diversity

Ambitious management and marketing student leads in many organizations across campus

Greg Johnson — Wed, 15 May 2024 13:10:51 +0000

Ambitious management and marketing student leads in many organizations across campus Greg Johnson Wed, 05/15/2024 - 09:10

After two years of studying management and marketing at the Costello College of Business and the Honors College at George Mason University, Rakibul Alam’s academic credits have put him a semester ahead of schedule.

Rakibul Alam

Now planning to graduate in December of 2025, Alam has been working at an accelerated rate both inside and outside of the classroom. He saw how many opportunities George Mason had to offer, and he was keen to take advantage of as many of them as possible. Among his accolades so far are being named an Honors College Professional Development Fellow, co-founding the Collective Organizations of South Asia, serving as senator in the George Mason Student Government, being a student ambassador for the Costello College of Business, receiving the Shrivastava Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship, and being named the Schwartzstein First-Year Research Award Finalist for his research project, “Coastal Bangladesh: the Effect of High Soil Salinity & Sustainable Agriculture.”

Coming in his freshman year as a commuting student, Alam wanted to learn about the student body and find ways in which he could immediately get involved and feel at home at George Mason. The first group he joined was the Bengali Patriots Association, where he quickly became the freshman representative and most recently the treasurer. “Within the first two weeks, I also learned there was an election for student government,” he says. “I ran for election, and I won and have served as senator the past two years. Everything kind of spiraled from that.” Through the student government, he was also appointed as a student ambassador for the Costello College of Business. As a Costello College of Business ambassador, he’s interacted with and presented to students, prospective students, community partners, and even the Board of Trustees. The position has empowered him to build and expand on his skillsets as he showcases what it means to be a Costello College of Business student. Recently, he’s shifted his ambassador focus to marketing and has been creating social media content to engage the student body, reaching nearly 50,000 views.

This past April, Alam’s startup company, Project Hope, co-owned and established by management and entrepreneurship student Naila Ahsan, was awarded the top prize in Social Impact at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Patriot Pitch Competition. “Our campaign endeavors to furnish annual provisions of safe, sustainable, reusable sanitary napkins to marginalized communities,” he says. “In Bangladesh, 85% of the menstruating population cannot afford necessary menstruating products. Therefore, we are on a mission to end period poverty.” Presenting the prize check to Alam and Ahsan was Sumeet Shrivastava, MBA ’94, an individual whom Alam now considers a mentor. Always proactive in getting involved and making connections, Alam connected with Shrivastava and Christine Landoll, director of business engagement at the Costello College of Business, at several events across the university. Receiving the Shrivastava Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship opened even more doors for him. The scholarship is awarded to students who are contributing to diversity and inclusion through their leadership roles. Rakibul Alam is an exemplary Shrivastava Diversity and Inclusion scholar.

While Alam has taken advantage of the myriad opportunities at George Mason, like with Project Hope, he has also identified and worked toward introducing new solutions and initiatives where he sees a need. He did this when he co-founded the Collective Organizations of South Asia. “The South Asian community was so strong, but it was very dispersed, and our goal was to unify under the organization,” he says. “Our main objective was to provide scholarships for South Asian students.” He is currently their vice president of internal affairs.

In addition to the organizations where he is an active member, Alam enjoys participating in events put on by others across campus. “Going to so many different cultural events helps make you a global leader,” he says. “Companies are very represented all over the world, so having that global understanding is very important.” From the get-go, he came into George Mason with a vision of using the university’s diverse resources to make his student experience as rewarding as possible. Furthermore, this summer he will be interning at the Pentagon with the United States Department of the Navy as a financial management intern. Only two years in, he has a resume stacked with accomplishments, a network connecting him with esteemed business leaders, and the drive to put all of his goals within reach.

Topics

Costello College of Business News

Costello College of Business Students

Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

diversity

Students

Learn more about Student Organizations at the Costello College of Business

In This Story

Sumeet Shrivastava, '94

Christine Landoll

Tharuna Kalaivanan

Daniel Hyunbin Chung — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 14:31:55 +0000

Tharuna Kalaivanan Daniel Hyunbin Chung Thu, 01/27/2022 - 09:31

Instructor & Graduate Professional Assistant, Honors College

Instructor, Honors College

PhD Student, Sociology

Lead Research Mentor, Social Science Research Lab

Contact Information

Email: tkalaiva@gmu.edu
Phone: 703-993-1110
Mail Stop: Honors College, MSN 1F4
Campus: Fairfax
Office: Buchanan Hall 205

Personal Websites

Biography

Tharuna Kalaivanan is a PhD student in the Public and Applied Sociology Program at George Mason University. She graduated from George Mason University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology in 2020. She is also an Honors College Alum. Currently she is an Instructor and Graduate Professional Assistant in the Honors College. She is also a Lead Research Mentor in the Social Science Research Lab (SSRL) led by Dr. Blake Silver. The SSRL is a multi-disciplinary lab that uses team-based social science research to understand student experiences in higher education. Her research interests include immigrants and how their experiences are shaped by race, ethnicity, and other dimensions of identity in higher education and the workplace. Currently she serves as the Secretary in the Public Sociology Association where she plays an active role in encouraging students to explore, learn, and do public sociology through pursuits devoted to activism around social problems on-campus and beyond.

Research

Kalaivanan's research interests include first-generation college students and students with immigrant backgrounds, focusing on their experiences in higher education and the workplace.

Education

BS, Psychology, George Mason University (2020)

Publications

Kalaivanan, Tharuna, Blake. R. Silver, Lily Krietzberg, and Bianca Kwan. Forthcoming. “The Senior-Year Transition: Gendered Experiences of Second-Generation Immigrant College Students” Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education Silver, Blake, Lily Krietzberg, and Tharuna Kalaivanan. Forthcoming. “Transitioning Out: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Students’ Concerns in the Senior Year” Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition Silver, Blake R., Freddy Lopez, Fanni Farago, and Tharuna Kalaivanan. 2021. “Focused, Exploratory, or Vigilant: Reproduction, Mobility, and the Self-Narratives of Second-Generation Immigrant Youth.” Qualitative Sociology. doi: 10.1007/s11133-021-09489-w. Silver, Blake R., Freddy Lopez, Tharuna Kalaivanan, and Lily Krietzberg. 2021. “Second-Generation Immigrant Students and the Senior-Year Transition.” Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice 58(4):388–400. doi: 10.1080/19496591.2020.1789467. Silver, Blake R., Tharuna Kalaivanan, Lily Krietzberg, and Jordan Hawkins. 2020. “Distance, Alignment, and Boundaries: How Second-Generation Immigrant College Seniors Negotiate Parental Involvement.” Journal of College Student Development 61(5):558–73. doi: http://dx.doi.org.mutex.gmu.edu/10.1353/csd.2020.0055.

Grants and Fellowships

OSCAR Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. “How Racialization Affects First-generation Asian-American’s Perception of Organizational Commitment and Identification” PI: Tharuna Kalaivanan. (8/2019-12/2019). OSCAR Undergraduate Student Travel Fund. “How Racialization Affects First-generation Asian-American’s Perception of Organizational Commitment and Identification” PI: Tharuna Kalaivanan. (2020). OSCAR Undergraduate Student Travel Fund. “Distance, Alignment, and Boundaries: How Second-Generation Immigrant Seniors Negotiate Parental Involvement”. PI: Tharuna Kalaivanan. (2019). OSCAR Undergraduate Student Travel Fund. “Supporting First-Generation American College Students in the Senior-Year Transition”. PI: Tharuna Kalaivanan. (2019).

Classes

HNRS 110: Principles of Research and Inquiry
HNRS 131: First-gen College Students

Honors College takes the lead as Fulbright expands diversity initiative

Damian Cristodero — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 09:30:00 +0000

Honors College takes the lead as Fulbright expands diversity initiative Damian Cristodero Thu, 11/01/2018 - 05:30

Mason alumnus Desmond Moffitt speaks at the Fulbright Diversity Conference in Berlin. Moffitt's experience as a Fulbright grantee and English Teaching Assistant in Germany, prompted him to push for greater support from Fulbright for diverse scholars teaching overseas. Photo provided.

For LaNitra Berger, director of the Office of Fellowships in George Mason University’s Honors College, one of the university’s prime directives is to produce graduates who are “ready to act.”

So when Fulbright scholar and Honors College alumnus Desmond Moffitt, BA History ’17, recommended to the Fulbright Program that cohorts of diverse scholars teaching overseas need more support to navigate and thrive in the countries to which they are assigned, Berger was understandably proud—especially of the result.

Partially in response, the U.S. State Department, which sponsors the Fulbright Program, and the German-American Fulbright Commission held a diversity roundtable in Berlin in May. The event brought together current U.S. Fulbright scholars to brainstorm ways to help the State Department and European Fulbright Commissions address those concerns.

Moffitt, who as a Fulbright grantee was an English Teaching Assistant in Dresden, Germany, said cultural differences he experienced led to conflicts with administrators and fellow teachers in the first school in which he taught. He said he was a target of racial harassment from immigrant students in his second school.

“You don’t just take the grant and run,” Berger said. “You go there, and when you see something that needs to be addressed, you step up and take the lead.”

What Moffitt said he saw was a need for all scholars, whether they be of color, of different sexual orientations or physical abilities, to receive more information and resources from the Fulbright Program to navigate the prejudices and harassment they might encounter in their host countries.

To help make his case, he engaged Berger, who has worked in the field of international education since 2005 and has been a highly respected mentor and Fulbright Program Advisor since 2010. He also reached out to other Fulbright scholars and alumni, the German-American Fulbright Commission, the State Department and other European Fulbright commissions.

“What we’re trying to do is make the approach more holistic when they talk about diversity,” said Moffitt, who is pursuing a master’s degree in education policy at Columbia University and is a project coordinator for the Institute for Urban and Minority Education. “We’re talking about religion, economic status, race, creed, gender, physical ability. There are so many definitions to diversity. If we can get to a point where the program is a multitiered approach, I think we are accomplishing something.”

LaNitra Berger and Desmond Moffitt at the Fulbright Diversity Conference in Berlin.

In March, Moffitt helped put together a cultural sensitivity workshop of working Fulbright scholars of diverse backgrounds to discuss their experiences. In July, Berger led a webinar for the Fulbright Program on navigating personal identity abroad in which three Fulbright alumni—including Mason graduates Matthew Robinson, BA History ’15, and Anjana Radhakrishnan, BS Economics ’15—told their stories.

And as part of a Fulbright Diversity Conference held in September to celebrate German-American Fulbright Commission diversity initiatives, Moffitt reported on the work of his task force that is developing recommendations to better promote diversity and equity in the Fulbright Program. Berger was a featured speaker and discussion facilitator at the conference.

“They were leaders at the program,” Mary Kirk, director of the State Department’s Office of Academic Exchange Programs, said of Moffitt and Berger. “We are very pleased with that connection with George Mason. The leadership of the campus is very evident, and we are using that to the advantage of the program.”

Kirk stressed that diversity is a top priority for the State Department, and that “significant resources” have been put into diversifying the Fulbright applicant pool.

For the past decade, she said, the State Department has been coordinating efforts to increase and strengthen Fulbright recruitment and the participation of minority-serving institutions, including historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions and tribal colleges. In addition, it has sought to encourage greater diversity among applicants from across the country.

Even so, feedback such as what she received from Berger, Moffitt and other Fulbright scholars about their experiences was critical to ensuring that Fulbrighters, once recruited, receive adequate support.

“Our primary focus for the State Department is the safety and security and successful scholarship experience of our American Fulbrighters,” Kirk said. “We always seek to learn from the experience of alumni to point out areas where we can consider new support systems for the program.”

“The fact that they are committing resources to this is very significant,” Berger said. “I would say this is one of the most significant changes that has happened in a very long time.”