This Mason Korea Dean’s message will be my final one, as I leave this position and prepare to move back to my former role as a faculty member on Mason’s Fairfax campus. For one year, I will also be serving as interim chair of Mason’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages. The search for a new campus dean is in its final stages.
Serving as dean of Mason’s campus in Korea has been an incredible opportunity. While I have been marvelously fortunate to hold this position, I also believe that it reflects the kinds of opportunities Mason and Mason Korea offer our students, faculty and staff more generally.
First, I have had the opportunity to experience the best of two worlds. I have had the privilege of continuing to work at an innovative, inclusive, and top-ranked US university in whose mission I have long believed, while also discovering Korea, an amazing country where I have thoroughly enjoyed living. Whether members of our Mason Korea community want to be in Korea to experience a new place, or want to be in Korea to remain close to home, we all get to be at George Mason and live in Korea at the same time.
Second, I have had opportunity to work with a terrific group of faculty and staff, and to serve an equally terrific group of students. While the talents of every member of our community are his or her own, Mason’s institutional culture plays a role too. I have always found Mason to be a welcoming and collegial place for all of its members, while also challenging them to do their best work. We undestand that everyone has something to offer the community, and that we thrive best when we thrive together. The success of Mason Korea and of our students is testament to both their individual talents and that positive institutional culture. I am so fortunate to have been part of it.
Third, Mason is a place of opportunity. For so many of our students, we are the door that opens and the path that unfolds. In that respect, George Mason embodies the best promise of US public higher education, and I am so proud that we have been able to extend that promise to Korea. Students from outside the US can receive an excellent US-style education often closer to home and at a much lower cost. Our US Mason students can study at Mason Korea for a semester or year with no worry about transfer equivalencies and at low cost— for Virgnia residents, tuition is the same whether they study at Mason US or Mason Korea.
Mason offers great opportunities for its faculty and staff too. I always tell new hires that they will have many new opportunities when they work here because Mason is growing so fast. With that kind of growth and innovation come new roles that need filling. In fact, I tell them, it is not just that those opportunities will be there if they want them. Rather, they better be ready to jump in and do something new. Because that’s what they will be asked to do.
My consolation for leaving Mason Korea is that while I will be leaving one home I will be returning to another. I am thankful that—as we have been saying throughout our 10th anniversary celebrations—we are “two nations, one Mason.”
Robert
p.s. Please check out coverage of our 10th anniversary in this newsletter. It was a great time.