everything from admissions and financial aid to counseling and career services.

For his dedication to Mason’s military community, Barnett is one of only 19 people nationwide recognized as a 2021 Veteran Champion of the Year in Higher Education by G.I. Jobs.

The award recognizes those who advocate for the advancement of America’s veterans and military students in higher education by seeking to enable their success at colleges, universities and vocational schools.

The list of awardees was published by VIQTORY in the August issue of G.I. Jobs magazine, a national print and digital publication that has been connecting service members, veterans and their families to civilian career, education and business ownership opportunities since 2001.

Receiving this award “was very humbling,” Barnett said. “It is very validating to be recognized for trying to do some good.”

After graduating from Mason in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in health, fitness and recreation resources, Barnett worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He returned to Mason in April 2015 as OMS’s operations manager. He was promoted to his current position of assistant director in 2016.

Barnett helps OMS recruit and retain the more than 3,500 military-affiliated students at Mason.

“Our main goal is to help these types of students get into college, stay in college, and then get them out the door in a positive way,” Barnett said.

“Ryan is a Patriot at heart, both in his service to country and to George Mason University,” Connors said. “Ryan embodies the values of our university community and has made lasting and immeasurable contributions to every life he touches.”

Barnett will be participating in the selection of the 2022 Veteran Champion of the Year in Higher Education.

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