Archive for July, 2009

University of Chicago

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

The University of Chicago (commonly referred to as UChicago, The U of C, or just Chicago) is a private, coeducational research university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was incorporated by oil magnate and benefactor John D. Rockefeller and the American Baptist Education Society in 1890; William Rainey Harper became its first president in 1891 and the first classes were held in 1892.

The University is affiliated with 82 Nobel Prize laureates. The university and its undergraduate college have a reputation of devotion to academic scholarship and intellectualism. Historically, the university has also been noted for its undergraduate core curriculum known as the Common Core pioneered by Robert Maynard Hutchins; for several influential academic movements and centers, such as the Chicago School of Economics, the Chicago School of Sociology, the Law and Economics movement in legal analysis, and several of the most prominent movements in anthropology; and for its role in developing modern physics leading to the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The university is also home to the Committee on Social Thought, an interdisciplinary graduate research program, and to the largest university press in the United States. (more…)

University of Miami

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

The University of Miami (commonly referred to as UM, Miami of Florida, or The U) is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 in the city of Coral Gables, Florida, a historic suburb of Miami. The Miller School of Medicine and various other departments are located in Miami proper at the Miami Civic Center and on Virginia Key.

The university currently enrolls 15,449 students in approximately 115 undergraduate, 114 master’s, 51 doctoral, and two professional areas of study. The University’s students represent all 50 states and 148 foreign countries. There are currently 2,348 full-time faculty members whose ranks include Fulbright Scholars, Guggenheim Fellows, and National Science Foundation award recipients. Of this distinguished faculty, 97% hold doctorates or terminal degrees in their field. With more than 13,000 full and part-time faculty and staff, UM is the largest private employer in Miami-Dade County.

The University of Miami is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and 23 additional professional and educational accrediting agencies. UM is a member of the American Association of University Women, the American Council on Education, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Association of American Colleges, the Florida Association of Colleges and Universities, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. (more…)

Howard University

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Howard University is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States.

Howard was established by a charter in 1867, and much of its early funding came from endowment, private benefaction, and tuition. An annual congressional appropriation administered by the Secretary of the Interior funded the school.[citation needed] It was named for founder Oliver Otis Howard who was commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau and who later served as a president of the school. Today, it is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund and is partially funded by the US Government, which gives approximately $235 million annually. From its outset, it was nonsectarian and open to people of both sexes and all races. Howard has graduate schools of pharmacy, law, medicine, dentistry and divinity, in addition to the undergraduate program. The current enrollment is approximately 11,000, including 7,000 undergraduates. The university’s football homecoming activities serve as one of the premier annual events in Washington. (more…)

Dartmouth College

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Dartmouth College (pronounced /?dɑrtm?θ/) is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire. Incorporated as “Trustees of Dartmouth College,” it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. In addition to its undergraduate liberal arts program, Dartmouth has medical, engineering, and business schools, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences. With a total enrollment of 5,848, Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League.

Established in 1769 by Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock with funds largely raised by the efforts of Native American preacher Samson Occom, the College’s initial mission was to acculturate and Christianize the Native Americans. After a long period of financial and political struggles, Dartmouth emerged from relative obscurity in the early twentieth century. In 2004, Booz Allen Hamilton selected Dartmouth College as a model of institutional endurance “whose record of endurance has had implications and benefits for all American organizations, both academic and commercial,” citing Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward and Dartmouth’s successful self-reinvention in the late 1800s. Dartmouth alumni, from Daniel Webster to the many donors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have been famously involved in their college.

Dartmouth is located on a rural 269-acre (1.1 km?) campus in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire. Given the College’s isolated location, participation in athletics and the school’s Greek system is high. Dartmouth’s 34 varsity sports teams compete in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. Students are also well-known for preserving a variety of strong campus traditions. (more…)

Rice University

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

William Marsh Rice University (commonly known as Rice University and opened in 1912 as The William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science and Art) is a private coeducational research university located in Houston, Texas, United States. Its campus is located near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center.

The student body consists of over 3,000 undergraduate, 897 post-graduate, and 1,247 doctoral students, and awarded 1,448 degrees in 2007. The university employs 611 full-time faculty and 396 part-time or adjunct faculty members in 2007. Rice has a very high level of research activity and had $77.2 million in sponsored research funding in 2007. Rice is noted for its applied science programs in the fields of nanotechnology, artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, and space science. Rice was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1985. The university is organized into eight schools offering 40 undergraduate degree programs, 51 masters programs, and 29 doctoral programs.

Rice opened in 1912 as a coeducational institution with free tuition. The university was founded several years after the murder of its namesake, the prominent Houston businessman William Marsh Rice, who left a $4.6 million ($111 million in current dollars) funding endowment in his will. It is listed as one of thirty Hidden Ivies and as one of Newsweek’s “New Ivies”. (more…)