Since it was founded in 1972, George Mason University has grown into a major educational force and earned a reputation as an innovative, entrepreneurial institution. Just minutes from Washington, D.C., George Mason has a growing and diverse student body and an exceptional faculty of enterprising scholars. At the center of the world’s political, information, and communications networks, George Mason is the university needed by a region and a world driven by new social, economic, and technological realities.

George Mason’s development has been shaped in response to the educational needs of its cosmopolitan constituency. The university has gained national distinction in a range of academic fields, including public policy, information technology, economics, the fine and performing arts, law, conflict resolution, and, most recently, the biosciences.

Strong alliances with business, the community, and government benefit George Mason’s students and the larger society. Enrollment is more than 32,000, with students studying in 186 degree programs at the bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and professional levels.

Mason is a distributed university with campuses in Fairfax, Arlington, and Prince William counties. In addition to these three campuses, George Mason operates a site in Loudoun County and has partnered with the Smithsonian Institute to offer a Global Conservation Studies Program at the Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal. The university also offers programs on-line, at the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon, and at Ridgetop. Each location has a distinctive academic focus that plays a critical role in the economy of its region.