Mason ready to honor winter graduates Thursday

George Mason University will celebrate more than 5,000 students graduating or earning certificates in the Winter Commencement ceremony at 9:30 a.m. Thursday at EagleBank Arena.

The event will be livestreamed on Mason’s YouTube channel. Doors open an hour before the ceremony.

The graduates hail from 78 countries and 41 states, and 24% of bachelor’s degree recipients identify as first-generation graduates.

Students also will be honored at two degree celebrations Thursday. Guest tickets are required for Commencement and the degree celebrations.

Paul Misener, JD ’93, founder and principal of Misener Innovation and a former global vice president at Amazon, is the featured Commencement speaker. 

Shruti Sekar, an Honors College student graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, is the student speaker.

The top five majors among the 2,962 undergraduates in the winter Class of 2023 are business; psychology; criminology, law and society; computer science; and information technology.

Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors account for 29% of the students earning bachelor’s degrees and 31% of students earning advanced degrees, indicating that Mason is addressing the need to produce tech talent for Northern Virginia and around the state. Health science majors make up 8% of undergraduate degree earners this winter.

For the 1,576 students earning master’s degrees, the top five majors are special education, data analytics engineering, curriculum and instruction, computer science, and business administration.

The top majors for the 154 students earning doctoral degrees are education, economics, computer science, and psychology.

The winter graduating class also includes seven law school graduates.