Partner With Us

Multidisciplinary teams of undergraduate Honors College students address your strategic challenges.

The Honors College's top priority is positioning our students for success. Business, government, nonprofit, and internal university partners are invited to connect with our outstanding and dedicated undergraduates, and help shape tomorrow's leaders.

Working with our student teams, partners gain insight into strategically important issues, while building their connections to George Mason University. Our students, in turn, develop professional skills, enhance their sense of civic and workplace responsibility, and practice working collaboratively on small teams. The Honors College partners with corporations, government institutions, and nonprofit groups. Recent partners include Fairfax County, QinetiQ, Auspex Labs, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Northrop Grumman, MVLE, District Taco, the Latino Economic Development Center, the League of Women Voters, Solvitur Systems, the Creative and Performing Arts Center, the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce Foundation, GovStar, and more.

Mason Now: Power the Possible, George Mason University’s historic $1 billion campaign, is helping expand these partnerships and amplify the impact of the Honors College, fostering opportunities for our students to address real-world challenges while building invaluable professional networks and skills.

Example 1: Internally-facing. “We need help developing a plan to rebuild our nonprofit’s pipeline of long-term volunteers, which has not recovered after the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes cultivating leaders within our volunteer base and engaging prospective volunteers.”

Example 2: Externally-facing. “How might our organization compare the value of paid and unpaid voter datasets? We would like to apply a dimensional data valuation model, considering breadth of data, quality of metadata, use, cost, privacy restrictions, and limits on voter’s personally identifiable data.”

Our partners represent a wide range of sectors and industries. Partners with diverse foci help us familiarize our students with the range of multidimensional challenges present in the private and public sectors. When selecting partners, we strive to balance repeat and new partners and to provide depth and breadth of benefit to our wider community, our students, and our partner organizations.

• Gain the insight of a student team of undergraduate students from multiple disciplines. The project culminates with the public presentation of the team’s work, as well as a final report to be delivered to you.
• Promote staff development by creating a meaningful opportunity to mentor students who will soon join the workforce as young professionals.
• Increase the visibility of your organization or mission among George Mason’s Honors College students.
• Receive recognition at our semesterly exhibitions, which are attended by large numbers of students, partners, and university leaders.

Students use tools and practices drawn from business consulting and human-centered design to provide new perspective on the challenge you present. Using the collaborative skills we have taught them, students will conduct 50 hours of group meetings among themselves. Each individual student team member will additionally contribute 50 or more hours over the semester.

The most successful projects focus on long-term, strategic challenges, rather than everyday operational tasks. Partners will provide us with a challenge statement that gives specifications for the project and will provide clarity and guidance to the student team. Two associates from your organization will act as points of contact and will hold four or more one-hour meetings with the team during the semester. Sponsors of partnerships have opportunities to further engage with George Mason University’s Honors College students.

For more information about nonprofit and government partnership projects, get in touch with Melanie Fedri, the Honors College experiential learning coordinator.

To explore the possibility of corporate or industry partnership, get in touch with Zofia Burr, dean of the Honors College, and Zavin Smith, the assistant vice president for annual and constituent giving and strategic initiatives.