Category: Event Recap
By Tiffany Boggs, Student Media
What began as an international night in the 1970s turned into a weeklong celebration in 1981.
For 44 years, international students from around the world have come together to celebrate their cultural background with music, dance, food, and sports. It’s a week of recognition, learning, and appreciation for diversity at George Mason University.
A variety of events took place from March 28 through April 6. The iWeek Committee hosted three events: the traditional Parade and Festival, a tour around the world, and the international dance competition.
The parade and festival had three hundred students participating, walking across the Mason campus representing their home country. The event was followed by a ceremony and a table fair, in which thirty organizations signed up for students to connect with multicultural groups hosted by Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) and other departments at Mason, according to the Assistant Director for International Engagement, Office of International Programs (OPS), Jonathan Carmona.
Tour around the world, the food tasting event where students visited tables representing a country, learned about the cultural foods from different continents and regions. Finally, the international dance competition. Eight teams competed, incorporating unique dance styles from diverse cultures. The winners of the 2025 iWeek dance competition was Mason Ke Rang, the South Asian dance group.
A few international students shared their experiences participating in Iweek and the pride they take in their country.
“I feel very proud. As an international student, I’m very proud to represent Uzbekistan, plus in the U.S. and at George Mason, not a lot of people are familiar with this country,” said Gulbanhor Nortojieva, who participated in the parade and festival. Nortojieva shared she came to the United States three years ago, and everything was a culture shock from the food and language. Nortojieva feels iWeek gives international students the opportunity to know one another, how diverse Mason is, and to reunite.
Chengeng Yin and Xiyas Huang celebrated iWeek in the parade and dance competition, representing their home China.
“As for me, I think it’s such an opportunity for us to spread our culture because during this competition we used the Chinese song and the traditional clothes, and the traditional dance positions. So, we want many friends to see how Chinese dances are and how we would perform so that they can better understand our culture,” said Yin.
For non-international students, iWeek is a meaningful time for them too. Awareness of students who come from all over the world and acknowledging global issues.
Tara Zamani, born in the United States, but her family is from Iran. She would visit Iran “a couple of times every year” before Covid-19, but due to the conflict in the Middle East, it’s unsafe for Zamani to visit. Despite the global issues, she looks at iWeek as a time of “unity.”
“Every country has some sort of issue, whether that be political or economic. In general, there’s always going to be an issue, however, we are being united by how proud we are of our culture and roots. So, I think it’s very important we take time to celebrate that and take time to celebrate the beauty in each of our cultures instead of the hardships,” Zamani said.
Carmona ended with appreciation for the fact that international students feel connected to iWeek, and the hard work is paying off.
“It makes me see the purpose of the work I do and makes me feel that I’m doing my job correctly. Even though how busy it is and how much time, work, and hours it takes, I’m always very grateful for that. I’m always very grateful that students feel celebrated and represented in any way we can in that week, and I think that’s just priceless,” he said.
By Mary J. Demarco, Student Media
In 2005, Mason undergraduate student Hilton Pereira entered the Mason career fair with his eyes set on adding experiences to his resume through internships and volunteer opportunities. What he didn’t expect was to change both his major and career path after signing up to volunteer at a local fire department during that career fair.
“This job fair made a huge impact on my career choice. I was going one way and then found the fire department and fell in love with it,” Pereira said.
Twenty years later, Pereira now returns to the job fair not as a student but as a mentor along with his colleagues at the Prince William County Fire and Rescue. From February 18 to 20, 2025, he, along with 191 other companies, congregated in the lower level of the Johnson Center to meet with students in hopes of recruiting new interns and employees.
This event didn’t happen overnight. It took three years of planning and coordination to make the three-day career fair work. 
Matt Myers, Associate Director for Employer and Alumni Engagement at Mason Career Services, explains that each day of the three-day event is designated towards a specific field.
“I gathered some ideas from them [other universities] and that's how we came to STEM day, [a] business, government, and nonprofit day, and then our all majors day where it could… be a good fit for everybody involved,” Myers said.
Along with a team of staff from Career Services, Mary Claire Kraft, Career Services Senior Manager in charge of employment and alumni engagement, has spent the past 3 years working on preparing the 2025 Mason Career Fair. Kraft emphasizes the influence student feedback has in planning future events.
“This year, our switch to a three-day fair was in response to student feedback. We wanted to have a more spread out environment, a place that students could navigate with a little more comfort,” Kraft said.
Current Mason sophomore Zachary Grim attended all three days with an open mindset to working for any company that offered a position. 
“My parents told me when searching for jobs and internships to cast a wide net,” Grim said. “I'm just looking at all sorts of stuff. Obviously stuff like writing and communications, internships because that's where I really want to focus on. But also stuff like Afax, Fairfax County Parks, maybe even the police department and global internships because I want to study [and] work abroad.”
In “casting a wide net,” Grim talked to just about every booth in the room. Most notably he found the Trader Joe's booth and Global Internship booth to be the most informative and helpful in his search for a job. During a conversation with an employee at Trader Joe's, Grim recalled that the employee went out of her way to provide information on the specific store location and contact information.
Meanwhile, Freshmen Alison Crane and Rachel Lay navigated their first career fair, initially feeling overwhelmed. However, as they acclimated to the environment, they found the career fair to be very enriching.
“Every single stand I've looked at, somebody's talked to me pretty soon. It was quite nice actually,” Crane said.
Crane and Lay’s anxieties over the situation were quelled by the supportive job fair participants. It’s people like Pereira who made the difference.
“I just like to have conversations with students from different majors, from different career paths, from different ideas of what they want to do, but really just give people the opportunity to open up their minds and look at different opportunities that they would not otherwise have thought about,” Pereira said.