Recalling Mason's Second Decade
By Daniel Walsch
This article is the second in a series of three describing George Mason's
growth and milestones during its first 30 years as an independent university.
In April 1983, George Mason University gained national exposure when Time
magazine named it one of nine "fast-rising and ambitious institutions - one
that is challenging the nation's elite schools."
This nod of recognition was an unexpected feather in George Mason's cap because
only 11 years before it had been designated an independent member of Virginia's
system of colleges and universities. At the beginning of its second decade, the
university had begun conferring doctoral degrees and boasted an enrollment of
14,930. High technology, public policy, and the arts had been designated the institution's
three primary academic areas of focus.
George W. Johnson was now in his fifth year as president and was leading the
charge to establish George Mason as a high-caliber institution through ongoing
collaborations and discussions with key leaders throughout the region and the
commonwealth.
In a speech to a local civic organization, Johnson said, "We need people
of diverse talents. But just as diverse people of Virginia depend for their futures
on a vast increase in the handling of information, so, too, the diverse institutions
of the commonwealth depend for their effectiveness on a dramatic new commitment
to the general support of higher education."
Shortly after that speech, Johnson and the university had a related announcement
to make: the hiring of a certain economics professor who had been teaching and
conducting research at Virginia Tech since 1969. After working in Blacksburg for
the past 14 years, James McGill Buchanan was ready for a change. So, following
discussions with administrators and faculty at George Mason, coupled with his
own sense that George Mason was "a dynamic, growing university," Buchanan
decided to make the Northern Virginia-based institution his new home as its Holbert
L. Harris University Professor, bringing with him his Center for Study of Public
Choice of which he was the principal founder in the late 1960s.
Three years later on Oct. 16, 1986, Buchanan found out he had received the
Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in applying economic principles to explain
political decision making. Buchanan said he was "surprised and shocked."
For George Mason, the award was a giant leap forward in visibility and prestige.
Later that day, at a special celebratory meeting of Mason's Board of Visitors,
Johnson reflected the university's new sense of confidence, optimism, and buoyancy.
While the first recipient of the Nobel prize in Virginia's history stood before
the group, Johnson raised a glass of champagne and toasted, "To our first
laureate."
The unprecedented excitement over Buchanan's achievement temporarily overshadowed
a calculated effort started by George Mason in 1984 to hire outstanding scholars
throughout the country who were committed to undergraduate teaching and interdisciplinary
scholarship. Known as the Robinson Professors, these academicians joined the university
as a result of a generous bequest from Clarence J. Robinson. Although they came
from varied backgrounds and represented different areas of study, each shared
a common denominator: a national reputation for scholastic excellence.
George Mason's Robinson Professors are Mary Catherine Bateson, anthropology;
Harold Morowitz, biology; Egon Veheheyn, humanities; Thelma Lavine, philosophy;
Roger Wilkins, American culture; James Trefil, physics; Paul D'Andrea, theater;
Vassily Aksyonov, Russian literature; Hugh Heclo, public affairs; John Paden,
international studies; Shaul Bakhash, history; Robert Hazen, earth sciences; Lenore
Weitzman, sociology; and Jean-Paul Dumont, anthropology.
Individually and collectively, these scholars added to the university's growing
reputation and helped serve as a magnet to students and other scholars.
Other highlights of George Mason's second decade ranged from creating the
School of Nursing, the School of Information Technology, and the Graduate School
of Education to initiating the Early Identification Program and the Plan for Alternative
General Education.
With the university's third decade on the horizon, George Mason's enrollment
was 20,693. Its reputation was evolving from "up and coming" to "innovative
and entrepreneurial." Looking ahead, in late 1990, Johnson said, "To
stay really alive as institutions, we have to provide settings that are attractive
to creative and enterprising professionals and which are discouraging and unattractive
to the timid, the unenterprising, and the comfort seeking."
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