The University
Founded in 1972, George Mason University now has locations in Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudoun counties.
The Ras Al Khaimah campus in the United Arab Emirates offers enterprising faculty and an inventive curriculum, with a spirit of innovation and excellence that attracts the best minds in the world.
As the largest university in Virginia, Mason has become a major educational force and earned a reputation as an innovative, entrepreneurial institution that has gained national distinction in a range of academic fields.
The Man
George Mason, for whom our university is named, was one of the greatest of the founding fathers of the United States, yet he is among the least known.
Find out more about George Mason or visit the patriot's home, Gunston Hall, which is a short distance from the Fairfax Campus, and is adjacent to Mount Vernon, home of George Washington.
Mason Traditions
Learn more about the events, history, and folklore that makes us Patriots.
Make A Gift!
Private funding is critical to George Mason's continuing quest for excellence.
Administration
Mason Highlights
- Mason has almost 30,000 students, the largest enrollment in Virginia. We are also among the most diverse universities in the country.
- Mason has added 30 new degree programs in the past few years, including advanced degrees in bioinformatics, climate dynamics, information security, and neuroscience; as well as undergraduate degrees in conflict analysis and resolution and global affairs.
- Mason's School of Law is the youngest to enter the select group of top 35 law schools in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. It has achieved this status by focusing on recruiting better students and superior faculty.
- Mason Worldwide: Mason has a number of reciprocal relationships with universities in Korea, China, and Germany that bring faculty and students to Mason and send our students abroad.
- New centers – such as the Center for Real Estate Entrepreneurship – respond to the needs ofcompanies and organizations in the region.
- According to the American Society for Engineering Education, Mason was in the top 50 in both the total number of engineering degrees awarded and in the number awarded to women.
- GMU-TV has won 18 Telly Awards and numerous other awards of distinction.
- Abul Hussam, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, received the 2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability Gold Award of $1 million from the National Academy of Engineering. The award recognized his innovative solution for removing arsenic from drinking water in developing countries.
- The Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study now has a MRI brain scanner, becoming one of two non-medical schools with a cognitive neuroscience research institute to own functional imaging technology.
- It is estimated that one out of every three health-care patients in Northern Virginia is treated by a graduate of Mason's nursing program.
- U.S. News and World Report ranked George Mason’s Writing Across the Curriculum program in the top 20 in the country in 2008, for the 6th year in a row.
- The Center for History and New Media is changing how researchers and students work online with tools like Zotero, which stores references and notes right in the web browser, allowing it to sense, record and share scholarly information on the web.
- Mason’s DRAGON project transfers large files between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Maryland.