Alumni News

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to honor Alaina Ruffin, BA English '23, with the 2026 CHSS G.O.L.D. - Graduate of the Last Decade award. Ruffin is a paralegal for the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to honor Eric Johnson, MA English '05, with the 2026 CHSS alumni service to George Mason award. Johnson's career has bridged digital innovation, humanities scholarship, and service to his alma mater.

Three-time English alum Jessica McCaughey—MA English '05, MFA '11, and PhD Writing and Rhetoric ’22—has a new book coming out from Routledge end of September.

Holly Mason Badra, MFA ’17 and now Associate Director of Women and Gender Studies, recently published Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora (University of Arkansas Press).

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to honor Laura Scott, MFA Creative Writing ’93, with the 2025 Distinguished Faculty Alumni Award. Scott has spent her career shaping the next generation of storytellers at George Mason University. After earning her degree, she joined the English department as an academic coordinator and instructor, where she now teaches fiction writing and guides students as they begin their journeys as novelists.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to honor Rachel Lindsey, MA English ’05, MEd Counseling and Development ’14, with the 2025 Distinguished Staff Alumni Award. Lindsey is the assistant director of career education, where she manages career preparation courses that reach more than 500 students annually.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to honor Michael Carrigan, BA English '98, with the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award in English. Carrigan serves as branch chief for the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. initiative at the Health Resources and Services Administration’s HIV/AIDS Bureau. He leads a team supporting jurisdictions across the country in delivering innovative care and treatment for people with HIV. 

Three recent MFA alums—Jessika Bouvier, Kara Crawford, and Connor Harding, all class of ’25—have recently debuted an online literary journal, Chatterbox, dedicated to short fiction on the longer side.

Over the last decade, Ellen Weeren, BA ’90 and MFA ’19, has been run­ning the Facebook group A Reason to Write, serving a community of more than 750 writers at all stages of their careers with news, opportunities, and regular doses of motivation—and more recently, she’s taken that mission from the virtual world into the real one.

Each year, the George Mason University Alumni Association celebrates the achievements of alumni at the annual Celebration of Distinction awards program. The Alumni Association recognizes alumni for their outstanding professional achievements and service to the university, and honors the achievements of alumni from each school, college, and affinity chapter.