2019 GMUAA Awards Announced
For more than 30 years, the George Mason University Alumni Association has recognized outstanding alumni, student, and faculty accomplishments with four unique annual awards. The 2019 GMUAA award recipients are:
The Alumna of the Year Award
Terri Cofer Beirne, BA Government and Politics '88, is Eastern counsel for the San Francisco-based Wine Institute, representing the California wineries nonlegal and policy issues before governors, ABC boards, and legislatures in seven mid-Atlantic states for the last decade. She is involved with all efforts to change the sale, taxation, distribution, and direct shipment of wine into these states. Prior, she practiced administrative law in Virginia, representing wine, utility, and health care clients before the general assembly, the executive branch, state licensing and regulatory boards, and the Virginia State Corporation Commission. A 1988 mason graduate, Cofer Beirne earned a law degree from the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond in 2000. She is currently vice chair of the George Mason University Foundation Inc., Board of Trustees, following a gubernatorial appointment to the Mason Board of Visitors from 2007 to 2011. She attended Mason by virtue of Pell grants and student loans and by working for a Mason Vice President, where she monitored higher education legislation and compiled news clippings for Mason's Board of Visitors. While a student at Mason, she was a governor's intern and legislative aide to a Northern Virginia delegate. In 2006, Cofer Beirne was appointed by the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors as an interim supervisor, and she now serves on the Chesterfield County Economic Development Authority. Virginia Business Magazinenamed Cofer Beirne a legal elite in the field of legislative, regulatory, and administrative law in 2007, and she received the Virginia Wine Industry Person of the Year Award in 2009. She was an adjunct professor from 2006 to 2010 at the University of Virginia and Piedmont Virginia Community College, where she taught wine law to consumers and industry members. In 2013, she secured the Wine and Spirits Education Trust Level 2 Certification for trade professionals. As a trustee, Cofer Beirne has been instrumental in leading the effort to launch Geo. Mason Wine to support student scholarships. A certified yoga instructor, Cofer Beirne resides with her husband and daughter in Midlothian, Virginia.
The Outstanding Service Award
Caroline Sutter, MSN ’01, DNP ’12 and Rebecca Sutter, MSN ’01, DNP ’12, are doctorally trained and credentialed family nurse practitioners. They are co-founders and current directors of the Mason and Partners (MAP) Clinics. The MAP Clinics function as active learning labs for Mason students of all levels and multiple disciplines, while serving vulnerable populations in Manassas Park and Fairfax County, Virginia. Both Rebecca and Caroline spent their early careers as registered nurses in the pediatric intensive care unit at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., before returning to school for their master’s and doctoral degrees. They each received a doctor of nursing practice from Mason in 2012. Both have been nationally recognized for their work implementing and evaluating the unique model of community health care access and navigation used in the MAP Clinics, which uses a systems approach to improve care and promote collaboration between public health, public safety, and health to ensure that
evidence-based treatment is available for at-risk and marginalized individuals, families, communities, and populations. Most recently, Rebecca has successfully used this model of care to include criminally involved at-risk individuals being released into the community using a comprehensive and coordinated approach to connect them to needed health and social services using care navigation and peer recovery support programs. Caroline has most recently led the Northern Virginia Area Health Education Center (AHEC) initiative at Mason, where the future health care workforce benefits from coordinated and strategic educational opportunities and interventions that link them to the care of underserved populations. Both pride themselves most on being associate professors in the School of Nursing at Mason, where they educate and guide their students to work at their highest level, and hope to inspire the next generation of public health leaders.
The Faculty Member of the Year Award
Lisa Gring-Pemble, PhD, is an associate professor in Mason’s School of Business. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of St. Olaf College, she received her MA and PhD in rhetoric from the University of Maryland. Since joining Mason in 2000, she has pursued teaching and research around global impact and engagement, argumentation and persuasion, and political communication and legislation. She is the author of Grim Fairy Tales: The Rhetorical Construction of American Welfare Policyand is one of the editors of Readings on Political Communication. Her work has appeared in outlets such as the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Political Communication, and Rhetoric & Public Affairs. Her current research focuses on morality in capitalist markets, the influence of language on equal pay and immigration legislation, and the role of business in addressing sustainable development goals and creating positive impact. She is passionate about teaching and is the recipient of both a 2006 George Mason University Teaching Excellence Award and a 2017 Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research (OSCAR) Mentoring Excellence Award. She takes joy in designing hands-on courses, such as a study trip to New Hampshire during the presidential primaries to meet candidates and analyze the political process, a study-abroad trip to Colombia for students to investigate different social enterprise models, and class day trips to Washington, D.C., to meet with civic leaders like U.S. Senator Mark Warner, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and U.S. Representative John Lewis. As Mason’s director of global impact and engagement, Gring-Pemble supports community partnerships and university-wide initiatives that engage students of all majors in social enterprise. She is deeply involved with sustainability initiatives as co-founder of the Honey Bee Initiative, a member of Mason’s team in the Deans and Directors Cohort of the Global Responsible Leadership Institute (GRLI), a Mason representative in the Champions Cycle of the Principles of Responsible Management (PRME) Initiative of the UN Global Compact, and Mason’s liaison to Ashoka.
The Senior of the Year Award
Alexander Walters, BS Mechanical Engineering ’18, came to Mason as a transfer student and was forced to quickly adapt to the early engineering courses that so many students dread. Walters was determined to achieve an engineering degree in two years, which meant he had to bundle the most intensive classes together within his first year at Mason. While the workload hindered the typical college experience at times, Walters’ determination never waned. During his second semester, he was able to participate in Mason’s yearlong mechanical engineering capstone course. He and his team developed a storm drain inspection system for Mason’s Office of Facilities Management. His team effort led to the project gaining recognition, including being featured on the university’s homepage, as well as in several magazines. After he successfully finished the capstone project, the Mason Facilities team invited him to continue to work on the project to improve its functionality. In December 2018, Walters completed his degree in mechanical engineering and secured a position at Lockheed Martin. Walters hopes that his Mason experience shows that there is no single cookie-cutter Mason experience – we all chart our own course at our university and use it as a springboard to reach new heights.