Mary Lee Clark

^{Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Qarni speaks during a launch event for the ADVANCE partnership between George Mason and Northern Virginia Community College. Photo by Lathan Goumas.}

�� has joined the American Talent Initiative, a collaboration of the nation’s top 120 four-year institutions with a shared goal of enrolling, supporting and graduating 50,000 additional talented, lower-income students across high-graduation rate colleges and universities by 2025.

The initiative is a collaboration with the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, Ithaka S+R and multiple colleges and universities with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies. All institutions in the initiative must already have a 70 percent graduation rate for their students within six years.

Mason is already on an upward trend of graduating low-income students; Mason Pell Grant recipients graduate at nearly the same level as non-Pell grant recipients. Through programs like ADVANCE and the Early Identification Program, low-income students receive the assistance they need early on.

"In other words, this is a no brainer for Mason—it's what we do,” said David Burge, vice president for enrollment management.

Ten years ago, people thought that lower-income students weren’t getting offers of admissions to colleges and universities, said Burge, and even though that has improved, many students still face the difficulty of paying for their education.

One way Mason keeps education affordable is through the ADVANCE program with Northern Virginia Community College, which is expected to help approximately 500 students transfer seamlessly from NOVA to Mason in 100 aligned curricular pathways this fall. ADVANCE students are given the support they need to complete their bachelor’s degree within four years.

"ADVANCE is an obvious example of how an institution can expand the number of low-income transfer students, drop the overall costs and then improve those metrics toward graduation with features like success coaching and streamlining the process of admissions and financial aid,” said Burge.

Starting with primary school education, Mason’s Early Identification Program (EIP) collaborates with schools in Virginia to empower students to achieve their goals of pursuing higher education through civic engagement, leadership training and academic and personal development. The program has more than 1,600 graduates, many of whom were the first in their families to attend a college or university.

Additionally, Mason has one of the lowest three-year loan default rates in the nation averaging around 2.3% compared to the national average of 7.1%.

To reach the goals set by the American Talent Initiative, Mason plans to increase fundraising efforts and add additional support for low-income students, such as success coaching and other services that serve the whole student, since low-income students often have barriers outside of the institution that can impact their education.

"We will continue to do better than what we've done before and look forward to sharing Mason’s successes with the other participating universities who are not as successful in recruiting and graduating these students,” said Burge.

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In four and a half years at Mason, Dylan Toms has played the lead in three musicals and five operas.

Music major Dylan Toms said his most memorable performance at �� was when, as a freshman, he played the leading role in the musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” Little did he know that it would be the first of many leading roles during his time at the university.

Photo by Lathan Goumas.

Over the past four and a half years, Toms, an Honors College student who is graduating on Dec. 20, has played the lead in three musicals and five operas. Besides “Drood,” he appeared in the musicals “Threepenny Opera” and “The Gondoliers” and in the operas “La Vie de Bohéme,” “Albert Herring” and, most recently, “Dido and Aeneas.”

“Mason has pushed me to become a performer I had no idea I could be,” Toms said.

When Toms was a junior starring in “Threepenny Opera,” in which he played Macheath, London’s most notorious criminal, local theater critic David Siegel wrote of him in DC Metro Theater Arts: “From the moment he steps into view with white gloves, white spats, and an altogether dapper mien, [Toms] gives off shivers with his smooth, slick, sneering performance. His solos and duets are spot-on.”

Toms, from the small town of Bedford, Virginia, got his first taste of performance in his elementary school’s production of “The Polar Express.” Though his middle and high schools did not have theater programs, he participated in community theater with the Little Town Players in Bedford.

Dylan Toms as the wicked John Jasper in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." Promotional photo.

Toms visited Mason during his sophomore year of high school and was able to catch a dress rehearsal of Mason’s mainstage show “The Merchant.” From then on, he said, he couldn’t imagine going to any other university.

“This program has kept me on my toes for four and a half years,” Toms said of his time at Mason. “I am so grateful for that because I truly believe I can go into the real world with so much more experience than I had before.”

Toms started in Mason’s theater program but found his place in musical theater. He attributes his success and progress to his voice teacher John Aler, associate professor in the School of Music.

“[Toms is] very eager to learn and experience new avenues of ways to be expressive,” Aler said. “He works extremely hard and is always prepared, and he never misses a chance to perform. He is a teacher's dream student.”

Toms said he was inspired by his fellow classmates and Mason’s proximity to Washington, D.C.’s booming music and theater scene. He frequently visited Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, with Mason Cabaret, which is run by Erin Gardiner, an adjunct faculty member in Mason’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, and James Gardiner, deputy director of creative content and publicity at Signature Theatre, respectively.

After graduation Toms plans to move to New York City and pursue a career in musical theater.

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