Access to Excellence podcast terms
- August 6, 2024
To recognize Mason Korea's 10th anniversary, President Gregory Washington is joined by former campus dean Robert Matz and associate professor Gyu Tag Lee to discuss the growth of Mason Korea, the influence of Korean pop on global culture, and more.
- July 5, 2024
Jamil Jaffer and Gregory Washington discuss the U.S.'s position on the global stage, the power of the American Dream, and what we as citizens can do to start solving some of the country's stickiest problems.
- April 22, 2024
Jeremy Campbell, associate director for strategic engagement in Mason’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth, says that at the current pace the Amazon rainforest, in five to 10 years, could pass a tipping point in which it could transform into grasslands. That process, fueled by deforestation and climate change, has already begun and is a threat to the biodiversity and socio-cultural aspects that define the region.
- March 25, 2024
Catherine Read is the first woman and first Mason graduate (BA government and politics ’84) to be mayor of Fairfax City, Va., the university’s hometown, and she isn’t shy about touting a university she says helped teach her how to think critically. Want to know why it’s good to “disrupt the system,” why it’s important to get more women into policy-making decisions, and why our educational system doesn’t reward bold ideas? Read tells you.
- February 16, 2024
Rev. Jeffery Johnson, pastor of Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Fairfax, Virginia, and Dr. Vernon Walton, pastor of First Baptist Church in Vienna, Virginia, guide us through some of the history and aspirations of the Black community through the lens of Black and African American History Month and their perspectives as long-time leaders of their parishes, both of which were founded by former slaves.
- January 11, 2024
Mary Ellen O’Toole, director of the Forensic Science Program in Mason’s College of Science, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the university’s new “body farm,” an outdoor research and training laboratory on its SciTech Campus that will allow crime-scene research in forensic science and forensic anthropology using human donors.
- December 1, 2023
Peter Becker, a professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department in George Mason University’s College of Science explains, talks how a predicted major increase in solar storms could be a prelude to an “internet apocalypse, and how a $14 million federal study he is leading with the Navy could provide better predictive capabilities and help us better understand exactly what’s at stake.
- November 13, 2023
Melissa Perry, dean of Mason’s College of Public Health, is an ardent proponent of virtual reality as a tool to help solve the nation’s health challenges. But she also worries that technology has helped create an “epidemic of loneliness” that has heightened the importance of a shared humanity and “being present for each other.”
- September 11, 2023
Karina Korostelina, a professor of conflict analysis and resolution in Mason’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, conducts remarkable research with global implications that not only applies to countries and groups in conflict but societies as well. Ukraine’s war with Russia, at its end, she says, will present enormous problems with the reconciliation of people and territories.
- August 4, 2023
Nikyatu Jusu, an assistant professor of directing and screenwriting in Mason’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, talks about her hit movie “Nanny,” which won the grand prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The horror genre is not all “jump-scares,” she says. Just as often, the monster is a commentary on human nature and the way we treat each other and ourselves.