George Mason Names UC-Irvine Engineering Dean As New President

FAIRFAX CITY, VA — George Mason University has named Dr. Gregory Washington, the engineering dean at the University of California-Irvine, to serve as its eighth president and first African American president, succeeding Angel Cabrera. Washington will begin his tenure as university president on July 1.

GMU's board of visitors announced Washington's selection Monday and will formally introduce him to the university community on Thursday. Prior to his role at UC-Irvine, Washington served as associate dean of research and interim dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State University.

"When the Board set out to fill this position, we were determined to find someone who was both a strategic thinker with the vision to see our future and a mobilizer with the ability to inspire our community to build on Mason’s success," Tom Davis, rector of George Mason University and former congressman from Northern Virginia, said in a letter to the university community. "We found that and more in Dr. Washington, who stood out in a competitive pool of leaders with a clearly defined vision for Mason that would set the standard for higher education."

Washington, 54, will replace Anne Holton, a former Virginia education secretary who has been serving as interim president since last summer when Cabrera resigned from GMU after a seven-year tenure to take over as president of Georgia Tech.

GMU now has 37,000 students and 2,630 faculty members after a sustained period of growth over the past four decades. Widely known for naming its law school after conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and its title among universities as the largest recipient of money from the Charles Koch Foundation, GMU's arts and sciences departments are less known for skewing as far to the political right.

At UC-Irvine, Washington is credited with having hired one of the most diverse engineering faculties in the country, and expanding undergraduate and graduate enrollment during his tenure. He launched a freshman learning initiative that led to more than 60 percent of the school’s undergraduate engineering students conducting research.

“I am honored to accept this position and thrilled to lead Mason at this exciting time,” Washington said Monday in a statement. “What attracted me to Mason was its reputation for having real impact, providing access and for its commitment to inclusive excellence. Those values are in direct alignment with how I operate as an academic leader. I look forward to helping continue to accelerate the trajectory of the institution."