December 6, 2025

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

‘Journey of Self-Belief’ Propelled UMW Senior to Top Student Government Role

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UMW senior Will Thompson. Photo by Parker Michels-Boyce.

UMW senior Will Thompson. Photo by Parker Michels-Boyce.

When a last-minute change in his first year of college left University of Mary Washington senior Will Thompson without a Randolph Hall roommate, things started out “quiet.”

That didn’t last long.

A soccer player majoring in international business, Thompson pushed himself to get out of his room and meet as many people as possible.

A teammate involved in the African Student Union? Thompson signed up for ASU too.

A friend playing rugby? Thompson started going to games.

Arab Culture Club? UMW Choirs? Talk to the Hands? You name it, Thompson was in.

“Before I knew it, I was meeting so many people from so many different backgrounds,” he said.

Flash forward four years, and he’s interned on Capitol Hill and played soccer on UMW’s top-performing Division III team. And all those connections? They’ve fed into what he calls a “journey of self-belief” that led him all the way to the top of student government. Read more.

UMW Career and Internship Fair Matches Students, Employers

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Hundreds of students and 45 local and regional employers attended the University of Mary Washington’s recent Carer and Internship Fair. The bi-annual event is designed to match companies with open positions to students qualified to fill them. Photo by Suzanne Carr Rossi.

Hundreds of students and 45 local and regional employers attended the University of Mary Washington’s recent Carer and Internship Fair. The bi-annual event is designed to match companies with open positions to students qualified to fill them. Photo by Suzanne Carr Rossi.

Armed with a recently revamped résumé and knowledge collected from coursework, University of Mary Washington junior Abigail Fuller made the rounds at UMW’s 2025 Career and Internship Fair.

“My dream is to work in a museum someday, ideally in my favorite place in the world, Washington, D.C.,” Fuller, a history major with a minor in museum studies, wrote in an introductory blog post for one of her classes.

Along with hundreds of fellow UMW students, she came one step closer to fulfilling her professional goals by attending this month’s fair, which featured 45 organizations from industries as varied as education, health care and finance. Fanned out across the Cedric Rucker University Center’s Chandler Ballroom, they drew potential employees to information tables with candy, snacks and colorful tchotchkes, like highlighters, bookmarks and pens. But the four-hour biannual fair, hosted by the Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD), has a serious side, aiming to match companies with open positions to students looking to fill them.

“Hands-on events like these are so critical to students, particularly UMW students who are passionate, driven and seek those interpersonal relationships that will set them up for success,” said CCPD Student Experience Manager Emily Burke ’15. “I’m so encouraged to see them interact with a diverse range of employers who actively want to hire students and alumni from Mary Washington.” Read more.

UMW Students, Professor Route Efforts Toward New Stafford County African American Heritage Map

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Professor of Geography Steve Hanna spoke at the unveiling of the Stafford African American Heritage Trail at a recent ceremony at Stafford Hospital.

When University of Mary Washington junior Ethan Sweeny began a summer internship working alongside Professor of Geography Steve Hanna, he knew he’d signed up for something special.

“I immediately knew it was something I was going to really enjoy doing,” said Sweeny, a geospatial analysis major who worked with Hanna last summer and throughout the fall to help create the Stafford African American Heritage Trail. “Using what I’ve learned in class in a real-world project was really rewarding, but I think the most rewarding thing I took from it was being able to help tell these amazing stories that might have been lost.”

The trail, a 23-stop driving tour, highlights the strength and resilience of African American people in Stafford County throughout the past 300 years. Officially unveiled during a recent ceremony at Stafford Hospital, it also showcases the connection between UMW and the local community, and the power of professors to include students in research and other important endeavors.

“This is exactly what so many of my colleagues at Mary Washington strive to do,” Hanna said at the unveiling event, where he and Sweeny, who’s also pursuing a certificate in GIS, learned they’d been named in a House Resolution by the Virginia General Assembly in praise of the project. “We involve our students in projects with community partners to create works of consequence, projects that make a difference in this region and across the globe.” Read more.

UMW Makes Prestigious Poets&Quants Rankings for Undergrad Business Schools

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University of Mary Washington students pass by Woodard Hall on the Fredericksburg Campus. UMW’s undergraduate business program was included in the prestigious ‘Poets&Quants Best Undergraduate Business Schools of 2025.’

University of Mary Washington students pass by Woodard Hall on the Fredericksburg Campus. UMW’s undergraduate business program was included in the prestigious ‘Poets&Quants Best Undergraduate Business Schools of 2025.’

The University of Mary Washington has been named in Poets&Quants Best Undergraduate Business Schools of 2025, released this morning, March 17.

The prestigious annual list evaluates undergraduate business schools based on three categories – admission standards, academic experience and career outcomes – each weighted at 33.3 percent and counting equally toward schools’ final scores.

While UMW comes in 84th overall, the University claims 34th in the “academic experience” category, landing in the survey’s top third, along with Georgetown University and the University of Virginia. Other Virginia schools listed in this year’s Poets&Quants rankings include the College of William and Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business and the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business.

“This recognition highlights our faculty’s expertise, our focus on innovation and the success of our graduates,” said UMW College of Business Dean Filiz Tabak. “It showcases UMW as a top destination for students seeking a rigorous, hands-on business education with small class sizes, personalized attention and strong career outcomes.” Read more. 

UMW Great Lives Series Remains Brilliant With Lecture on Transformative Genius

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University of Mary Washington Professor Emeritus of Physics Bulent Atalay will deliver a presentation Thursday, March 13, in Dodd Auditorium.

University of Mary Washington Professor Emeritus of Physics Bulent Atalay will deliver a presentation Thursday, March 13, in Dodd Auditorium.

Bulent Atalay spent more than four decades teaching physics at the University of Mary Washington. On the side, he fed a passion for the arts that had possessed him from an early age.

“As a child growing up in Turkey and England, I drew and painted everything I could get ahold of,” said Atalay, whose books of lithographs created in the 1970s can be found in the White House, Buckingham Palace and the Smithsonian. But he also discovered a penchant for numbers, equations and things mathematical, in his high school days and during his training in physics in college and graduate school.

Audience members will learn more when he speaks this week as part of the William B. Crawley Great Lives Lecture Series. Atalay’s presentation – the Coldwell Banker Elite Lecture, focusing on his latest book, Beyond Genius – is scheduled for George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium on Thursday, March 13, at 7:30 p.m. It’s the latest installment of the series’ 22nd season, which continues for free most Tuesdays and Thursdays through April 3.

“Genius, like all human qualities, comes in degrees,” Atalay said during a Zoom interview from his home office, adorned with blown-up covers of his first book, 2004’s Math and the Mona Lisa. That book examines the numbers, patterns and symmetries Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci used to create his own paintings. Published in 14 languages, the work preceded Atalay’s Leonardo’s Universe, an illustration-filled, coffee table book published in 2009 by National Geographic, and co-authored with friend and former UMW graduate student Keith Wamsley ’03. Read more.

Podcasts and Broadcasts Channel UMW Expertise

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University of Mary Washington faculty, staff and students hit the ground running this year, sharing their academic specialties and love for what they do over the airwaves. Since the first days of January, their voices have contributed to the live broadcasts and pre-recorded podcasts that weave their way into home conversations, office discussions and the morning commute.

UMW experts transmitted their thoughts, offering insights on topics like map-making and artificial intelligence, and issuing invitations to on-campus events. Here – touting their zeal for everything from recruiting students to leading the school – are some of them:

Biz Beat Banter: UMW President Troy Paino: On Jan. 10, UMW President Troy Paino spoke with Bill Freehling, host of the Fredericksburg Advance’s Biz Beat Banter podcast. The 45-minute conversation covered highlights of Paino’s career before his 2016 arrival at Mary Washington, his duties as president and his goals for the University.

“I felt that what would give my life the most meaning is if I was doing something where I was investing in other people’s lives,” Paino said of his journey to college presidency and his George Washington Hall corner office. “Education is an opportunity to invest in other people and to be a part of an enterprise that at its core is hope. You’re dealing with young people at a stage of life where it’s all before them.”

Town Talk/UMW’s Great Lives: On Jan. 21, UMW’s Scott Harris, director of the William B. Crawley Great Lives lecture series, joined host Ted Schubel on the Town Talk radio show, aired live from WFVA’s Stafford County studio. The hour-long broadcast explored Mary Washington’s signature lecture series, which features – for free – presentations by biographers on their celebrated subjects. Speakers present on Tuesdays and Thursdays through April 3 in George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium.

“When you take biography as a vehicle, it helps give you a much more grounded sense of how the past evolved, and people can relate,” Harris, who also serves as executive director of UMW Museums, said on the show. “People like hearing stories about other people.” Read more. 

Alumna Breathes ‘Real Life’ Into Costumes for UMW Theatre’s New ‘John Proctor’ Show

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Alumna Alicia Austin ’16 majored in theatre at UMW and studied costume design at Yale. Her work can be seen in shows such as Hulu’s ‘Only Murders in the Building.’

A single garment, recently dyed, rattled around in the dryer. A sewing machine hummed, its needle stabbing into the waistline of a pair of pants. The University of Mary Washington’s costume shop was in full swing this week, as student workers – and a special guest alumna – prepared for a new production by the Department of Theatre and Dance.

Brooklyn-based costume designer Alicia Austin ’16, whose talent has contributed to shows like the smash Hulu hit Only Murders in the Building, came back to campus to dress cast members of UMW’s John Proctor is the Villain. Set to kick off tomorrow, with a special pay-what-you-can performance tonight, the play reinterprets the Arthur Miller classic The Crucible and features the kind of gritty, true-to-life wardrobes Austin has come to adore.

“With shows like this, it’s about breathing real life into them,” she said of John Proctor, which examines the coming-of-age thoughts of highschoolers in a small Georgia town. “Those clothes [most of which she snagged from Goodwill] have been lived in. You can tell they’ve got a story behind them.”

So does Austin, who enrolled at Mary Washington to study psychology. It came into play, she recalled, in a costume design course taught by Associate Professor of Theatre Kevin McCluskey. “I loved figuring out what kind of people the characters were and how we could use clothing as a language,” Austin said of the class that changed her college trajectory. “I was hooked.” Read more.

Bonus Track: UMW Staff Member Among Newest Recording Academy Inductees

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If the album covers on the walls of Chris Williams’ office put a spin on his story, Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony will bring it full circle. A longtime songwriter and music journalist, Williams – assistant director of the University of Mary Washington’s James Farmer Multicultural Center (JFMC) – has been published in Ebony, The Atlantic, […]

UMW Business Students Win Kudos, Cash in Case Competition

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From left to right: UMW business students Sudhanshu Sarin, Jeremy Sanchez, Dwayne Clarke and Cole Hudak take first place in UMW’s fall 2024 College of Business Case Competition. Photo by Karen Pearlman.

One after the other, teams of University of Mary Washington students presented their case to a panel of executive judges.

Visuals depicting balance sheets, gross profit margins and financial analyses flashed onto the big screen in the Hurley Convergence Center’s Digital Auditorium, where five groups – 17 students in all – participated in the fall 2024 College of Business Case Competition.

The event showcased the concepts and skillsets business students collect throughout their time at UMW, with teams from the 400-level Strategic Management course coming together to analyze a business scenario and compete for bragging rights and a cash prize. Judges – Andrew Blate ’04 and Craig Schneibolk, co-owners of remodeling company Beautiful Home Services who led the way in establishing the endowed fund for the annual award money, along with product strategy consultant Travis Bjorklund ’02 – doled out a total of $4,000 to the three top-placing teams.

“You’re going to be in front of boards of directors and investors and advisors very, very soon,” Blate said to the students, most of them seniors. “You need to have a little taste of this kind of competitiveness.” Read more.

UMW Psychology Grad-In-Residence Talks About ‘Tough Stuff’ Around Terminal Illness

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Abigail Gellene-Beaudoin ’13 was this year’s Psychology Graduate in Residence.

Abigail Gellene-Beaudoin ’13 was this year’s Psychology Graduate in Residence.

In a way, Abigail Gellene-Beaudoin’s Mary Washington path began to take shape back in middle school. That’s when her friend was diagnosed with an incurable cancer.

“Walking through her journey with her … led me to decide I wanted to pursue a career in a helping profession,” said Gellene-Beaudoin, a licensed clinical social worker and practicing psychotherapist. A 2013 UMW alumna, she also was this year’s Department of Psychological Science Graduate-in-Residence.

In that role, she presented a free public lecture titled “Talking about the Tough Stuff: Helping caregivers find the words to explain a loved one’s terminal illness or end-stage disease to children.” The talk took place on Thursday, Sept. 12, at 4 p.m., in the Hurley Convergence Center Digital Auditorium. While she was on campus, Gellene-Beaudoin also discussed her experience in the field of clinical social work in classes including developmental psychology, psychopathology and clinical psychology. And she had lunch with students interested in pursuing careers in related fields. Read more.