Virtual Open House Applied Industrial and Organizational Psychology Transcript

George Mason Online Admissions: Alright, so, thank you, everyone, for being here tonight. We’re gonna spend, ideally, the next 35-plus minutes. I know these things will usually run over a little bit, just based on how many questions we have. I’ll be running through a brief presentation about the I-O Psychology program. Once again, I appreciate everyone for taking the time to be here. My name is Matthew. I’ll kind of be hosting and facilitating the meeting tonight. So, just to give everyone the rundown of what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna run through a slideshow presentation that’s gonna cover some, I think, really helpful information regarding the program. We’re gonna hear from some program alumni at a certain point who’ve gone through the program. We’ll have a Q&A at the end, run through some general I think helpful admissions facts, and ideally, we’ll kind of be able to cover everything in a helpful, timely manner. So, I’m gonna share the slideshow here real quick, just to get us kicked off. So, give me one second, there we go. Alright, can everyone see? Perfect. Alright, well, yeah, just to kind of start us off here, we’ve got our agenda pulled up, but the main people we’re going to be hearing from, at least at the start, we’ve got the, director and assistant director of the program and the meeting with us, so they’re going to be able to share a good amount of information with us. So do you… do you guys want to introduce yourselves?

Afra Ahmad: Sure. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the open house, and I know that it mentions Summer 2026. We look forward to hopefully welcoming you all in the program in a few weeks. My name is Dr. Afra Ahmad, and I’m the program director here at George Mason. We’re really excited to host you tonight. Dr. Stagl has got us started with some introductions. We’d love to hear where you’re tuning in from, where, you know, some of your background, undergrad, work experiences. We’d love to learn more about you, so please engage with us in the chat, and feel free to ask questions throughout the session. All right, so we started with our background information a little bit. I just wanted to mention that I’m a longtime Mason Patriot. I actually did my undergrad, master’s, and PhD, all from George Mason University. My advisor was Dr. Eden King, who has served as PSYOP president as well, and, you know, my research emphasis or focus was on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Kevin?

Kevin Stagl: So, I am Kevin Stagl again, and I have been at I-O for a few decades, and I started out in assessment consultancies again, and then, went on to assessment technology consultancies. I was involved in a lot of work simulation assessment center work in the mid-90s. And then I went on to UCF and studied under the great Eduardo Salas. You’re going to read his research, former SIAT president. And I worked for him at the University of Central Florida’s Research Park. At the time, it was the fourth or fifth largest research park in the nation. Hundreds of high-tech companies all working together. We worked there for about 6 years together. Then I went on to a series of defense consultancies, technology, and defense tech incubators. And now I’m here in academia, so, again, I look forward to getting to know each of you, and, and sharing and channeling all this, expertise for you during our courses together here at Mason. So, welcome.

Afra Ahmad: So, we have a lot to share tonight, so Matt, can you get us started on the next slide, please? So, first, we want to start off, why industrial organizational psychology? Some of you might be certain that this is the field for you, others of you might be a little on the fence. And so, just wanted to share what’s out there, you know, why industrial organizational psychology? Well, according to U.S. News, we’re number 3 in best science job, number 34 in Best STEM jobs, and, you know, we’re in the top 100 of best jobs to have. So, I know a lot of times folks are thinking, is it going to be worth my investment, right? Am I going to get a job? And so, you can have some reassurance there. But, you know, in terms of, you know, what we’re looking at as we’re looking at projections in the next decade, we are growing more than average than other… some of the other professions out there, and folks with I-O backgrounds do make, pretty good, decent amount. Out of all psychology disciplines, they are the highest earnings ones out there. So, it’s always good to know that you’ll have job opportunities, you’ll hopefully have a good living wage, and finally, hopefully you’re interested in the topics. We are going to be telling you a lot about our program tonight, but, you know, when you dive into industrial organizational psychology, you’ll have access to knowledge and skill set that can serve a variety of industries and a variety of roles that you’re going to learn a ton about. Alright, next. So, George Mason University, some of you all I saw in the chat are more local, others not so much, but George Mason is a University in Northern Virginia, with the main campuses in Northern Virginia, and it started off as a branch of UVA. A lot of folks don’t know that. We became our own independent institution in 1972, and now we’re the largest public university with over 40,000 students, both in person and online. In terms of research, you know, what we’re doing, we are designated as R1 Doctoral Research University by the Carnegie Classification, so we have our professors are publishing, including our IO professors, putting out a lot of scholarship out there. So as I mentioned, we have some campuses in Northern Virginia, and international campus in South Korea, and a ton of online programs, including the one that you all are here to learn about tonight. So, our I-O program was founded the same year as the university, in 1972, so that means we have 50 years of experience in I.O, in the university setting, and all of that. So, faculty that have, you know, been in our program and continue to serve in our program are leaders in the research and applied space. And I know we were mentioning PSYOP President, and I recognize some of you folks may not know what that acronym is, but it is the largest professional organization of the field, so it’s called Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology. Both Dr. Stagl and myself have been trained by folks who have served as former presidents, and we’ve had four faculty members who were at the George Mason I-O program who were presidents, and now we have a fifth PSYOP president coming up, which is a current faculty member, Dr. Rashad Zalal, who has designed the performance management class for the MPS program and teaches in it often as well. So, our graduates, whether it’s the… we do have an on-ground PhD and MA program, and the fully online MPS program, our graduates from across three programs do work at universities, federal agencies, and Fortune 500 companies, and right now, we are the largest I-O program in the nation. We do have 10 full-time I-O faculty with over 30 additional part-time faculty that support the learning goals of the program. Next. So, what makes our program unique? You might be shopping around, looking at different programs, so I think I wanted to highlight a little bit about our fully online MPS program. We do have renowned experts and innovators and leaders of the field. So, I don’t know, some of you who may have joined earlier, we were chatting with an alum now who’s currently working on a book, and she was mentioning how she’s citing faculty members who are here at George Mason University. So, the folks, whether you’re with us or elsewhere, you’ll read about the folks that are teaching here at George Mason University. You can’t pick up a leadership textbook or take a leadership class without seeing Dr. Steven Zaccaro’s citations. He’s, again, an innovator and leader of the field, and so that’s what you’re getting here at Mason. We do have competitive tuition for a top-ranked master’s program. And this is something we do carefully, we do a competitive analysis, and, you know, again, we are ranked in the top for I-O graduate programs, but we are very competitive in our tuition as well, which I know matters in today’s industry and world. We are fully online. Now, this is the MPS program. As I mentioned, we do have an in-person master’s program, which is separate, that’s the MA. The MPS program is fully online. It’s for working professionals. It’s for folks that are balancing various work-life demands. And then in terms of funding opportunities, we do, you know, you can work through and get financial aid, grants, loans, and scholarships, and we have started some internal funding opportunities as well. Lots of folks wonder what are the requirements. We are looking at your past you know, academic experience, including undergrad. Now, some of you might have been a long time ago, and maybe you don’t want to remember your GPA from back then, so you could always talk a little bit about that in your essay, about what you’ve done since then, right? How have you built yourself academically and professionally? What kind of experiences do you bring to the program? So, we’re not required to standardize you know, GRE scores, but we are looking at your academic and professional experience. Sometimes folks wonder, like, what can I do to bolster that? You can always… there’s ways to continue learning in so many different platforms. So, it’s really intriguing to us when we’re reading, and we’re like, yeah, this student hasn’t engaged in a lot of academic work, but went ahead and took some Coursera Learning modules, or Khan Academy modules, and is really trying to up their stats and data analytics and things like that to get prepared. So make sure that you mention those sort of initiatives and endeavors or certificates and things like that. And then I know we were talking a little bit earlier about rankings, well, and sort of different things about what we stand for. According to a recent Forbes article, we’re claimed as the yielding the best overall return on investment. When you wonder about that return on investment. It might mean different things to different people, but what we are guaranteeing is that if you put in what you’re supposed to be putting into the program, you will walk out with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to be a competent, you know, industrial organizational psychologist. You do walk out with toolkits. You walk out with knowing how to do things, using different platforms, and you walk out with opportunities to get promoted; you can walk away with opportunities to get new jobs. And we want you to read this for yourself. We have an I-O newsletter, and hopefully they’ll send out the slides after, but please do check out that link. That I-O newsletter will tell you about where our students are working, and we encourage you to look up those names in the Good News Corner and connect with those folks on LinkedIn. Connect with those alums, connect with the current students, ask them themselves. Like, how was this graduate program helpful to get you this promotion, or get you this new opportunity? So that’s something you can check out as well. So, our fully online program, while the PhD and MA has been around since 1972, it launched in 2019, the fully online program. So, we’re now in the seventh year, and we have a growing alumni network, which means that you’ll not only come in with the students who might be in this room, but you will have access to a network of folks who have gone through the program before you, and folks that are more senior, that’ll come back and speak in office hours. They will share their expertise, their experiences, their tips, they’ll connect with you all, connect with you on LinkedIn, connect with you on other professional spaces, and you’ll have an opportunity to learn from them. So, you’ll have the opportunity to focus on the scientist-practitioner model, where, you know, we train you to apply the research-backed methods to the real workplace problems. You all mentioned in the chat, in some of those introductions, some of those places y’all are working, and so they have some challenges, right? And you’ll be learning how to address those challenges. And we’ll have you ready, prepared to, you know, do a number of careers. And Dr. Stagl talks a lot about this in the first class. So, when you’re with us, you’ll be taking 30 credits, completing the, you know, program in about a year and a half. We want you to focus on one class at a time, so you’ll take 8-week class. And then you’ll take the next 8-week class, so you’re still accomplishing two classes a semester, and… but it allows you to focus on the coursework and your work-life demands. Every single class includes applied projects and assessments that’s grounded in organizational scenarios, as well as the practicum experience. I’m going to turn it over to Dr. Stagl to talk a little bit about what that might look like in some of his courses.

Kevin Stagl: Okay, so, the typical course is 8 weeks, and summertime is 7 weeks, some close to 7 weeks. And, the initial course is an overview, a survey of industrial organizational psychology. So, you’re going to begin on the very first project with an overview of the world of work, including mining active opportunities and using occupational archives that we access for information, so that you can understand what’s required in the talent marketplace, and to benchmark your own assets and capacities and capabilities to the requirements. And so, from the very first course, you’re going to start comparing yourselves to what is in demand at this moment and then developing an individualized learning plan. We have crafted a very unique experience, active learning experience, for you here, but this is as much your effort as our effort, and even more so on you, and so we expect you to be actively engaged in shaping what it is that you want to experience here at Mason. So, there are, there are at least 10, I think I covered 10 to 15, additional incremental opportunities besides the coursework that we’re gonna, we’re gonna all engage in. For you to be actively involved, and to, and to learn from other sources of information and other people. And so, we want you to be, from the very beginning, taking this as a career plan and a facilitator of your own learning signature and career success. So, in the first course, we’re going to have a broad swath of topics from Intro to I-O in the world of work. We’re going to cover some research methods and some advanced data analytics. We’re going to introduce you to some of the very practical topics of I.O, like selection and training and performance management. And, even at the end, some organizational theory, some leadership theory, leadership power. And so, many different topics in the first course, and we just took a deeper look at the entire project. The program is just terrifically diverse in the, in the breadth and depth of the, of the areas that you’re going to explore and learn more of.

Afra Ahmad: Thanks, Kevin. So, I see some questions coming in, and it dies perfectly into where we’re going next. We do have a flexible and rigorous curriculum, so keep those questions coming, because I’m going to come back to them and see if any of them can be addressed during it. We’ll circle back a little bit at the end. So, our curriculum, these are the set of courses you’ll be taking with us. The first 8 are required courses in that order, and you’ll see that first course, Psych 598, is the Intro to Science and Practice of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Then, that’s for, you know, the 7- or 8 week sessions. So, somebody asked about clarity regarding the 7-8 week sessions. Courses are 8 weeks long during the spring and fall terms. And they’re 7 weeks in the summer. That’s just to give folks a little bit of break so that they can have a week after their spring semester and a week after their summer semester to sort of have a week break before we dive into the fall and so forth. So that’s why the courses are a little more condensed, but students have been very adaptable, and they’ve done fine. So, if you’re coming in the summer terms with us, you’ll be taking the first two classes, and the very first class is with Dr. Stagl, that Intro to the Science and Practice. So we get you some foundational knowledge, then we… you dive into data analysis, foundations of industrial psychology, Data Analysis 2. We have everyone taking employee selections, and then we have students taking this two-part research methods practicum course, which is like the capstone experience for the students in the program. And I’ll share with you a little bit more, on the next slide in a second about what that looks like. And then you conclude your time with us in the program taking two electives. I know that these are a lot, you know, interesting set of electives. We do send out a preference survey for you all to complete, so that we can schedule electives that are in your top three choices. So we do schedule that based on each cohort’s desire. So some cohorts, we have a lot of folks interested in organizational change and development, so we ensure and make sure we can offer that either in the first half or second half of that specific semester when that cohort’s taking their two electives. So we do send that out. Next slide, please. I wanted to briefly talk a little bit about the practicum requirements. Sometimes, folks interested in our program ask us, like, what does that look like? Do I have to quit my job and do a practicum? And the short answer is no. We have combined the research methods and practicum course to be, again, your capstone experience. What you’re doing here is you are using the scientist-practitioner model, where you’re going to use research to solve a real workplace problem. You work in small teams of 3 to 4 students, you identify a workplace challenge, and you would first develop that research question, do a literature review, you put together methods. And you’ve basically, you formulate a survey, and you have to create a survey using, you know, validated measures in your literature review. You put it up on Qualtrics, and you actually collect data, and then you work through cleaning that data, doing some descriptive statistics, preliminary analyses. Then you run your actual analyses, and then you finish up the whole academic writing with that discussion section and drafting a full academic paper, and you conclude the capstone experience by drafting a white paper and applied presentation. So, by the time you are, you know, taking these two course sequence with us, you start off with a broad idea and research question, or way to solve a sort of a workplace problem that you’re curious about, and by the time you’re done, you have three major deliverables. You have an academic paper, a white paper, and an applied presentation. And that’s done on purpose. We want you all to build not only the academic side of things with that academic paper, but really build that applied skill set. When we surveyed alumni and we were developing the program, they really wanted to make sure that students graduating from this program have the knowledge, skills, and abilities, and just language to talk to non-technical audience. And so, we do ensure that you’re doing that through this course sequence. Next. Sometimes students ask us, well, what if I’m interested in taking more than one elective? So, there’s a couple of ways that you can do that. One is that you can finish your two electives and graduate and come back and take it as a non-degree student. Or, we have a second pathway that we started about two and a half years ago, where you can do a graduate certificate in human capital and HR Management along with your master’s degree. And so, you can basically stack and leave with both a master’s and a certificate. So, if you’ll… this is a certificate that’s offered in partnership with the Costello College of Business. And you have 4 core courses for the certificate, so 2 of them are our psychology courses and our electives, and then you’ll take two MBA courses. And then you’ll have one additional elective that you’ll take, and you could take, again, you have three options of our electives to take. So, you could walk away taking 3 electives with us, and 2 MBA courses, and get that certificate. Matt, next. We do have a ton of professional development opportunities. Of course, you’re attending coursework and attending classes. We have, you know, asynchronous components of each class, but we also have synchronous time, which are office hours. While they’re not always required, they are highly encouraged, and hopefully our guest speakers continue to tell you a little bit about them, but that’s an opportunity to have peer engagement, faculty engagement, to get feedback on understanding materials, expectations, some career support, so you’re getting that support through the coursework. We also have program-wide calls where either Dr. Stagl and I will host Alumni, or guest speakers. Internal, external recruiters, things like that, and we do have student liaisons who help us plan that, so if you have a need, you’d reach out to the liaisons, like, I really want to hear from more recruiters. I see some great questions coming in, I want to hear from recruiters talking about the role of AI in I-O psychology, things like that, and you can have guest speakers that tune into that. We also have the IEL Learning Series, so this is something that’s offered across our three programs to PhD and MA and MPS students during the academic year, we invite prominent guest speakers, both academics and practitioners to speak to our students about projects they’re working on, so you get an opportunity to learn and hear their expertise. You have access to University Career Services. We encourage our students to tap into, you know, their resume, cover letter reviews, interviews, and things like that, and the job board. And then we have some in-person engagements. I saw some people, someone lived in Clifton, or things like that. We have a fall picnic in the Northern Virginia area, and a happy hour in the spring where people can join. We have the graduations, and of course, we have the PSYOP annual conference. This year, it’ll be in New Orleans. We have about 30 alumni and current students who are planning on attending, as well as 15 faculty members. Career opportunities, often we try our best to share job and internship postings that is shared with us, or what I try to do is to share it on my LinkedIn and things like that, and we have different opportunities, like consulting challenges. We actually, hot off the press, just learned last night that one of our MPS students won the PSYOP Consulting Challenge, and so these are pretty neat opportunities that we get to share with our students. Another thing we have is, sometimes people ask about, do you guys give any type of funding? So, we do have a flyer that we put together about different funding opportunities throughout the university, but in terms of what we give in the MPS program, we have an opportunity for a tuition scholarship. We do, and again, this is brand new, but we are able to now give two tuition scholarships in the fall and two in the spring. And the MPS Professional Development Fund that I know Dr. Stagl’s really excited about. Do you want to spend a minute talking a little bit about that?

Kevin Stagl: The inaugural MPSPDG Fund grant was awarded to 10 members this spring, and so 10 of your peers received $500 awards to support their conference participation. And we are looking very promising to roll that out again in June. And so that is an opportunity for you to further enrich yourself. This is one of the 14 other… 10 to 15 other opportunities I mentioned to incrementally mature, evolve, learn, grow, while you’re at this program. So, we’re going to invest in you while you’re here.

Afra Ahmad: Yeah, that’s great. Next, Matt?

Kevin Stagl: We have a set of questions, too.

Afra Ahmad: Oh, okay, go… Matt, could you go, to the Q&A part, or stop sharing the screen for just a minute? I want to get to some of these questions before we turn it to our guest speakers. Alright, so, let me see…

Kevin Stagl: Jonna wants to know if there’s an advantage, some particular courses that you’d rather have for 8 weeks than 7 weeks. And, I’ll just say my own two cents on that, yes. I would rather have 8 weeks to complete ADA too, but instructors kind of handle that differently, depending on the instructor. Like, I try to include everything, and I just have a few less requirements of the assignments I’m including. Other instructors will take off assignments, depending on when they’re delivering. So, we all handle it slightly differently, but we’re all acutely aware that it’s 7 weeks instead of 8. And so, we will adjust accordingly, and we will make sure that we provide you with additional resources, so that you can continue to study. You’re going to… this is a career continuum, a multi-decade marathon, so, we’re going to seed you with many, many hundreds of resources that you’re going to continue forward with beyond this program. So, and then, I’m sorry, you want to jump in on that one, offer?

Afra Ahmad: No, that’s great. I think that the faculty do their best to… you don’t sort of lose out on a week or something like that. They typically, move things around and shift it, so I… what I do is things that are due up in Module 1, I might split it between Modules 1 and 2 and get folks caught up that way, and so you’re not really losing out on content. But as Dr. Stagl said, I think most professors are very adaptable, but sure, you’d probably that extra week for a stats class. That might be a little easier.

Kevin Stagl: You’re gonna keep studying stats long after this program, so that extra week, that extra few days won’t make the difference in your life, I trust me. Go ahead.

Afra Ahmad: I said, I see the second question about accommodation. So, we are a fully online program, asynchronous, flexible, and we do need to make sure all of our courses online, you know, are accessible and things like that with closed captioning and so forth, but we do have an Office of Disability Services, where students work with that office and they can get academic and coursework accommodations, so Dr. Stagl and I are well aware of anyone who comes through that office and might have accommodations for extra time on, you know, quizzes and assignments or things like that, and so we work with them on that. But otherwise, the access and technology accommodations are typically built into the course by our learning design team. And so forth, but again, communicate with us, communicate with that office, and they communicate and send those letters, you know, through you to us, and, you know, every faculty member honors that. But hopefully that answers that question. The next one, Kevin, I’m gonna give you this. What data and analytic tools do students utilize?

Kevin Stagl: Excel, R, RStudio, and Tableau. There are other options. There’s a virtual computing lab, and you want to spin up on MATLAB because you plan to work on an engineering firm. MATLAB’s there for you, or MSTAT, or SYSTAT, or other options, but those are the main four.

Afra Ahmad: Yeah, so yes, we do. If you are wondering in your stats classes, both of them, the 601 and 602 is mainly using R, and as Dr. mentioned, those are the main ones that we’re using. Stephanie asked, how many hours of schoolwork and learning should you set aside? I like answering this question, so… You know, there’s actually a formula behind that, so a 3-credit graduate course should be equivalent to about 120 hours, and how do you break that up? That’s about 15 hours or so, give or take, in a particular week. How do you make those 15 hours squeeze in on top of a full-time job? Well, our students have told us that they have gotten very efficient with their time, so they might be putting in 2 hours minimum per day, you know, doing some readings and things like that. And then, you know, filling in the rest of those hours over the weekend. But typically, you know, you’re engaging in office hours, you’re starting the readings, you’re submitting discussion board posts, and then you’re finishing up some more final deliverables over the weekend. I think our alumni and our students that are on the call are going to be best to sort of answer some of these questions as how they balance their time. Is there an advantage or disadvantage to starting in the summer? I would say we’ve been… Dr. Stagl and I have been doing this for 7 years now. We’ve had students coming in the spring, summer, and fall, and I don’t think anyone says that there’s a major disadvantage at starting at a particular time. You’re still taking the same courses and getting the same level of support and, you know, experience. The only thing is that the summer cohort might be smaller than some of the other… the fall cohort, but to me, that just means more individual time. If Kevin has a smaller group in his office hours in a few weeks in May, that’s more time he has to answer your questions and support you. That’s the way I see it.

Kevin Stagl: We’re gonna go for marathon sessions, and I’m gonna stay, you can come and go as you choose, but if there’s fewer of you, I’m just gonna spend more time with each one of you, right? So, there are a few more, go ahead.

Afra Ahmad: So some of these questions, do any of the classes cover AI’s role in I-O psychology? I would say that the AI stuff, you know, as you’ll know, it is relatively new. There’s a lot of conversations and things happening at PSYOP, so I would say that, you know, students are encouraged to continue to learn what’s happening with AI and how it’s integrated with biopsychology. I myself am actually on a panel about this at PSYOP, so it is, you know, out there and slowly being integrated. But I’ll tell you, in terms of… there’s two parts of that. AI is changing the way people work, and it is changing the way people are doing things, and it’s important to be aware of that. But in terms of AI in the program, Dr. Stagl and I have a pretty similar stance, is that we want you to come in and as students, we want you all to build a mental model of the field, and a lot of that is… it’s traditional approaches, right? Those foundational articles, those foundational ways of doing things, because AI is not going to be able to think creatively and solve problems in those ways. Students in my research methods class they… the way that the assignments are broken up into each, each week, there’s… it’s very difficult to get AI to just be like, write me an academic paper and a white paper and applied presentation. So, it’s really nice when students have to do chunks at a time, because they’re… I think part of the learning and the process and building that mental model is doing the work in that way. And honestly AI doesn’t always know what’s best out there. There’s a lot of times where students have learned that it’s putting out some garbage and garbage articles as well, or false articles, and that’s why it’s very important that you are aware, and you do learn these foundational things in the program. What are the top journals in the field? Where does the best science come from in our field? And then you can compare it to what AI’s doing. But yeah, the world of the world, you know, the way that we’re working is changing, and we do I try to acknowledge and integrate that, but that’s sort of our approach and how we are teaching some of that material. I think Bill got… oh, go ahead.

Kevin Stagl: One amplifying point on that is that Dr. Phil Lee here is a world-renowned expert at AI. And he’s going to teach you ADA too. He takes on some MPS students in his lab occasionally, they support his projects. And he works on large language models and other aspects of AI that are just phenomenally advanced. So, you can go as far as you want with it, but we’re also going to make sure that you attain expertise, and it’s not just the machine’s expertise.

Afra Ahmad: Alright. So I know we’re at 7:40…7:35, and I want to make sure we get time to hear from our guest speakers, so maybe they can answer some of these questions. I will say that, you know, if there’s anything else that you don’t feel like is addressed tonight, by the end of tonight, feel free to reach out to Dr. Stagl and myself. We’re happy to jump on a phone call or further answer any questions that you might still have remaining, but I know that Jessica, Heather, and Bill have been waiting patiently, and we do have limited time tonight. And, and I think Jessica, Heather, and Bill, you guys can see some of these questions that may still be left to be addressed, so please make sure you sort of maybe touch base on those.

Kevin Stagl: Arshi, your work experience is sufficient, sir. Please apply. In response to your question, or ma’am, whoever or she is.

Arshi Chowdhury: I’m sorry, can you repeat that, please?

Kevin Stagl: The answer is yes; your work experience is sufficient. You don’t have to have work experience to apply to the program.

Arshi Chowdhury: Okay, okay.

Kevin Stagl: I recommend you work during the program.

Arshi Chowdhury: Okay, okay, because I know, like, my peers, they all have, like, some sort of research experience, and I don’t, so I didn’t know if that would be, like, a huge factor of me being accepted into the program, so I just wanted to make sure.

Kevin Stagl: It’s a predictor, but only one of several, and you’ve already documented work experience, so that’ll be taken into consideration.

Arshi Chowdhury: Alright, perfect, thank you, thank you so much.

Afra Ahmad: Alright, Matt, I’m gonna turn it back over to you, and at this point. Dr. Stagl and I will be logging off so that you can hear from the students and alumni directly, ask them all the questions without us in the room, and Matt, if you can also take this time to stop the recording, because we do want to make sure our applicants feel comfortable coming on camera, asking and engaging with the student guest speakers. And again, if there are any questions that you all still have after tonight, please reach out to Dr. Stagl and myself. We’ll make sure that when you get the recap, you get our email addresses as well, but please, please, please do reach out to us.

George Mason Online Admissions: Alright, well, we are gonna keep truckin’ along here. Yeah, as we’ve heard, we’ve got a few guest speakers who are gonna, yeah, run through a few questions and some more program information. So, I’m gonna share our presentation again, get that back up on the screen, and then make sure we can all see our guest speakers, as we… yeah, I’ll kind of introduce ourselves here. So let me get, Heather…

Heather Carter: Hi!

George Mason Online Admissions: There we go… And then we’ve got… Bill, as well? There we go.

Bill Schaffhauser: Hello.

George Mason Online Admissions: And then… Our third guest speaker is… Jessica. And this is where we’re gonna stop the recording, so we’re gonna cut that off here… Alright, we are live again. So… I don’t know if anyone in the group is wondering, you know, we’ve got faculty, we’ve got alumni who’ve been able to join with us tonight to offer information, where I kind of step in is for you prospective students who are looking to get more information on the program, you know, start the application process. Usually whenever you guys request to get information, that’s where… that’s where I’ll pick up with you. So, I am here to help you guys who are looking to start through the admissions process. Luckily for this program, you know, we’re getting ready, we’re really gearing up for our, our fall start here, you know, coming up in a few months. The admissions process is really straightforward. I’ve seen some questions in the chat about it so far, so we’re just gonna run through all of the information here real quick. The admissions requirements are really, you know, pretty, pretty simple here. You know, we’re gonna need a bachelor’s degree. Ideally, we’re gonna need the GPA to be a 3.0 or above. You know, you’ll need to submit your transcripts, and then a small number of supplemental documents. So, you’ll need to be ready to provide a couple references, you know, short personal statement, around 750 to 1,000 words there. And then, you know, one-page resume, nothing, nothing super-duper crazy. And then there are, as you can see towards the bottom of this slide. There are a small number of requisite courses. They kind of exist on a triage, though, and I’ll explain how that triage works. So, there are 3 classes here. Research methods, statistics, and some sort of I-O related coursework. Research methods is preferred. It’s not gonna break your application if you don’t have it, so don’t think that if you’re, you know, if you’ve got your transcripts in your mind’s eye, and you’re thinking, oh, I don’t think Research Methods is on there, please don’t let that keep you from applying. It will support your application. It will not break it if you don’t have it. And then I-O related coursework, that is completely optional. Once again, it’s gonna be one of those things that kind of supports and undergirds your application. It will not make you, you know, unqualified to start the program if you don’t have any IR-related coursework. Just to kind of recap here, yeah, a bachelor’s degree, 3.0 GPA, small number of, supplemental documents listed here. But that’s pretty much it. Application is super easy to fill out. If you need any support during the application process, that’s what I’m here for. But yeah, apart from that, you know, pretty, pretty straightforward, all things considered. It’s kind of the end of our, of our presentation.

Stephanie Rabelo: Can you put your contact information in there? Because I spoke to someone about applications, and they said that the letters of reference had to include one work reference, and that was non-negotiable, but I don’t see that on there, so maybe I could just reach out to you to ask you some more follow-up questions about that.

George Mason Online Admissions: Absolutely, yeah. I’ll share my email in the chat, and then while I do that, did we have… do we have any other questions regarding the admissions process, admission requirements?

Amber Barrios: I had thrown this in the chat, but for a personal statement, would it be beneficial to discuss if we do have experience in that research method course, to talk about that?

George Mason Online Admissions: Hmm… Yeah, so, for the research methods requirement, there’s actually a part of the application, it’s a… they call it the experience grid. It’s basically a little like a spreadsheet where you’ll list out whether or not you’ve done each of the prereq courses. So usually my recommendation, if it goes into your academic coursework. We’ll put that in the grid, and then if it’s work experience, personal qualifications. You know, anything that’s not going to exist on a transcript or, you know, within a GPA number. That’s really where your personal statement will come in to, you know, if you’re looking to kind of really give your application some personal information to, I don’t know, maybe separate it, set it apart. The personal statement would be, you know, I think the best place to do that. But in terms of your academic experience, yeah, there will be a spot in the application to put that. Yeah, great question.

Amber Barrios: Thank you.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah, of course. Any other questions?

Arshi Chowdhury: One question, if you don’t mind.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah, absolutely.

Arshi Chowdhury: So ideally, I would probably apply, like, somewhere in the middle of the next fall semester, and I would be in the middle of taking, an IO-related course and a research methods course, but when I submit my transcript, would those courses still be shown, since I would be in the middle of doing them, or is it only the completed courses that you guys would see?

George Mason Online Admissions: Completed courses. So, if you’re looking to send in your transcripts, yeah, just make sure that they’re completely up to date. We can accept unofficial transcripts. You know, there are going to be a lot of programs out there where we’ll need to start with official transcripts. GMU has some flexibility there. We can accept unofficial transcripts as a part of the application process to make the initial admissions decision. Just as long as we get officials by start date. So, we can be as flexible as to, you know, accept unofficial transcripts, but they do need to be, you know, as up to date as we can get them. Yeah, great question.

Arshi Chowdhury: Would I… would I be able to submit both the official and unofficial, or just one?

George Mason Online Admissions: If you’ve got officials, let’s start with those, but if we’re up against the clock a little bit. And you need to get, you know, something submitted, and you do have easy access to your unofficial transcripts, that’s where I usually recommend starting with that. Because, you know, there will be always a gap between application deadline and start date, so if it’s a matter of, I need to submit something before application deadline, I’ve got my unofficials. Go on ahead and submit those, and we can worry about getting your officials in between the app cutoff and start date, because usually that gives us about another month to work with there. And sometimes it’s a case of, you know, I just graduated, I don’t have my official transcript conferral yet, so, you know, in those cases as well, oftentimes it’s easier to start with unofficials than we’ll get the, you know officials as they’re distributed to the graduating class. Does that make sense?

Arshi Chowdhury: Yes, it does. Thank you.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah, for sure. These are great questions. Did we have… did we have any other questions? Okay, well, I am… I’m putting my email in the chat for everyone to use it if you have any questions after. Let’s see here. There we go… Alright, can everyone see that? Alright, we are at, yeah, 8:21 here, so I think it’s… it’s time to go ahead and wrap us up here. Thank you so much to everyone for attending. I know this didn’t take any short amount of time, but as you continue to consider what’s going to meet your, you know, personal and professional goals. You know, it’s worth having, you know, dedicated time like this to have conversation about it, you know, to get as candid as we can. Yeah, because your consideration, your time investment is worth, yeah, careful consideration. So, thank you, really, for, taking all this time to spend with us to cover program details. Thank you to our alumni speakers. You guys were awesome tonight. You know, I’m sure everyone really appreciates all of the, yeah, very personal perspective that you bring to the program. And apart from that, I think we’re good to wrap up here. So yeah, thank you everyone for joining, and don’t hesitate to give us a shout if you have any questions, you know, as you continue to consider whether or not the application is something you’d like to start.

Jessica Dixon: Good to meet you all.

Amber Barrios: Thank you.

George Mason Online Admissions: Thanks!

Bill Schaffhauser: Nice to meet you. Good luck. You got this.