Th following sources were used in compiling this information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason_University
http://www.gmu.edu/vcenter/history.html

George Mason University, also known as GMU or simply Mason, is a public university in the United States. It is located in Northern Virginia, with its main campus in Fairfax and additional campuses in Arlington and Prince William County. The university is also in the process of opening two more campuses by 2009, one in Loudoun County, and another in Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates.

Named after American revolutionary, patriot and founding father George Mason, the university was founded as a branch of the University of Virginia in 1957 and became an independent institution in 1972. Although relatively young, George Mason is a dynamic university that has gained a national reputation for innovation, entrepreneurship, and cutting-edge research in a number of fields.

The University garnered national attention during the 2006 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament when its little-known basketball team advanced to the Final Four, the first mid-major team to do so since 1979, attracting an unprecedented campaign of media coverage. "...Never before has a school [like GMU] with such little name recognition ascended so unexpectedly to the national stage," wrote Stefan Fatsis in The Wall Street Journal on March 30, 2006.

George Mason University is named after American revolutionary, patriot, and founding father George Mason. The University traces its roots back to the 1950s when the legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia passed a resolution, in January of 1956, to establish a branch college of the University of Virginia in Northern Virginia. In September of 1957 the new college opened its doors to seventeen students, all of whom enrolled as freshmen in a renovated elementary school building at Bailey's Crossroads. John Norville Gibson Finley served as Director of the new branch, which was known as University College.

The City of Fairfax, Virginia, then the Town of Fairfax, purchased and donated 150 acres of land to the University of Virginia for the college's new location, which was referred to as the Fairfax Campus. In 1959 the Board of Visitors of UVA 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 forty acres of Fairfax Campus began in 1962. In the Fall of 1964 the new campus welcomed 356 students.

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 GMC to provide for a 600 acre Fairfax Campus in 1966 with the intention that the institution would expand into a regional university of major proportions, including the granting of graduate degrees.
On April 7, 1972 the Virginia General Assembly enacted legislation which separated George Mason College from its parent institution, the University of Virginia. Renamed that day by the legislation, GMC became George Mason University.

In 1979 GMU opened its law school in Arlington by acquiring the International School of Law, which was a private institution that had recently attained provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association (ABA). By 1981 the law school, now known as the George Mason University School of Law (GMUSL), gained full ABA accreditation.

Also, in 1979, the university moved all of its athletic programs to NCAA Division I. Enrollment that year passed 11,000. The university opened its Arlington campus in 1982, two blocks from the Virginia Square-GMU station in Arlington. In 1986 the university's governing body, the Board of Visitors, approved a new master plan for the year based on an enrollment of 20,000 full-time students with housing for 5,000 students by 1995. That same year university housing opened to bring the total number of residential students to 700.

Through a bequest of Russian immigrant Shelley Krasnow the University established the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study in 1991. The Institute was created to further the understanding of the mind and intelligence by combining the fields of cognitive psychology, neurobiology, and artificial intelligence. In 1992, GMU's new Prince William Institute began classes in a temporary site in Manassas, Virginia. The Institute moved to a permanent 124-acre site located on the Rt. 234 bypass, ten miles south of Manassas, by the year 1997, and is now known as the Prince William Campus. The university graduated more than 5,000 students that following spring.

While George Mason University is relatively young, particularly compared to established research universities in Virginia, it has grown rapidly, reaching an enrollment of 29,889 students in 2006, and is the second largest university in the state of Virginia, exceeded only by Virginia Commonwealth University. According to a 2005 report issued by the university, enrollment is expected to reach 35,000 students by 2011 with more than 7,000 resident students.

In 2002 Mason celebrated its 30th anniversary of independence from the University of Virginia and launched its first capital campaign with a goal to raise $110 million. It concluded by raising $142 million, $32 million more than their goal. The George Mason University logo, originally designed in 1982, was updated in 2004.

Over the last decade George Mason 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. The George Mason University School of Law is ranked 34th in the United States, and the Industrial/Organizational Psychology graduate program is consistently ranked in the top ten in the nation. The university has additional strength in the basic and applied sciences with critical mass in proteomics, neuroscience and computational sciences. Research support comes to Mason faculty from such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Likewise, the Center for Secure Information Systems is designated as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education by the National Security Agency.

Mason is also home to the Center for History and New Media whose various history websites attract more than one million visitors each month.

Mason's Center for Global Education's Study Abroad program has been rated as one of the top twenty programs in the United States, offering dozens of programs ranging from one-week spring break programs to full year programs.

Mason was awarded $25 million, in 2005, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, for construction of a Regional Biocontainment Laboratory at the Prince William Campus in Manassas.

------------------------------------------------------
George Mason University's growing reputation as an innovative educational leader is rooted in Virginia's strong educational tradition.
The university began as the Northern Virginia branch of the University of Virginia in 1957. Eager to support the fledgling institution, the Town (now City) of Fairfax purchased 150 acres in 1958 and donated it to the University of Virginia for a permanent branch campus. In March 1966, the General Assembly authorized the expansion of George Mason College into a four-year, degree-granting institution and gave it the long-range mandate to expand into a major regional university.

In 1972, the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia recommended that the college separate from its parent institution. On April 7, the governor signed the General Assembly legislation that established George Mason University as an independent member of the commonwealth's system of colleges and universities.

Since 1972, the university's development has been marked by rapid growth and innovative planning. Drawing prominent scholars from all fields, George Mason's outstanding faculty includes two Nobel laureates in Economic Science, James Buchanan (1986) and Vernon Smith (2002), the Robinson Professors, a group of outstanding scholars committed to undergraduate teaching and interdisciplinary scholarship, a Pulitzer Prize winner, IEEE Centennial Medalists, and recipients of numerous grants and awards, including Fulbright, National Science Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts awards. Endowed chairs have also brought many artists and scholars to campus.

George Mason has expanded its presence to serve the entire Northern Virginia region by employing the revolutionary concept of the "distributed" university. The university acquired the George Mason University School of Law and a campus in Arlington in 1979, and established the Prince William Campus in Prince William County in 1997.
George Mason University has achieved national distinction in many areas. Its reputation continues to grow as the university provides for an educational, cultural, and economic resource for the people of Northern Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation and beyond.