page_title: George Mason University
section_title: University of Virginia (1949–1972)
hierarchical_section_title: George Mason University / History / University of Virginia (1949–1972)
caption_attribution_description: English: Blue Ridge Aerial Surveys, “George Mason College, Fairfax campus, 1967, aerial photograph looking north,” A History of George Mason University. Aerial photograph of George Mason College, Fairfax campus. Photo depicts, Fenwick Library, Lecture Hall, and North, South, East, and West Buildings. 8" x 10" photograph print; black and white.
context_page_description: George Mason University is a public research university located in Fairfax County near Fairfax City in Virginia. In 1956, the Commonwealth of Virginia authorized the establishment of a Northern Virginia branch of the University of Virginia and the institution that is now named George Mason University opened in September 1957. It became an independent institution in 1972. It has since grown to become the largest four-year public university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The university is named after the founding father George Mason, a Virginia planter and politician who authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights that later influenced the future Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. Mason operates four campuses in Virginia, as well as a fifth campus in South Korea.
  The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". It is particularly well known in the fields of economics and law and economics. Two Mason economics professors have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics: James M. Buchanan in 1986 and Vernon L. Smith in 2002.
context_section_description: The University of Virginia in Charlottesville created an extension center to serve Northern Virginia. "… the University Center opened, on October 1, 1949..." The extension center offered both for credit and non-credit informal classes in the evenings in the Vocational Building of the Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, at schools in Alexandria, Fairfax, and Prince William, at federal buildings, at churches, at the Virginia Theological Seminary, and at Marine Corps Base Quantico, and even in a few private homes. 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 increased to 1,192 students from 665 students the previous year.
  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 (0.61 km²) 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 (160,000 m²) of Fairfax Campus began in 1962. In the Fall of 1964 the new campus welcomed 356 students.
  During the 1966 Session of 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 (2.4 km²) Fairfax Campus with the intention that the institution would expand into a regional university of major proportions, including the granting of graduate degrees.
caption: Aerial photograph taken in 1967 showing what was then called George Mason College
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