Thanksgiving is coming. I am thankful that for the first time in two years, I will be celebrating the holiday together with my faculty and staff colleagues here at Mason Korea. New, less restrictive COVID prevention rules will allow us to get together.
I'm even more thankful that Mason Korea will be coming back together for in-person instruction for the Spring 2022 semester. While students and faculty have adapted admirably to online teaching over the past two years, it will be a great pleasure to see our buildings and classrooms once again full of conversation and energy.
Speaking of teaching, I am thankful for our faculty at Mason Korea, and for teachers everywhere. Our faculty has shifted to teaching online with great creativity and skill. That has been hard and important work! The impact of this work shows in how much our students have achieved despite the pandemic, some of these achievements chronicled in this newsletter. I am thankful for our students’ resilience and determination.
I am thankful for our Mason Korea staff, who support the mission of Mason Korea in countless ways, always with an eye to making our campus a great place to teach and learn. They have helped us work through so many complicated challenges to our operations caused by the pandemic.
Our communities in Songdo, Incheon and Korea have provided excellent opportunities for our students and faculty, such as the recent UNESCO conference in Songdo. We are thankful to have them as supporters of Mason Korea and look forward to expanding our collaborations with them.
I am especially thankful for the generous donors to our Thanks Knows No Bounds scholarship campaign, who as of this writing have contributed $24,445 to this scholarship fund—98% of our $25,000 goal! The campaign ends on November 28. If you'd like to help put us over the top, you can donate here.
Finally, I'm thankful to have the privilege of working in a university dedicated to, as our George Mason University mission puts it, "creating a more just, free, and prosperous world." Another article linked to in this newsletter describes a recent effort on the part Mason Korea students, faculty and staff to provide charcoal heating briquettes to help heat homes in Incheon this winter. When we are fortunate to receive, we should seek to give back.