Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Nick Mason.  Born in Vineland, he and his family lived in a few different places in southern New Jersey when he was young.  However, he moved back to Vineland for middle school, and he graduated from Vineland High School in 2012.  His mother is a retired elementary school teacher.  His father worked in manufacturing and currently works for Hydraulic Packing and Seals (HPS).  They design seals, have them manufactured overseas, and then distribute them, mostly in the eastern United States.  He attended Rowan University with his identical twin brother Dean, who sadly passed away in 2023.  He has a younger brother who is an electrician.  During his time at Rowan, he won several awards, including the Asian Studies program’s Charles Fu Memorial Scholarship (twice), the Marius Livingston scholarship, the History Department’s Senior of Distinction, and the Best Paper Prize.  in 2016, he entered the doctoral program at Syracuse University. During his time at Syracuse, he won more awards, including the Best Graduate Student Paper at the Eastern Pennsylvania Regional Phi Alpha Theta conference, the Smith Prize for the best graduate paper written by a Syracuse University history student, and the University-wide 2020 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.  He plans to complete his doctorate in 2024.  In 2022, he proudly married his fellow Rowan alum, Brooke Brown. 

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I chose Rowan for several reasons.  First, it was financially accessible for my family.  Second, it was a good school that was also close to home, which allowed me to be able to maintain my friendships from high school.  Third, it was farther from my home than something like Cumberland County College so I could also move on to campus and grow in that regard.  I entered Rowan as a history major for the simple reason that I liked the subject and learning about the past.  Even though it was actually my worst subject in high school, I still thought that I would enjoy teaching it someday.  I always thought I would be a good teacher, but I didn’t want to teach younger people.  So, I thought I would teach at the college level.  It took me a long time to realize that the path to becoming a college teacher was not designed for those who wanted to teach but those who wanted to do academic research first and foremost. 

For me, one of the things at Rowan that defined my time there was my service to the Department.  In my first-year, I became involved with extra-curricular activities right from the beginning.  I showed up to my first meeting of the Student History Association (SHA), and Dr. Carrigan handed me a pen and asked me to take on the vacant position of Secretary.  I served actively that year and was elected as President of SHA for my sophomore year.  I was then re-elected in my junior year before becoming President of Phi Alpha Theta (PAT) in my senior year.  I am proud of all that we did during my years, including organizing many book signings highlighting the publications of our faculty, participating in various community service activities such as the “Haunted Student Center” at Halloween, and helping coordinate various field trips to places such as Antietam National Battlefield, Harper’s Ferry National Park, and the Gettysburg National Miliary Park.

I started research at Rowan on anti-Chinese mob violence that ended up becoming my dissertation topic at Syracuse University.  Drs. Carrigan, Klapper, and Wang all played a critical role in this research, which led me to have a head start over my peers at Syracuse.  While these three were particularly influential in that work, my overall history training and education were outstanding, aided by classes with Drs. Blake, Blanck, Duke-Bryant, Heinzen, Janofsky, and Morschauser, Rose, and Wiltenburg. 

Another really important moment to me during my undergraduate years was the semester I spent abroad at Shanghai, China.  It was a period of growth for me.  It showed how much I had matured over the first two years at Rowan.  From wanting to stay close to home as a first-year student, I now felt confident enough to travel to the opposite side of the world with only three semesters of Chinese to my credit.  It was eye-opening to experience a completely different way of life.  The density of the city’s population and buildings were beyond even that of New York City and something that I never imagined.  I returned confident that I not only had a broader view of the world but was also much better prepared to handle challenges that might come my way. 

I look back on my time at Rowan with much fondness, one of the best periods of my life.  I still return to Glassboro from time to time and reminiscence about all the great times that I had there.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/