The Office of the Provost has announced that Ann Ardis has been re-appointed to a second five-year term as dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The college is seeking nominations for the newly formed CHSS Staff and Administrative Faculty Advisory Council. Staff and administrative faculty members, please read the draft council charter and consider nominating yourselves by COB September 23 (photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash).

The Office of Faculty Affairs and Development will offer Coaching for Inclusive Excellence (CoFIE) this month, with courses designed to support efforts to recruit, hire, and retain a diverse faculty body.

The Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence, to be announced in spring 2023, recognize outstanding members of our community for excellence in teaching, research, social impact, and diversity & inclusion. Learn more, and submit your nominations by December 6.

The nine-part Faculty Engagement series from University Life seeks to provide information about Mason students and services, hear faculty perspectives and insights from the classroom, and identify the ways our collective work in student success intersects and overlaps.

The CHSS Office of Development and Alumni Relations has some ways that you can help engage with our alumni and strengthen their ties to Mason.

Does your unit have an anniversary or milestone this year? Please contact Nikki Jerome Ouellette and Anne Reynolds so we can help spread your news (image by PhotoMIX Company from Pexels).

With the coming of cold and flu season, the Provost's Office offers a reminder on how to best work with students requesting time away from class for illness (image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay).

The National Humanities Conference program is posted, and conference organizers are accepting late breaking session proposals until October 7, 2022. NEH Chairs Shelly Lowe, Natalia Molina, and Viet Thanh Nguyen are among the presenters. NHC Equitable Access travel grants are available; apply by September 30.

The Office of Research Integrity and Assurance (ORIA) has created two brief online training modules in Mason Leaps covering our university community's responsibilities related to export controls. As an internationally focused university, it's important to be aware of these regulations and possible sanctions, and understand when they apply.

CHSS researchers are invited to reach out to the college's "Pre-Award" Research Administration staff when opportunities for external funding (grants, contracts, fellowships, etc.) arise.

The Center for Humanities Research has announced its fall 2022 series of talks centering on its annual theme, Connecting/Not Connecting: Formations of Community, Solidarity, Alienation, Antipathy. Each of the talks will be in a hybrid in-person and virtual format.

On the fourth anniversary of the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue that left eleven people dead, journalist Mark Oppenheimer discusses the community that surrounds the synagogue, and how the residents of Squirrel Hill countered the antisemitism and hatred behind the attack.

Employees who are Virginia Retirement System (VRS) Hybrid Retirement Plan members may opt out of the automatic 0.5% increase to voluntary contributions that will occur on January 1, 2023. The opt-out period is from September 16, 2022 through December 15, 2022.

As part of Mason's commitment to inclusive excellence, University Life has compiled a calendar of religious holidays, and asks faculty and staff to consider this resource when scheduling important activities (image by tigerlily713 from Pixabay).

Crystal Anderson, faculty member in the African and African American Studies program, discusses a long-standing Black and Latino fandom for Asian movies, which feeds into a contemporary interest in Korean culture.

Two English department faculty members, Professor Kyoko Mori and Assistant Professor Lijung Zhang, are featured on Virginia Humanities' With Good Reason radio program this month (image by Michaela from Pixabay).

In two separate interviews on the China Global Television Network, Kevin Matthews, assistant professor in the Department of History and Art History, discusses the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the election of Prime Minister Liz Truss.

In the Washington Post and Bloomberg, economics professor Tyler Cowen considers factors that may contribute to a slow labor market recovery following a recession.

On the Apple Podcast, The Greatness Machine, psychology professor Todd Kashdan discusses the importance of anger and its value for questioning a status quo and making changes.

In the National Interest, economics professor Christopher Coyne notes that concerns about the growth in government should also inform questions about increasing the size of the military.