Alan Gilbert Merten (December 27, 1941 – May 21, 2020)[1][2] was the fifth president of George Mason University.

[3] Merten was born on December 27, 1941, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Merten began his academic career as an engineering professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

He was then appointed dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, and then dean of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, an Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York.

[3] Merten died on May 21, 2020, at a nursing home in Naples, Florida at age 78, following a battle with Parkinson's disease.