June 2011

A Message from the Dean

At the end of the academic year in May, GW celebrated the accomplishments of more than 7,000 students who received degrees from across the university in 2010-11. I was delighted to recognize and shake hands with more than 800 students at the Elliott School's commencement ceremony on May 13. Like their predecessors, our newest graduates have worked long and hard to achieve new levels of expertise in their chosen fields, and they are now well-prepared for rewarding careers in international affairs. I would like to extend my personal congratulations to the Elliott School's newest graduates.

I hope that all of our alumni — whether you graduated weeks ago or decades ago — will stay in touch! Please check to make sure that we have your latest coordinates. You can send your contact information via email to esiaalum@gwu.edu. You can also update your information on the Alumni page of our website.

There are many ways to stay connected with the Elliott School. Our Web Video Initiative now features videos from around 100 of our special events on a wide range of topics. In fact, the initial impetus for the Web Video Initiative was alumni engagement — we wanted to continue sharing the Elliott School's intellectual resources with our far-flung alumni. Over this past academic year, speakers at the Elliott School included Senator Richard Lugar; India's Ambassador to the United States, Meera Shankar; Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bob Woodward; former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley; Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi; renowned scholars from the GW faculty and other experts from around the world. If you are able to join us on campus for events, please stop by. But even if you can't come to E Street, you can watch some of our best events at your convenience via the Elliott School website. Whether you live in New York or New Delhi, in Honolulu or Ouagadougou, you can continue to benefit from your Elliott School connection.

The Elliott School's alumni community is an extraordinary group of international affairs professionals — 18,000 people who have embarked on careers in the public, private, and non-profit sectors in more than 100 countries around the world. Elliott School alumni are diplomats, policymakers, government officials, military officers, business executives, journalists, analysts, activists, aid workers, educators, and scholars. Four of our alumni are featured in this issue of Briefing: Thomas Luley and Collin Stevenson, two new graduates who spoke on commencement weekend; Lori Garver, the deputy administrator at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the keynote speaker at the Elliott School commencement ceremony; and Diana Henriques, senior writer at The New York Times, author of a brilliant and best-selling book on the Bernie Madoff scandal, a recent recipient of GW's Alumni Outstanding Service Award, and a new member of the GW Board of Trustees.

At GW's Elliott School of International Affairs, we like to say that we are educating the next generation of national and international leaders. We like to say it — because it is true.

Michael E. Brown
Dean
Elliott School of International Affairs
The George Washington University