Costello College of Business News

George Mason University has announced a generous multi-year commitment from Schwab Advisor Services in partnership with the Charles Schwab Foundation to grow and strengthen George Mason’s Financial Planning and Wealth Management Program (FPWM) and to position it to meet the region’s strong demand for certified financial planners.

When Grant Patterson began his career in accounting at Beers and Cutler, his team was searching for a staff member to recruit and present at George Mason University. As he took more recruiting trips, he got to know the faculty well and connected with student organizations. Eventually, the firm’s partner at the time, John Niehoff, BS Accounting ’84, asked him if he would be willing to manage the recruiting relationship at George Mason, and Patterson was more than willing to step into that role.

After taking the Survey of Accounting 203 course with Muhammad Awais (BS Accounting ‘13, MS Accounting ‘14), an adjunct instructor at the Costello College of Business, Khaled Alkurd knew everything he needed to know to switch his area of study from marketing to accounting.

There has been a flurry of activity in federal acquisition this year. From the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts across federal agencies to the numerous reform initiatives in defense acquisition and the Federal Acquisition Regulation, these activities are having a major impact on today’s government contracting industrial base. The timing was ideal for bringing together government, industry, and academia for a serious discussion about the current performance of and future prospects for the government contracting community.

Boards with higher social capital enjoy more market freedom to engage in potentially risky strategic alliances — to the ultimate benefit of their firms.

At the end of the 2025 spring semester, Brian Ngac, an instructional assistant professor of Information Systems and Operations Management (ISOM) at the Costello College of Business and FWI Corporate Partner Faculty Fellow, and Nirup Menon, professor of ISOM at Costello, received word that another one of their experiential learning proposals won a grant from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI).

The first-of-its-kind index evaluates current structure of the federal contracting industrial base, contracting trends, and the financial performance of government contracting firms

As the creative director at Outright, a full-service creative agency dedicated to turning heads for modern brands, Kate Gazzillo’s expertise includes using AI creatively, often representing her agency in panels, keynote addresses, and other speaking engagements.

Auditors with less common first names are more likely to deviate from auditing norms. But is their individualism an asset or a liability?

Skip West, founder of MAXSA Innovations and adjunct faculty at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, offers the course Turning Ideas into Successful Companies once a year to MBA students. The concept for the course came from West’s own entrepreneurial experiences of turning his ideas into companies.