A new leader for George Mason University was announced early Thursday morning, following President Alan Merten’s announcement in March that he planned to retire at the end of this school year.
Angel Cabrera, 44, is currently the president of Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona. He’ll take the reins in Fairfax this summer, becoming the sixth president in GMU’s 39-year history.
Merten had been president since 1996, overseeing an enrollment increase from 24,000 to more than 33,000, and watching the admissions rate drop from 75 percent to 50 percent in that time.
Cabrera, a native of Spain, was a professor and dean at IE Business School in Madrid from 1998 to 2004, when he joined Thunderbird.
He earned doctorate and master’s degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology, attending as a Fullbright Scholar. His bachelor’s and an engineering master’s come from Madrid Polytechnical University, which GMU officials call Spain’s premier engineering school.
“The search was extensive and comprehensive, and the result, I am confident, is one in which all of us will take great pride,” said Lovey Hammel, a member of the school’s governing board and chairwoman of the search committee. “Dr. Cabrera brings with him an impressive global vision, an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit in keeping with Mason’s, and an impressive commitment to collaboration.”
