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Dear Fellow Patriots:

I am writing to announce the beginning of an important new chapter in the history of research at George Mason �鶹����. Drawing on our roots as the university that overcame adversity to become the nation’s youngest-ever R1 institution, we are now poised to launch a university-wide research project that will sharpen our focus on humanity’s most pressing needs while maximizing our competitiveness for vital research funding in this very uncertain time.

Last year I challenged a group of faculty and university leaders to identify the greatest threats to humanity’s ability to live a peaceful, healthy, prosperous and just existence. The point of the exercise was to establish a framework to align the full force of our scholarly enterprise around solving those so-called grand challenges.

They went to work. From their dazzling array of inspiring research came long lists of worthy possibilities, which the team carefully rendered to 13 groupings, and finally to six overarching challenges:

• Advancing 21st century education for all
• Building a climate-resilient society
• Driving responsible digital innovation and sustainable infrastructure
• Improving human health, well-being, and preparedness
• Pioneering space exploration, research and collaboration
• Strengthening peace, trust and engagement in democracy

These are grand challenges of our times as seen by our faculty. And I agree with them. But as I studied them, two astounding truths emerged.

First, the group inadvertently expressed each of these topics as solutions, not challenges. Their positioning tells of their ambitions to move immediately past problem articulation and on to problem solving. It is the most optimistic approach to grand challenges I have ever read.

Second, these are not free-standing challenges, but six interlocking solutions to a single, existential grand challenge—a future that is shaping up to be one we do not want for our children or choose for ourselves. This is the singular grand challenge confronting all of humanity. Unprecedented action is required immediately to secure the future we want, not one we are forced to endure.

�鶹���� world is at a crossroads: It is time either to brace ourselves for global decline and a future that none of us wants, or seize back control of our destiny and work to reverse course. It will take all of us working together on all of these solutions at once to alter the trajectory of our future.

But given today’s extremely volatile federal funding environment, why launch a new research initiative? In some ways, this a very good time to introduce such a project because the moment demands that research enterprises maximize coordination and efficiency to stay viable.

With that, I am proud to introduce The Grand Challenge Initiative. We have many ways of tackling our most fundamental threat. Still, we are indivisible in our resolve to do our part to assure that our descendants will inherit a world where it is possible to pursue the lives they want for themselves. In that respect, we are one world, one people, and one university, with one Grand Challenge in front of us. I encourage you to explore this website to see the many ways our faculty are already hard at work on the Grand Challenge.

To this challenge we will throw our six Grand Solutions. We will organize our research and learning communities around them. �鶹���� resources and priorities will be aligned to give preference to these efforts. Best of all, every academic unit on campus will be able to see itself in at least one of the Grand Solutions, and chart its contribution to the cause of defeating humanity’s ultimate Grand Challenge.

The world on the horizon can look very unsettling to the untrained eye, as changes that we experience all around us seem to give rise to an unrecognizable and often discouraging future.

But learned eyes like those of our faculty also can envision a world replete with possibility and opportunity. Instead of asking, “What if we can’t fix what’s broken in our world?” they ask a far more compelling question: “What if we can?”

Patriots, let’s all make answering that question the cause of our time together at this university.

Sincerely,

Gregory Washington
President