When Annette Ott-Barnett, BIS ’18, enrolled at George Mason University in 2016, she was already well into an established career as a certified business event planner.
But she had recently completed her associate’s degree at Northern Virginia Community College and wanted to expand on one of her interests—sustainability—while also pursuing event management and enriching her career as a certified association executive.
She was able to achieve all three goals with one degree thanks to George Mason’s Bachelor of Individualized Study (BIS) program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
“The BIS program provided all three opportunities at once and allowed me to design my own degree,” she said.
Ott-Barnett graduated with her BIS degree in 2018 with a concentration in sustainable business events management. Also walking across the commencement stage that spring was her husband, Roy Barnett, who earned his BIS degree with a concentration in global real estate finance, design, and development.
As BIS celebrates its 50th anniversary as a program at George Mason, the couple is an example of how the program meets non-traditional, adult learners where they are and gives them an opportunity to gear the degree toward their current careers or area of interest. Students create interdisciplinary concentrations to meet their own educational needs for professional advancement, career change, preparation for graduate school, and personal satisfaction.
“It's been a joy to watch BIS students graduate who truly enjoyed their college experiences and courses and go on to get the promotions and jobs they've always wanted,” said Integrative Studies Assistant Professor Janet Ha Poirot, who formerly served as associate director of the BIS program. “We've also heard back from students who fell in love with learning while in the BIS program and went on to get their graduate degrees.”
Founded in 1975, the George Mason BIS degree completion program offers generous transfer credit options and a distinctive educational opportunity to integrate other college-level learning, such as professional credentials and military experience, into university coursework credits.
Ott-Barnett and Barnett were both beneficiaries of this incentive. Ott-Barnett received extra credits for having served in the U.S. Army while Barnett had more than three decades of experience in real estate in land acquisition, planning, and development for Van Metre Companies.
“The program allowed me to consolidate all my prior education and career experiences into a global real estate finance, design, and development concentration and provided the opportunity to expand my knowledge base with multiple real estate development courses as well as research and technical writing courses,” Barnett said.
For Ott-Barnett, she was uncertain of which concentration she wanted to pursue when she entered the program. She knew she wanted to incorporate her skillsets of association and events management. As she delved into her studies and pulled from her own experiences in events management, she began to focus more on sustainability.
"I discovered the impact events were having on the community and environment,” she said. “It was not until my capstone that I discovered my love for sustainability, preparing a website for the events community and surveying them on issues impacting the sector.”
Since graduating from George Mason, the couple has pursued further education—traveling halfway around the world to Australia.
Both received master’s degrees from the University of Technology Sydney and, after coming back to the United States post-pandemic, they’ve returned to Sydney. Ott-Barnett is a professional doctorate student at Torrens University Australia, finishing her thesis on food waste at business events. She hopes to complete her doctorate in 2026 and is currently contributing to several scholarly articles on sustainability, most recently submitting a study on event planners’ role and responsibility in food waste reduction.
“Food waste is a complex issue with widespread impact,” Ott-Barnett said. “It affects the entire food chain, with consumers, the hospitality and tourism sectors, and events often playing a part.”
Barnett still works for Van Metre and also teaches several classes virtually for George Mason and Shippensburg University. At George Mason he has taught real estate classes through the Costello College of Business, including REAL 625: Financial Analysis and Valuation and principles of real estate and real estate, finance, investment and appraisal analysis for the U.S. Army real estate housing and financial certificate program.
When not studying, working, or teaching, the proud grandparents travel around the world, having visited 85 countries and all seven continents.
“BIS is the perfect program for the busy adult learner,” Ha Poirot said. “It rewards mature students who are able to take ownership of their education since they get to choose which courses to take. They craft their own interdisciplinary concentration, customize their individualized degrees and write research based on their own career or academic goals and interests.”
December 17, 2025