Mason as a Living Lab

This month the organizers of the Foragers’ Forest on George Mason’s Fairfax Campus marked the project’s first anniversary with the planting of endangered American chestnut trees.

For its commitment to campus sustainability, George Mason University has earned a Gold rating in the STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System) Assessment. STARS is a self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance and is offered by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).

Kirin Emlet Furst, in Mason's Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering, is using funds from an NSF CAREER award to measure the amounts of harmful "forever" chemicals in drinking water.

With nearly 1,000 acres of land, waterways, forests, and buildings, George Mason University’s campuses are a dynamic, living learning environment of hands-on applied research.