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The
university can trace its roots back to the 1950s when the Virginia state
legislature 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. The Board of Visitors of UVa
selected a permanent name for the college: George Mason College of the
University of Virginia in 1959. 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 Mason opened its law school in Arlington and 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 Ballston Metro 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.
George Mason Academic logo 2004-present
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George Mason Academic logo 2004-present
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 Manasss, by the year 1997, and is now
known as the Prince William Campus. The university graduated more than 5,000
students that following spring.
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.
AND THEN IN 2006.......... (Watch Video)
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