With the opening of the 2021-22 academic year, Dean Ardis announced several leadership changes throughout the college.

The start of the fall 2021 semester brings with it unusual levels of preparation, and we humbly add a few more items to your list (photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash.com).

Meet the CHSS peer advisors: four doctoral students, funded by the Provost’s Office of Graduate Education, who worked to welcome new graduate students to Mason.

For the 2021-2022 academic year, the National Humanities Center (NHC) announced the appointment of 36 fellows. Chosen from 638 applicants, Jessica Hurley, from Mason's Department of English, will serve as a Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams, Jr. Fellow.

Mason’s Research Continuity Working Group announced the university will no longer have separate research-related protocols for COVID-19. The group’s website now redirects the community to the university’s main COVID-19 guidance. Additionally, the Return to Research form is no longer necessary.

Study leaves for tenured instructional faculty, funded by the provost, are intended to provide paid temporary leave for advancing scholarly research, teaching, and/or creative activity, including the development of innovative teaching approaches and methods. The college encourages its full-time, tenured faculty with six or more years of service to Mason to pursue this opportunity.

Each month CHSS Research will feature some upcoming funding opportunities. This month's features are: the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships; Russell Sage Foundation: Social, Political, and Economic Inequality Special Initiative; and the National Endowment for the Humanities: Collaborative Research.

The Center for Humanities Research has announced its 2021-22 Fellows: faculty members and PhD candidates who have been elected to work in residence together on projects that relate to CHR's annual theme, "Pasts/Presents/Futures.” 

In an article on CNN's website about students who do not want to return to in-person schooling, Robyn Mehlenbeck, director of Mason's Center for Psychological Services notes how virtual learning helped some students cope with social pressures.

Ed Maibach, director of Mason's Center for Climate Change Communication, comments on the shifting stances of some Republican members of Congress regarding climate change.

In a Bloomberg opinion piece also printed in the Washington Post, Tyler Cowen, economics professor and general director, Center for Study of Public Choice, considers Afghanistan and other U.S. long-term foreign policy endeavors.

In a Washington Post article about Taliban rule of Afghanistan, Abdulaziz Sachedina, religious studies professor and IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies, distinguishes between sharia law and modern governing policies.