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

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College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Military Veterans and Families Initiative (MVFI)

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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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