The National Science Foundation recently announced its rankings of schools nation-wide in the area of financing for federal research and development projects for 2003, the most recent year for which data is available. George Mason’s SPP, which was classified as a political science program for the purpose of the study, came in fourth—after only the Naval Postgraduate School, Harvard University, and the University of Michigan. SPP was ahead of schools like Princeton University, ranked sixth, and Duke University, ranked seventh. “We beat out schools that have been around a lot longer than we have, who have been running their programs a lot longer than we have,” said Dean Kingsley Haynes. He expects SPP to rise in the ranks when the statistics for 2004 are released and is proud of what the current rankings mean for the school. “Our high placement shows we’re able to attract grants and contracts from a wide variety of sources in the federal government, and to do that year in and year out the way we do, you have to do a good job consistently—or they’ll drop you.” The school’s biggest funders in the federal government are NASA, the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation; it also receives significant amounts from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Commerce. In terms of total research and development money, from government and non-government sources, SPP was ranked fifteenth.