The story
20th century
In 1949, the University of Virginia created an extension center to serve mid-career working professionals and non-traditional students near urban centers in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. The extension center offered both for credit and non-credit informal classes in the evenings at various pre-existing venues. The first for credit classes offered were: "Government in the Far East, Introduction to International Politics, English Composition, Principles of Economics, Mathematical Analysis, Introduction to Mathematical Statistics, and Principles of Lip Reading." By the end of 1952, enrollment was 1,192 students.
A resolution of the Virginia General Assembly in January 1956 changed the extension center into University College, the Northern Virginia branch of the University of Virginia. John Norville Gibson Finley served as director. Seventeen freshmen students attended classes at University College in a small renovated elementary school building in Bailey's Crossroads starting in September 1957. In 1958 University College became George Mason College.
The City of Fairfax purchased and donated 150 acres (60 hectares) of land just south of the city limits to the University of Virginia for the college's new site, which is now referred to as the Fairfax Campus. In 1959, the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia selected a permanent name for the college: George Mason College of the University of Virginia. The Fairfax campus construction planning that began in early 1960 showed visible results when the development of the first 40 acres (16 hectares) of Fairfax Campus began in 1962. In the Fall of 1964 the new campus welcomed 356 students.
In 1966, in the Virginia General Assembly, Alexandria delegate James M. Thomson, with the backing of the University of Virginia, introduced a bill in the General Assembly to make George Mason College a four-year institution under the University of Virginia's direction. The measure, known as H 33, passed the Assembly easily and was approved on March 1, 1966, making George Mason College a degree-granting institution. During that same year, the local jurisdictions of Fairfax County, Arlington County, and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church agreed to appropriate $3 million to purchase land adjacent to Mason to provide for a 600-acre (240-hectare) Fairfax Campus with the intention that the institution would expand into a regional university of major proportions, including the granting of graduate degrees.
In 1972, Virginia separated George Mason College from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and renamed it George Mason University.
In 1978, George W. Johnson was appointed to serve as the fourth president. Under his eighteen-year tenure, the university expanded both its physical size and program offerings at a tremendous rate. Shortly before Johnson's inauguration in April 1979, Mason acquired the School of Law and the new Arlington Campus. The university also became a doctoral institution. Toward the end of Johnson's term, Mason would be deep in planning for a third campus in Prince William County at Manassas. Major campus facilities, such as Student Union Building II, EagleBank Arena, Center for the Arts, and the Johnson Learning Center, were all constructed over the course of Johnson's eighteen years as University President. Enrollment once again more than doubled from 10,767 during the fall of 1978 to 24,368 in the spring of 1996.
In 1996, Alan Merten, dean of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University was appointed the university's president. He believed that the university's location made it responsible for both contributing to and drawing from its surrounding communities—local, national, and global. George Mason was becoming recognized and acclaimed in all of these spheres. During Merten's tenure, the university hosted the World Congress of Information Technology in 1998, celebrated a second Nobel Memorial Prize-winning faculty member in 2002, and cheered the Men's basketball team in their NCAA Final Four appearance in 2006. Enrollment increased from just over 24,000 students in 1996 to approximately 33,000 during the spring semester of 2012, making Mason Virginia's largest public university.
21st century
Following Merten's retirement in 2012, Ángel Cabrera was appointed the university's sixth president on July 1, 2012.
Read the full text
In a resolution on August 17, 2012, the board asked Cabrera to create a new strategic vision that would help Mason remain relevant and competitive in the future. The drafting of the Vision for Mason, from conception to official outline, created a new mission statement that defines the university.
On March 25, 2013, Cabrera held a press conference to announce the university's decision to leave the Colonial Athletic Association to join the Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10). The announcement came just days after the Board of Visitors' approval of the university's vision document that Cabrera had overseen. Mason began competition in the A-10 during the 2013–2014 academic year. The Chronicle of Higher Education listed Mason as one of the "Great Colleges to Work For" from 2010 to 2014. The Washington Post listed Mason as one of the "Top Workplaces" in 2014.
The WorldatWork Alliance for Work-Life Progress awarded Mason the Seal of Distinction in 2015. The AARP listed Mason as one of the Best Employers for Workers Over 50 in 2013. Phi Beta Kappa established a chapter at the university in 2013.
In 2018, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealed that conservative donors, including the Charles Koch Foundation and Federalist Society, were given direct influence over faculty hiring decisions at the university's law and economics schools. GMU President Ángel Cabrera acknowledged that the revelations raised questions about the university's academic integrity and pledged to prohibit donors from sitting on faculty selection committees in the future.
Cabrera resigned his position on July 31, 2019, to become president of Georgia Tech. Following Cabrera's resignation, Anne B. Holton served as interim president until June 30, 2020.
On February 24, 2020, the Board of Visitors appointed Gregory Washington as the university's eighth president, and he assumed that role on July 1, 2020. Washington is the university's first African-American president.
On March 23, 2020, George Mason shifted to exclusively online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hybrid instruction occurred during the Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and Fall 2021 semesters during which the university offered a combination of online and in-person instruction.
Mild unrest occurred on George Mason's campus in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attack of Hamas on Israel and the resulting war. Statements denouncing antisemitism and Islamophobia were made by the Office of the President. An encampment on nearby George Washington University's campus was organized in part by George Mason students.
In August 2025, the Department of Education issued a press release claiming that the university had "violated Title VI by illegally using race and other immutable characteristics in university practices and policies, including hiring and promotion" in the name of "diversity, equity and inclusion."
From Wikipedia’s article on George Mason University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5