The University of Southern California

The University of Southern California  is a private research university located in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California. USC has historically educated a large number of the region's business leaders and professionals. In recent decades, the university has also leveraged its location in Los Angeles to establish relationships with research and cultural institutions throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim. An engine for economic activity, USC contributes $8 billion annually to the economy of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and California.


For the 2014–15 academic year, there were 18,740 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs. USC also has 23,729 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, and medicine. The university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the world, consistently ranking among the top 3 in external contributions and alumni giving rates. Multiple academic rankings list the University of Southern California as being among the top 25 universities in the United States. With an acceptance rate of 16 percent, USC is also among the most selective academic institutions in the nation.

USC sponsors a variety of intercollegiate sports and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. Members of the sports teams, the Trojans, have won 102 NCAA team championships, ranking them third in the nation, and 378 NCAA individual championships, ranking them second in the nation. Trojan athletes have won 288 medals at the Olympic games , more than any other university in the United States. If USC were a country, its athletes would have collectively received the 12th-most Olympic gold medals in history. In 1969, it joined the Association of American Universities.


The colors of USC are cardinal and gold, which were approved by USC's third president, the Reverend George W. White, in 1896. In 1958, the shade of gold, which was originally more of an orange color, was changed to a more yellow shade. The letterman's awards were the first to make the change.

USC students and athletes are known as Trojans, epitomized by the Trojan Shrine, nicknamed "Tommy Trojan", near the center of campus. Until 1912, USC students  were known as Fighting Methodists or Wesleyans, though neither name was approved by the university. During a fateful track and field meet with Stanford University, the USC team was beaten early and seemingly conclusively. After only the first few events, it seemed implausible that USC would ever win; however, the team fought back, winning many of the later events, to lose only by a slight margin. After this contest, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Owen Bird reported that the USC athletes "fought on like the Trojans of antiquity", and the president of the university at the time, George F. Bovard, approved the name officially.


The University Park campus is in the University Park district of Los Angeles, 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest of Downtown Los Angeles. The campus's boundaries are Jefferson Boulevard on the north and northeast, Figueroa Street on the southeast, Exposition Boulevard on the south, and Vermont Avenue on the west. Since the 1960s, through campus vehicle traffic has been either severely restricted or entirely prohibited on some thoroughfares. The University Park campus is within walking distance to Los Angeles landmarks such as the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, and Los Angeles Coliseum. Most buildings are in the Romanesque Revival style, although some dormitories, engineering buildings, and physical sciences labs are of various Modernist styles  that sharply contrast with the predominantly red-brick campus. Widney Alumni House, built in 1880, is the oldest university building in Southern California. In recent years the campus has been renovated to remove the vestiges of old roads and replace them with traditional university quads and gardens. The historic portion of the main campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

The School of Policy, Planning, and Development also runs a satellite campus in Sacramento. In 2005, USC established a federal relations office in Washington, D.C. A Health Sciences Alhambra campus holds The Primary Care Physician Assistant Program, the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research and the Masters in Public Health Program.


USC's role in making visible and sustained improvements in the neighborhoods surrounding both the University Park and Health Sciences campuses earned it the distinction of College of the Year 2000 by the Time/Princeton Review College Guide.

Roughly half of the university's students volunteer in community-service programs in neighborhoods around campus and throughout Los Angeles. These outreach programs, as well as previous administrations' commitment to remaining in South Los Angeles amid widespread calls to move the campus following the 1965 Watts Riots, are credited for the safety of the university during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. The ZIP code for USC is 90089 and the surrounding University Park community is 90007.

Health Sciences campus

Located three miles (5 km) from downtown Los Angeles and seven miles (11 km) from the University Park campus, USC's Health Sciences campus is a major center for basic and clinical biomedical research in the fields of cancer, gene therapy, the neurosciences, and transplantation biology, among others. The 50-acre (20 ha) campus is home to the region's first and oldest medical and pharmacy schools, as well as acclaimed programs in physical therapy, occupational therapy (which are respectively ranked No. 1 and No. 3 by U.S. News & World Report) and pharmacy. As well, USC physicians serve more than one million patients each year.

In addition to the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, which is one of the nation's largest teaching hospitals, the campus includes three patient care facilities: USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, USC University Hospital, and the USC Eye Institute. USC faculty staffs these and many other hospitals in Southern California, including the internationally acclaimed Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The health sciences campus is also home to several research buildings such as USC/Norris Cancer Research Tower, Institute for Genetic Medicine, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Harlyne J. Norris Cancer Research Tower and Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research.

In July 2013, the University expanded its medical services into the foothill communities of northern Los Angeles when it acquired the 185 bed Verdugo Hills Hospital located in Glendale, California. USC planned on making at least $30 million in capital improvements to the facility, which was officially renamed USC Verdugo Hills Hospital. This 40-year-old hospital provides the community a 24-hour emergency department, primary stroke center, maternity/labor and delivery, cardiac rehabilitation, and imaging and diagnostic services.

Organization and administration

USC is a private public-benefit nonprofit corporation controlled by a Board of Trustees composed of 50 voting members and several life trustees, honorary trustees, and trustees emeriti who do not vote. Voting members of the Board of Trustees are elected for five-year terms. One fifth of the Trustees stand for re-election each year, and votes are cast only by the trustees not standing for election. Trustees tend to be high-ranking executives of large corporations  successful alumni, members of the upper echelons of university administration, or some combination of the three.

The university administration consists of a president, a provost, several vice-presidents of various departments, a treasurer, a chief information officer, and an athletic director. The current president is C. L. Max Nikias. In 2008, Nikias' predecessor, Steven Sample, was one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a salary of $1.9 million.

The USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the Graduate School, and the 17 professional schools are each led by an academic dean. USC occasionally awards emeritus titles to former administrators. There are currently six administrators emeriti.

The University of Southern California's 17 professional schools include the USC Leventhal School of Accounting, USC School of Architecture, USC Marshall School of Business, USC School of Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC, USC Rossier School of Education, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, USC Roski School of Fine Arts and Design, USC Davis School of Gerontology, USC Gould School of Law, Keck School of Medicine of USC, USC Thornton School of Music, USC School of Pharmacy, USC Price School of Public Policy, USC School of Social Work, and USC School of Theatre.

University of Southern California academics

USC is a large, primarily residential research university. The majority of the student body was undergraduate until 2007, when graduate student enrollment began to exceed undergraduate. The four-year, full-time undergraduate instructional program is classified as "balanced arts & sciences/professions" with a high graduate coexistence. Admissions are characterized as "most selective, lower transfer in"; 95 undergraduate majors and 147 academic and professional minors are offered.The graduate program is classified as "comprehensive" and offers 134 master's, doctoral, and professional degrees through 17 professional schools. USC is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The university was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1969. USC's academic departments fall either under the general liberal arts and sciences of the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences for undergraduates, the Graduate School for graduates, or the university's 18 professional schools.

USC presently has five Nobel Laureates on staff, eight Rhodes Scholars three MacArthur Fellows, 181 Fulbright Scholars one Turing Award winner, three winners of the National Medal of Arts, one winner of the National Humanities Medal, three winners of the National Medal of Science, and three winners of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation among its alumni and faculty. In addition to its academic awards, USC has produced the most Oscar winners out of any institution in the world by a significant margin.


The USC School of Architecture was established in 1916, the first in Southern California. From at least 1972 to 1976, and likely for a number of years prior to 1972, it was called The School of Architecture and Fine Art. The School of Fine Art  was eventually named the Roski School of Fine Arts in 2006 during a ceremony to open, the then, new Masters of Fine Art building occupying the previous and completely refurbished, Lucky Blue Jean factory. This small department grew rapidly with the help of the Allied Architects of Los Angeles. A separate School of Architecture was organized in September 1925. The school has been home to teachers such as Richard Neutra, Ralph Knowles, James Steele, A. Quincy Jones, William Pereira and Pierre Koenig. The school of architecture also claims notable alumni Frank Gehry, Jon Jerde, Thom Mayne, Raphael Soriano, Gregory Ain, and Pierre Koenig. Two of the alumni have become Pritzker Prize winners. In 2006, Qingyun Ma, a distinguished Shanghai-based architect, was named dean of the school.

The Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry at the University of Southern California was established in 1897 as The College of Dentistry, and today awards undergraduate and graduate degrees. Headed by Dean Avishai Sadan, D.M.D., the school traditionally has maintained five Divisions: Academic Affairs & Student Life, Clinical Affairs, Continuing Education, Research, and Community Health Programs and Hospital Affairs. In 2006, the USC Department of Physical Therapy and Biokinesiology, and the USC Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, which both had previously been organized as "Independent Health Professions" programs at USC's College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, were administratively aligned under the School of Dentistry and renamed "Divisions," bringing the total number of Divisions at the School of Dentistry to seven. In 2010, alumnus Herman Ostrow donated $35 million to name the school the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry. In 2013 the school introduced an eighth division, and in 2014 a $20 million gift endowed and named the USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy.

USC collaborated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University to offer the USC EMBA program in Shanghai. USC Dornsife also operates two international study centers in Paris and Madrid. The Marshall School of Business has satellite campuses in Orange County and San Diego.

The University of California

The University of California, Berkeley is a leading public research university located in Berkeley, California. Founded in 1868, Berkeley is the oldest of the ten research universities affiliated with the University of California system.

It is considered by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings as one of six university brands that lead in world reputation rankings in 2016 and is ranked third on the U.S. News' 2015 Best Global Universities rankings conducted in the U.S. and nearly 50 other countries.The Academic Ranking of World Universities also ranks the University of California, Berkeley fourth in the world overall, and first among public universities. It is broadly ranked first in science, third in engineering, and fifth in social sciences, with specific rankings of first in chemistry, first in physics, third in computer science, fourth in mathematics, and fourth in economics/business.The university is also well known for producing a high number of entrepreneurs.

Established in 1868 as the result of the merger of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland, Berkeley offers approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines The Dwinelle Bill of March 5, 1868 stated that the "University shall have for its design, to provide instruction and thorough and complete education in all departments of science, literature and art, industrial and profession[al] pursuits, and general education, and also special courses of instruction in preparation for the professions Cal co-manages three United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Berkeley faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 72 Nobel Prizes 9 Wolf Prizes, 13 Fields Medals 22 Turing Awards, 45 MacArthur Fellowships,20 Academy Awards, 14 Pulitzer Prizes and 105 Olympic gold medals To date, along with Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley scientists and researchers have discovered 16 chemical elements of the periodic table – more than any other university in the world.Lawrence Livermore Lab also discovered or co-discovered six chemical elements. Berkeley is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and continues to have very high research activity with $730.7 million in research and development expenditures in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014.

During World War II, following Glenn Seaborg's then-secret discovery of plutonium, Ernest Orlando Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory began to contract with the U.S. Army to develop the atomic bomb. UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942.[33][34] Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley is now a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory .

Originally, military training was compulsory for male undergraduates, and Berkeley housed an armory for that purpose. In 1917, Berkeley's ROTC program was established, and its School of Military Aeronautics trained future pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle, who graduated with a B.A. in 1922. Both Robert McNamara and Frederick C. Weyand graduated from UC Berkeley's ROTC program, earning B.A. degrees in 1937 and 1938, respectively. In 1926, future fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz established the first Naval Reserve Officers Training Corpsunit at Berkeley. During World War II, the military increased its presence on campus to recruit more officers, and by 1944, more than 1,000 Berkeley students were enrolled in the V-12 Navy College Training Program and naval training school for diesel engineering. The Board of Regents ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962.

During the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an anti-communist loyalty oath. A number of faculty members objected and were dismissed ten years passed before they were reinstated with back pay.

Funding

As state funding declined,Berkeley turned to private sources: BP donated $400 million over 10 years to develop biofuels,theHewlett Foundation gave $113 million to endow 100 faculty chairs, and Dow Chemical gave $10 million to research sustainability.The BP grant has been criticized fordiverting food production to fuel production. The 2008–13 Campaign for Berkeley raised $3.13 billion from 281,855 donors.

The original name University of California was frequently shortened to California or Cal. UC Berkeley's athletic teams date to this time and so are referred to as the California Golden Bears, Cal Bears, or just Cal. Today, University of California refers to a statewide school system. Referring to the University of California, Berkeley as UCB or University of California at Berkeley is discouraged and the domain name is berkeley.edu. Moreover, the term "Cal Berkeley" is not a correct reference to the school, but is occasionally used. Berkeley is unaffiliated with the Berklee College of Music or Berkeley College.

Undergraduate programs

The four-year, full-time undergraduate program has a focus on the arts and sciences with a high level of co-existence in undergraduate and graduate programs. Freshman admission is selective but there are high levels of transfer-in. 106 Bachelor's degrees are offered across the Haas School of Business (1), College of Chemistry (5), College of Engineering (20), College of Environmental Design (3), College of Letters and Science (67), College of Natural Resources (10), and other individual majors (2). The most popular majors are Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Political Science, Molecular and Cell Biology, Environmental Science, and Economics.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2015–2016 ranks Berkeley 13th in the world for academics and 6th in the world for reputation. In its 2016 edition, U.S. News & World Report ranked Berkeley 3rd in their "Best Global University Rankings. In 2015, Berkeley was ranked 4th in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities and 26th in the QS World University Rankings. The Center for World University Rankings ranked the university 7th in the world based on quality of education, alumni employment, quality of faculty, publications, influence, citations, broad impact, and patents in 2015.

The Berkeley campus encompasses approximately 1,232 acres though the "central campus" occupies only the low-lying western 178 acres of this area. Of the remaining acres, approximately 200 acres are occupied by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; other facilities above the main campus include the Lawrence Hall of Science and several research units, notably the Space Sciences Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, an undeveloped 800-acre ecological preserve, the University of California Botanical Garden and a recreation center in Strawberry Canyon. Portions of the mostly undeveloped, eastern area of the campus are actually within the City of Oakland; these portions extend from the Claremont Resort north through the Panoramic Hill neighborhood to Tilden Park.

To the west of the central campus is the downtown business district of Berkeley; to the northwest is the neighborhood of North Berkeley, including the so-called Gourmet Ghetto, a commercial district known for high quality dining due to the presence of such world-renowned restaurants as Chez Panisse. Immediately to the north is a quiet residential neighborhood known as Northside with a large graduate student population situated north of that are the upscale residential neighborhoods of the Berkeley Hills. Immediately southeast of campus lies fraternity row, and beyond that the Clark Kerr Campus and an upscale residential area named Claremont. The area south of the university includes student housing and Telegraph Avenue, one of Berkeley's main shopping districts with stores, street vendors and restaurants catering to college students and tourists. In addition, the University also owns land to the northwest of the main campus, a 90-acre married student housing complex in the nearby town of Albany and a field research station several miles to the north in Richmond, California.

UC Berkeley has a reputation for student activism, stemming from the 1960s and the Free Speech Movement. Today, Berkeley is known as a lively campus with activism in many forms, from email petitions, presentations on Sproul Plaza and volunteering, to the occasional protest. During the 2006–07 school year, there were 94 political student groups on campus including MEChXA de UC Berkeley, BerkeleyAmerican Civil Liberties Union, Berkeley Students for Life, Campus Greens, The Sustainability Team the Berkeley Student Food Collective, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Cal Berkeley Democrats, and the Berkeley College Republicans. Berkeley sends the most students to the Peace Corps of any university in the nation.

The Residence Hall Assembly is the student-run residence hall organization that oversees all aspects of residence wide event planning, legislation, sponsorships and activities for over 7,200 on-campus undergraduate residents. Founded in 1988 by the President's Council, it is now funded and supported by the Residential and Student Service Programs department on campus.

California – Stanford rivalry

One of the most famous moments in Big Game history occurred during the 85th Big Game on November 20, 1982. In what has become known as "the band play" or simply The Play, Cal scored the winning touchdown in the final seconds with a kickoff return that involved a series of laterals and the Stanford marching band rushing onto the field.

The California Golden Bears is the nickname used for 30 varsity athletic programs and various club teams of the University of California, Berkeley. Referred to in athletic competition as California or Cal, the university competes in the NCAA's Division I primarily as a member of the Pac-12 Conference, and for a limited number of sports as a member of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation . Over the course of the school's history, California has won team national titles in 13 men's and 3 women's sports and 103 team titles overall. Cal athletes have also competed in the Olympics for a host of different countries. Notable facilities used by the Bears include California Memorial Stadium and Haas Pavilion . Cal finished the 2010–11 athletic season with 1,219.50 points, earning third place in the Director's Cup standings, the Golden Bears' highest finish ever. Cal did not receive any points for its national championships in rugby and men's crew because those sports are not governed by the NCAA. Cal finished 12th in the 2014-15 standings.

Football

The California football team began play in 1885 and with its home games at California Memorial Stadium , except for in 2011 while Memorial Stadium was being renovated; the team played at San Francisco's AT&T Park. The team also has produced two of the oddest and most memorable plays in college football: Roy "Wrong Way" Riegels' fumble recovery and run toward the Cal goal line in the 1929 Rose Bowl, and The Play in the 1982 Big Game with the winning kickoff return after five laterals. The program is nationally renowned despite not participating in a major bowl game between 1959 and, yet has been consistently ranked nationally during the past decade. The program has also produced many current NFL stars, including but not limited to Aaron Rodgers Ryan Longwell, Marshawn Lynch, DeSean Jackson, Desmond Bishop, and Jahvid Best. The recently retired Tony Gonzalez, the NFL's all-time receptions leader among tight ends, played both football and basketball at Cal. Head coach Sonny Dykes began his tenure in 2012.

Cross country

The University of California's intercollegiate cross country team is under the direction of head coach Tony Sandoval who is in his 30th year at the university and 20th season as the cross country head coach.

Golf

The University of California's golf team has won one team national championship in 2004 and won two conference championships in 2012 and 2013. They also have one individual national champion, Max Homa, in 2013. The team's home course is at the Orinda Country Club in Orinda, they currently practice at the Metropolitan Golf Links inOakland, and the head coach is Steve Desimone.

Columbia University

Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. Columbia is the oldest college in New York State and the fifth chartered institution of higher learning in the country, making it one of nine colonial colleges founded before the Declaration of Independence. After the American Revolutionary War, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. A 1787 charter placed the institution under a private board of trustees before it was renamed Columbia University in 1896 when the campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location inMorningside Heights occupying 32 acres Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree.

The university is organized into twenty schools, including Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and theSchool of General Studies. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción and Nairobi. It has affiliations with several other institutions nearby, including Teachers College,Barnard College, and Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, UCL,Sciences Po Paris and the Juilliard School.

Columbia annually administers Notable alumni and former students include five Founding Fathers of the United States; nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court 20 living billionaires 29Academy Award winners and 29 heads of state, including three United States Presidents. Additionally, some 100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, faculty, or staff. Columbia is second only to Harvard in the number of Pulitzer Prize winning alumni and former students, boasting over 100 recipients as of 2015.

Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the college's first president, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the college's first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan. The college was officially founded on October 31, 1754, as King's College by royal charter ofKing George II, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.

In 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of theAmerican Revolution, his chief opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777, Alexander Hamilton. The American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, and was catastrophic for the operation of King's College, which suspended instruction for eight years beginning in 1776 with the arrival of the Continental Army. The suspension continued through the military occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The college's library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a military hospital first by American and then British forces. Loyalists were forced to abandon their King's College in New York, which was seized by the rebels and renamed Columbia College. The Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded King's Collegiate School.

On May 21, 1787, William Samuel Johnson, the son of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was unanimously elected President of Columbia College. Prior to serving at the university, Johnson had participated in the First Continental Congress and been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. For a period in the 1790s, with New York City as the federal and state capital and the country under successive Federalistgovernments, a revived Columbia thrived under the auspices of Federalists such as Hamilton and Jay. Both President George Washington and Vice President John Adams attended the college's commencement on May 6, 1789, as a tribute of honor to the many alumni of the school who had been involved in the American Revolution.

In 1896, the trustees officially authorized the use of yet another new name, Columbia University, and today the institution is officially known as "Columbia University in the City of New York." At the same time, university president Seth Low moved the campus again, from 49th Street to its present location, a more spacious campus in the developing neighborhood of Morningside Heights.[35] Under the leadership of Low's successor,Nicholas Murray Butler, who served for over four decades, Columbia rapidly became the nation's major institution for research, setting the "multiversity" model that later universities would adopt.

Morningside Heights

The majority of Columbia's graduate and undergraduate studies are conducted in Morningside Heights on Seth Low's late-19th century vision of a university campus where all disciplines could be taught in one location. The campus was designed along Beaux-Arts principles by architects McKim, Mead, and White. Columbia's main campus occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres , in Morningside Heights, New York City, a neighborhood that contains a number of academic institutions. The university owns over 7,800 apartments in Morningside Heights, housing faculty, graduate students, and staff. Almost two dozen undergraduate dormitories are located on campus or in Morningside Heights. Columbia University has an extensive underground tunnel system more than a century old, with the oldest portions predating the present campus. Some of these remain accessible to the public, while others have been cordoned off.

Other campuses

A statue by sculptor Daniel Chester French called Alma Mater is centered on the front steps ofLow Memorial Library. McKim, Mead & White invited French to build the sculpture in order to harmonize with the larger composition of the court and library in the center of the campus. Draped in an academic gown, the female figure of Alma Mater wears a crown of laurels and sits on a throne. The scroll-like arms of the throne end in lamps, representing sapientia and doctrina. A book signifying knowledge, balances on her lap, and an owl, the attribute of wisdom, is hidden in the folds of her gown. Her right hand holds a scepter composed of four sprays of wheat, terminating with a crown of King's College which refers to Columbia's origin as a Royalist institution in 1754. A local actress named Mary Lawton was said to have posed for parts of the sculpture. The statue was dedicated on September 23, 1903, as a gift of Mr. & Mrs. Robert Goelet, and was originally covered in golden leaf. During the Columbia University protests of 1968 a bomb damaged the sculpture, but it has since been repaired. The small hidden owl on the sculpture is also the subject of many Columbia legends, the main legend being that the first student in the freshmen class to find the hidden oIn April 2007, the university purchased more than two-thirds of a 17 acres site for a new campus in Manhattanville, an industrial neighborhood to the north of the Morningside Heights campus. Stretching from 125th Street to 133rd Street, the new campus will house buildings for Columbia's Business School, School of International and Public Affairs, and the Jerome L. Greene Center for Mind, Brain, and Behavior, where research will occur on neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.The $7 billion expansion plan includes demolishing all buildings, except three that are historically significant, eliminating the existing light industry and storage warehouses, and relocating tenants in 132 apartments. Replacing these buildings will be 6,800,000 square feet of space for the university. Community activist groups in West Harlem fought the expansion for reasons ranging from property protection and fair exchange for land, to residents' rights. Subsequent public hearings drew neighborhood opposition. Most recently, as of December 2008, the State of New York's Empire State Development Corporation approved use of eminent domain, which, through declaration of Manhattanville's "blighted" status, gives governmental bodies the right to appropriate private property for public use. On May 20, 2009, the New York State Public Authorities Control Board approved the Manhanttanville expansion plan and the first buildings are under construction. The statue will be valedictorian, and that any subsequent Columbia male who finds it will marry a Barnard student, given that Barnard is awomen's college.

Columbia University is home to many fraternities, sororities, and co-educational Greek organizations. Approximately 10–15% of undergraduate students are associated with Greek life.There has been a Greek presence on campus since the establishment in 1836 of the Delta Chapter of Alpha Delta Phi. The InterGreek Council is the self-governing student organization that provides guidelines and support to its member organizations within each of the three councils at Columbia, the Interfraternity Council, Panhellenic Council, and Multicultural Greek Council. The three council presidents bring their affiliated chapters together once a month to meet as one Greek community. The InterGreek Council meetings provide opportunity for member organizations to learn from each other, work together and advocate for community needs.

Technology and entrepreneurship

The Columbia University Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs was founded in 1999. The student-run group aims to foster entrepreneurship on campus. Each year CORE hosts dozens of events, including talks, #StartupColumbia, a conference and venture competition for $250,000, and Ignite@CU, a weekend for undergrads interested in design, engineering, and entrepreneurship. Notable speakers include Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, Alexis Ohanian, Drew Houston, and Mark Cuban. By 2006, CORE had awarded graduate and undergraduate students over $100,000 in seed capital.

CampusNetwork, an on-campus social networking site called Campus Network that preceded Facebook, was created and popularized by Columbia engineering student Adam Goldberg in 2003. Mark Zuckerberg later asked Goldberg to join him in Palo Alto to work on Facebook, but Goldberg declined the offer. The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science offers a minor in Technical Entrepreneurship through its Center for Technology, Innovation, and Community Engagement. SEAS' entrepreneurship activities focus on community building initiatives in New York and worldwide, made possible through partners such as Microsoft Corporation.

All Columbia undergraduates and graduates as well as students of Barnard College and other Columbia affiliated schools can register to participate in the World Leaders Forum using their student IDs. Even for individuals who do not have the privilege to attend the event live, they can watch the forum via online videos on Columbia University's website.

Past forum speakers include former President of the United States Bill Clinton, the Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Former President of Ghana John Agyekum Kufuor, President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of the Republic of Mozambique Joaquim Alberto Chissano, President of the Republic of Bolivia Carlos Diego Mesa Gisbert, President of the Republic of Romania Ion Iliescu, President of the Republic of Latvia Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, the first female President of Finland Tarja Halonen, President Yudhoyono of Indonesia, President Pervez Musharraf of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Iraq President Jalal Talabani, the 14th Dalai Lama, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, financier George Soros, Mayor of New York City Michael R. Bloomberg, President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, and Al Gore.

The University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's fourth-oldest surviving university.The university grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxfordafter a dispute with the townspeople.The two ancient universities share many common features and are often referred to jointly as "Oxbridge".

Cambridge is formed from a variety of institutions which include 31 constituent colleges and over 100 academic departments organised into six schools. Cambridge University Press, a department of the university, is the world's oldest publishing house and the second-largest university press in the world. The university also operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, and a botanic garden. Cambridge's libraries hold a total of around 15 million books, eight million of which are in Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library.

In the year ended 31 July 2015, the university had a total income of £1.64 billion, of which £397 million was from research grants and contracts. The central university and colleges have a combined endowment of around £5.89 billion, the largest of any universityoutside the United States.[13] The university is closely linked with the development of the high-tech business cluster known as "Silicon Fen". It is a member of numerous associations and forms part of the "golden triangle" of leading English universities and Cambridge University Health Partners, an academic health science centre.

By the late 12th century, the Cambridge region already had a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation, due to monks from the nearby bishopric church of Ely. However, it was an incident at Oxford which is most likely to have formed the establishment of the university: two Oxford scholars were hanged by the town authorities for the death of a woman, without consulting the ecclesiastical authorities, who would normally take precedence in such a case, but were at that time in conflict with the King John. The University of Oxford went into suspension in protest, and most scholars moved to cities such as Paris, Reading, and Cambridge. After the University of Oxford reformed several years later, enough scholars remained in Cambridge to form the nucleus of the new university. In order to claim precedence, it is common for Cambridge to trace its founding to the 1231 charter from King Henry III granting it the right to discipline its own members and an exemption from some taxes.

Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse, Cambridge's first college, in 1284. Many colleges were founded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but colleges continued to be established throughout the centuries to modern times, although there was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson, built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010, making it the newest full college.

Foundation of the colleges

In medieval times, many colleges were founded so that their members would pray for the souls of the founders, and were often associated with chapels or abbeys. A change in the colleges' focus occurred in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. King Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law and to stop teaching "scholastic philosophy". In response, colleges changed their curricula away from canon law, and towards the classics, the Bible, and mathematics.

Nearly a century later, the university was at the centre of a Protestant schism. Many nobles, intellectuals and even commoners saw the ways of the Church of England as being too similar to the Catholic Church and that it was used by the crown to usurp the rightful powers of the counties. East Anglia was the centre of what became the Puritanmovement and at Cambridge, it was particularly strong at Emmanuel, St Catharine's Hall, Sidney Sussex and Christ's College. They produced many "non-conformist" graduates who greatly influenced, by social position or pulpit, the approximately 20,000 Puritans who left for New England and especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s. Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War and head of the English Commonwealth , attended Sidney Sussex.

In the First World War, 13,878 members of the university served and 2,470 were killed. Teaching, and the fees it earned, came almost to a stop and severe financial difficulties followed. As a consequence the university first received systematic state support in 1919, and a Royal Commission appointed in 1920 recommended that the university should receive an annual grant. Following theSecond World War, the university saw a rapid expansion of student numbers and available places; this was partly due to the success and popularity gained by many Cambridge scientists.

Women's education

From 1921 women were awarded diplomas which "conferred the Title of the Degree of Bachelor of Arts". As they were not "admitted to the Degree of Bachelor of Arts" they were excluded from the governing of the university. Since students must belong to a college, and since established colleges remained closed to women, women found admissions restricted to colleges established only for women. Darwin College, the first wholly graduate college of the University, matriculated both men and women students from its inception in 1964 – and elected a mixed fellowship. Of the undergraduate colleges, starting with Churchill, Clare and King's Colleges, the former men's colleges began to admit women between 1972 and 1988. One of the female-only colleges, Girton, also began to admit male students from 1979, but the other female-only colleges did not do likewise. As a result of St Hilda's College, Oxford, ending its ban on male students in 2008, Cambridge is now the only remaining United Kingdom University with female-only colleges. In the academic year 2004–5, the university's student sex ratio, including post-graduates, was male 52%: female 48%.

Town and Gown

The relationship between the university and the city has not always been positive. The phrase Town and Gown is employed to differentiate inhabitants of Cambridge from students at the university, who historically wore academical dress. There are many stories of ferocious rivalry between the two categories: in 1381, strong clashes brought about attacks and looting of university properties while locals contested the privileges granted by the government to the academic staff. Following these events, the Chancellor was given special powers allowing him to prosecute the criminals and re-establish order in the city. Attempts to reconcile the two groups followed over time, and in the 16th century agreements were signed to improve the quality of streets and student accommodation around the city. However, this was followed by new confrontations when the plague hit Cambridge in 1630 and colleges refused to help those affected by the disease by locking their sites.

Nowadays, these conflicts have somewhat subsided and the University has become an opportunity for employment among the population, providing an increased level of wealth in the area. The enormous growth in the number of high-tech, biotech, providers of services and related firms situated near Cambridge has been termed the Cambridge Phenomenon: the addition of 1,500 new, registered companies and as many as 40,000 jobs between 1960 and 2010 has been directly related to the presence and importance of the educational institution.

The colleges are self-governing institutions with their own endowments and property, founded as integral parts of the university. All students and most academics are attached to a college. Their importance lies in the housing, welfare, social functions, and undergraduate teaching they provide. All faculties, departments, research centres, and laboratories belong to the university, which arranges lectures and awards degrees, but undergraduates receive their supervisions small-group teaching sessions, often with just one student within the colleges. Each college appoints its own teaching staff and fellows, who are also members of a university department. The colleges also decide which undergraduates to admit to the university, in accordance with university regulations.

In addition to the 31 colleges, the university is made up of over 150 departments, faculties, schools, syndicates and other institutions. Members of these are usually also members of one of the colleges and responsibility for running the entire academic programme of the university is divided amongst them. The university also houses the Institute of Continuing Education, a centre for part-time study.

Senate and the Regent House

The Senate consists of all holders of the MA degree or higher degrees. It elects the Chancellor and the High Steward, and elected two members of the House of Commons until the Cambridge University constituency was abolished in 1950. Prior to 1926, it was the University's governing body, fulfilling the functions that the Regent House fulfils today. The Regent House is the University's governing body, a direct democracy comprising all resident senior members of the University and the Colleges, together with the Chancellor, the High Steward, the Deputy High Steward, and the Commissary. The public representatives of the Regent House are the two Proctors, elected to serve for one year, on the nomination of the Colleges.


The academic year is divided into three academic terms, determined by the Statutes of the University. Michaelmas term lasts from October to December; Lent term from January to March; and Easter term from April to June.

Within these terms undergraduate teaching takes place within eight-week periods called Full Terms. According to the University statutes, it is a requirement that during this period all students should live within 3 miles of the Church of St Mary the Great; this is defined as Keeping term. Students can graduate only if they fulfill this condition for nine terms when obtaining a Bachelor of Arts or twelve terms when studying for a Master of Science, Engineering or Mathematics.

These terms are shorter than those of many other British universities.Undergraduates are also expected to prepare heavily in the three holidays

The Massachusetts Institute

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university modeland stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. Researchers worked on computers, radar, and inertial guidance during World War II and the Cold War. Post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian. The current 168-acre campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 mile along the northern bank of the Charles River basin.

MIT, with five schools and one college which contain a total of 34 departments, is often cited as among the world's top universities.The Institute is traditionally known for its research and education in the physical sciences and engineering, and more recently in biology, economics, linguistics, and management as well. The "Engineers" sponsor 31 sports, most teams of which compete in the NCAA Division III's New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference; the Division I rowing programs compete as part of the EARC and EAWRC.

As of 2015, 85 Nobel laureates, 52 National Medal of Science recipients, 65 Marshall Scholars, 45 Rhodes Scholars, 38MacArthur Fellows, 34 astronauts, 19 Turing award winners, and 6 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT. The school has a strong entrepreneurial culture, and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world.

The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.
Curricular reforms

In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President Vannevar Bush emphasized the importance of pure sciences like physics and chemistry and reduced the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios.The Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering. Unlike Ivy League schools, MIT catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants for its funding.The school was elected to theAssociation of American Universities in 1934.

Still, as late as 1949, the Lewis Committee lamented in its report on the state of education at MIT that "the Institute is widely conceived as basically a vocational school", a "partly unjustified" perception the committee sought to change. The report comprehensively reviewed the undergraduate curriculum, recommended offering a broader education, and warned against letting engineering and government-sponsored research detract from the sciences and humanities. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the MIT Sloan School of Management were formed in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors and launching competitive graduate programs. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences continued to develop under the successive terms of the more humanistically oriented presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980.

MIT has over 500 recognized student activity groups, including a campus radio station, The Tech student newspaper, an annualentrepreneurship competition, and weekly screenings of popular films by the Lecture Series Committee. Less traditional activities include the "world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction" in English, a model railroad club, and a vibrant folk dance scene. Students, faculty, and staff are involved in over 50 educational outreach and public service programs through the MIT Museum, Edgerton Center, and MIT Public Service Center.

The Independent Activities Period is a four-week-long "term" offering hundreds of optional classes, lectures, demonstrations, and other activities throughout the month of January between the Fall and Spring semesters. Some of the most popular recurring IAP activities are the 6.270, 6.370, and MasLab competitions, the annual "mystery hunt"and Charm School. More than 250 students pursue externships annually at companies in the US and abroad.

The Maclaurin Buildings comprise Buildings 3, 4, and 10, and form a large U-shaped structure enclosing the section of Killian Court farthest from the Charles River. This is the outdoors area where formal Commencement ceremonies occur every June, and is the classic view of MIT featured in many publicity photos. The buildings were named in honor of MIT president Richard C. Maclaurin, who was instrumental in organizing MIT's move from Boston to "The New Technology" campus in Cambridge. The facade of Building 10 is dominated by a colonnade of 10 monumental columns of the classic Ionic order. The Brass Rat, MIT's class ring, features the Building 10 facade on the shank of each ring, including a portrayal of the Great Dome.

The Great Dome, which sits atop Building 10, is modeled on McKim, Mead, and White's Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, which is in turn an imitation of the Pantheon in Rome. The Dome was originally planned to be a cavernous assembly hall, but budget limitations threatened to prevent construction of the Dome altogether. A smaller library and lecture hall instead filled the space. Architectural historian Mark Jarzombek later described the library space as a "capacious oculus light into its center, and its perimeter surrounded by a row of Corinthian columns. Four curved topped aedicules [add] a counter-punctual element. More baroque in flavor that what one normally might have expected from Bosworth, the building seems in fact to be an inside-out quotation from Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral.

Bosworth noted that the columns of the Pantheon's porch are not placed along a straight line, but bow out a bit toward the central axis. This is a classical optical illusion also used in the Parthenon of Athens to make the line of columns appear straight. Bosworth replicated this technique at MIT; to observe it, one has to lie down and sight along the front of the steps.
Rogers Building

The Rogers Building, named for MIT founder William Barton Rogers, is the second building of that name, the original having been demolished on its Back Bay site some years after MIT moved to Cambridge. Located at 77 Massachusetts Avenue, it is the official address of the entire Institute and serves as the entrance to the Infinite Corridor, the main pedestrian path connecting east campus with west campus. The Rogers Building was not a part of the original campus, but was built as a part of MIT's extension of the original Bosworth plan along Massachusetts Avenue.

The spacious lobby is an impressive vestibule topped by a small dome that rejects the neoclassical tradition of reducing scale between the interior and exterior, with the result that the "inner space remains at the less intimate urban scale. The glass oculus at the top was blacked out during World War II but was restored during a renovation in 2000. The School of Architecture and Planning is housed around the dome and the lobby court.
Business

MIT Press primarily publishes academic titles in the fields of Art & Architecture, Visual & Cultural Studies, Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Linguistics, Computer Science, Economics, Finance & Business, Environmental Science, Political Science, Life Sciences, Neuroscience,New Media, and Science, Technology, & Society.

The MIT Press is a distributor for such publishers as Zone Books and Semiotext. In 2000, the MIT Press created CogNet, an online resource for the study of the brain and the cognitive sciences.

The MIT Press also operates the MIT Press Bookstore showcasing both its front and backlist titles, along with a large selection of complementary works from other academic and trade publishers. The retail storefront is located next to the inbound Kendall Square Station of the MBTA Red Line subway in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Bookstore offers customized selections from the MIT Press at many conferences and symposia in the Boston area, and sponsors occasional lectures and book signings at MIT.

In 1981 the MIT Press published its first book under the Bradford Books imprint, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology by Daniel C. Dennett.

A European marketing office was opened in 1969, and a Journals division was added in 1972. In the late 1970s, responding to changing economic conditions, the publisher narrowed the focus of their catalog to a few key areas, initially architecture, computer science and artificial intelligence, economics, and cognitive science. Other areas, such as technology and design, have been added since. The latest addition is environmental science.

The Institute's sports teams are called the Engineers, their mascot since 1914 being a beaver, "nature's engineer". Lester Gardner, a member of the Class of 1898, provided the following justification: "The beaver not only typifies the Tech, but his habits are particularly our own. The beaver is noted for his engineering and mechanical skills and habits of industry. His habits are nocturnal. He does his best work in the dark.

Stanford University

Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, and is known as one of the world's most prestigious institutions.

Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford, former Governor of and U.S. Senator from California and railroad tycoon, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Stanford admitted its first students on October 1, 1891 as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Tuition was free until 1920. The university struggled financially after Leland Stanford's 1893 death and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley. By 1970, Stanford was home to a linear accelerator.

The main campus is in northern Santa Clara Valley adjacent to Palo Alto and between San Jose and San Francisco. Stanford also has land and facilities elsewhere.Its 8,180-acre campus is one of the largest in the United States.The university is also one of the top fundraising institutions in the country, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.

Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many companies including Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Sun Microsystems, Instagram,Snapchat, and Yahoo!, and companies founded by Stanford alumni generate more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, equivalent to the 10th-largest economy in the world. It is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires, 17 astronauts, and 20 Turing Award laureates. It is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress. Sixty Nobel laureates andseven Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, faculty or staff.

The university's Founding Grant of Endowment from the Stanfords was issued in November 1885. Besides defining the operational structure of the university, it made several specific stipulations:

To establish and maintain at such University an educational system, which will, if followed, fit the graduate for some useful pursuit, and to this end to cause the pupils, as easily as may be, to declare the particular calling, which, in life, they may desire to pursue.

To prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught in the University the immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man.

To have taught in the University the right and advantages of association and co-operation.
To afford equal facilities and give equal advantages in the University to both sexes.
To maintain on the Palo Alto estate a farm for instruction in agriculture in all its branches.

Though the trustees are in overall charge of the university, Leland and Jane Stanford as Founders retained great control until their deaths.

Despite the duty to have a co-educational institution in 1899 Jane Stanford, the remaining Founder, added to the Founding Grant the legal requirement that "the number of women attending the University as students shall at no time ever exceed five hundred". She feared the large numbers of women entering would lead the school to become "the Vassar of the West" and felt that would not be an appropriate memorial for her son. In 1933 the requirement was reinterpreted by the trustees to specify an undergraduate male:female ratio of 3:1.The "Stanford ratio" of 3:1 remained in place until the early 1960s. By the late 1960s the "ratio" was about 2:1 for undergraduates, but much more skewed at the graduate level, except in the humanities. In 1973 the University trustees successfully petitioned the courts to have the restriction formally removed. As of 2014 the undergraduate enrollment is split nearly evenly between the sexes though males outnumber females at the graduate level. In the same petition they also removed the prohibition of sectarian worship on campus.

The year after Jane Stanford's death, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake damaged parts of the campus and caused new financial and structural problems, though only two people on campus were killed. Some of the early construction, especially from the second phase between Leland Stanford's death in 1893 and Jane Stanford's death in 1905, was destroyed by the earthquake. The university retains the Quad, part of the Museum, the old Chemistry Building , and Encina Hall . The earthquake destroyed parts of the Main Quad, including the original iteration of Memorial Church and the gate that first marked the entrance of the school, as well as a partially built main library. Rebuilding on a somewhat less grandiose scale began immediately.

World War and late 20th century

After Ray Lyman Wilbur retired in 1943 in the midst of World War II, Donald Tresidder, president of the Board of Trustees, took over as president until his unexpected death in early 1948. In 1949 Wallace Sterling became president and he oversaw the rise of Stanford from a regional university to one of the most prestigious universities in the United States. He was succeeded by Kenneth Pitzer from Rice University who lasted only 19 months, having stepped in just as the university entered its most tumultuous period of student protests. Richard Lyman, former provost, was president from 1971 until 1980; Donald Kennedy also a former provost was president from 1980 until 1992, when he resigned during the midst of a controversy over finances with the U.S. Government. The Board of Trustees brought in an outsider, Gerhard Casper, from the University of Chicago who was president until 2000.

Biology

The biological sciences department evolved rapidly from 1946 to 1972 as its research focus changed, due to the Cold War and other historically significant conditions external to academia. Stanford science went through three phases of experimental direction during that time. In the early 1950s the department remained fixed in the classical independent and self-directed research mode, shunning interdisciplinary collaboration and excessive government funding. Between the 1950s and mid-1960s biological research shifted focus to the molecular level. Then, from the late 1960s onward, Stanford's goal became applying research and findings toward humanistic ends. Each phase was preempted by larger social issues, such as the escalation of the Cold War, the launch of Sputnik, and public concern over medical abuses.

Physics

From 1962 through 1970, negotiations took place between the Cambridge Electron Accelerator Laboratory , the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center , and the US Atomic Energy Commission over the proposed 1970 construction of the Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Ring . It would be the first US electron-positron colliding beam storage ring. Paris explores the competition and cooperation between the two university laboratories and presents diagrams of the proposed facilities, charts detailing location factors, and the parameters of different project proposals between 1967 and 1970. Several rings were built in Europe during the five years that it took to obtain funding for the project, but the extensive project revisions resulted in a superior design that was quickly constructed and paved the way for Nobel Prizes in 1976 for Burton Richter and in 1995 for Martin Perl.

From 1955 to 1985, solid state technology research and development at Stanford University followed three waves of industrial innovation made possible by support from private corporations, mainly Bell Telephone Laboratories, Shockley Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Xerox PARC. In 1969 the Stanford Research Institute operated one of the four original nodes that comprised ARPANET, predecessor to the Internet.

Other uses

Some of the land is managed to provide revenue for the university such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park. Stanford land is also leased for a token rent by the Palo Alto Unified School District for several schools including Palo Alto High School and Gunn High School.El Camino Park, the oldest Palo Alto city park , is also on Stanford land.

Landmarks

Contemporary campus landmarks include the Main Quad and Memorial Church, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts and art gallery, the Stanford Mausoleum and the Angel of Grief,Hoover Tower, the Rodin sculpture garden, the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden, the Arizona Cactus Garden, the Stanford University Arboretum, Green Library and the Dish. Frank Lloyd Wright's 1937 Hanna–Honeycomb House and the 1919 Lou Henry Hoover House are both listed on the National Historic Register. Previous landmarks included Meyer Library, which had been built in 1966; as of October 2014, the university intended to demolish it rather than invest money to bring it up to then-current codes and convert the space into a park

Reputation and rankings

Stanford is ranked 4th among U.S national universities for 2016 by U.S. News and World Report.Notably, Stanford occupies the number one position in numerous domestic college ranking measures, leading Slate to dub Stanford in 2014 as "the Harvard of the 21st century,and The New York Times in the same year to conclude that "Stanford University has become America’s 'it' school, by measures that Harvard once dominated. From polls done by The Princeton Review in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, the most commonly named "dream college" for students was Stanford; separately, parents, too, most frequently named Stanford as their "dream college. A 2003 Gallup poll had Stanford tied for second as the most prestigious university in the eyes of the general public.

Most of the Stanford University campus and other core University owned land is situated within the census-designated place of Stanford though the Stanford University Medical Center, the Stanford Shopping Center, and the Stanford Research Park are officially part of the city of Palo Alto. Its resident population consists of the inhabitants of on-campus housing, including graduate student residences and single-family homes and condominium owned by their faculty inhabitants but located on leased Stanford land. A residential neighborhood adjacent to the Stanford campus, College Terrace, featuring streets named after universities and colleges, including Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Princeton, is neither part of the Stanford CDP nor owned by the University but is part of Palo Alto.

Harvard is a large

Harvard is a large, highly residential research university. The nominal cost of attendance is high, but the University's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages. It operates several arts, cultural, and scientific museums, alongside the Harvard Library, which is the world's largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 million volumes. Harvard's alumni include eight U.S. presidents, several foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 335Rhodes Scholars, and 242 Marshall Scholars. To date, some 150 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medalists and 13 Turing Award winners have been affiliated as students, faculty, or staff

Established originally by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for John Harvard , Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning, and the Harvard Corporation is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College.

The University is organized into eleven separate academic units ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3 miles northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston and the medical, dental, and public healthschools are in the Longwood Medical Area. Harvard's $37.6 billion financial endowment is the largest of any academic institution.

  Colonial

Harvard was formed in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was initially called "New College" or "the college at New Towne". In 1638, the college became home for North America's first known printing press, carried by the ship John of London. In 1639, the college was renamed Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard, who was an alumnus of the University of Cambridge. He had left the school £779 and his library of some 400 books. The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650.

In the early years the College trained many Puritan ministers. It offered a classic curriculum on the English university model ​​many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge but conformed Puritanism. It was never affiliated with any particular denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and Unitarian churches.

During the 20th century, Harvard's international reputation grew as a burgeoning endowment and prominent professors expanded the university's scope. Rapid enrollment growth continued as new graduate schools were begun and the undergraduate College expanded. Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as sister school of Harvard College, became one of the most prominent schools for women in the United States. Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.

In the early 20th century, the student body was predominately "old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians"—a group later called "WASPs" . By the 1970s it was much more diversified.

Harvard's 209-acre main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, about 3 miles west-northwest of the State House in downtown Boston, and extends into the surrounding Harvard Square neighborhood. Harvard Yard itself contains the central administrative offices and main libraries of the university, academic buildings including Sever Hall and University Hall, Memorial Church, and the majority of the freshman dormitories. Sophomore, junior, and senior undergraduates live in twelve residential Houses, nine of which are south of Harvard Yard along or near the Charles River. The other three are located in a residential neighborhood half a mile northwest of the Yard at the Quadrangle , which formerly housed Radcliffe College students until Radcliffe merged its residential system with Harvard. Each residential house contains rooms for undergraduates, House masters, and resident tutors, as well as a dining hall and library. The facilities were made possible by a gift from Yale University alumnus Edward Harkness.

Major campus expansion

Harvard has purchased tracts of land in Allston, a walk across the Charles River from Cambridge, with the intent of major expansion southward.The university now owns approximately fifty percent more land in Allston than in Cambridge. Proposals to connect the Cambridge campus with the new Allston campus include new and enlarged bridges, a shuttle service and/or a tram. Plans also call for sinking part of Storrow Drive for replacement with park land and pedestrian access to the Charles River, as well as the construction of bike paths, and buildings throughout the Allston campus. The institution asserts that such expansion will benefit not only the school, but surrounding community, pointing to such features as the enhanced transit infrastructure, possible shuttles open to the public, and park space which will also be publicly accessible.

One of the foremost driving forces for Harvard's pending expansion is its goal of increasing the scope and strength of its science and technology programs. The university plans to construct two 500,000 square foot (50,000 m²) research complexes in Allston, which would be home to several interdisciplinary programs, including the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an enlarged Engineering department.

Divestment

Since the 1970s, several campaigns have sought to divest Harvard's endowment from holdings the campaigns opposed, including investments in apartheid South Africa, thetobacco industry, Sudan during the Darfur genocide, and the fossil fuel industry.

During the divestment from South Africa movement in the late 1980s, student activists erected a symbolic "shantytown" on Harvard Yard and blockaded a speech given by South African Vice Consul Duke Kent-Brown. The Harvard Management Company repeatedly refused to divest, stating that "operating expenses must not be subject to financially unrealistic strictures or carping by the unsophisticated or by special interest groups. However, the university did eventually reduce its South African holdings by $230 million in response to the pressure.

Libraries and museums

The Harvard University Library System is centered in Widener Library in Harvard Yard and comprises nearly 80 individual libraries holding over 18 million volumes. According to the American Library Association, this makes it the largest academic library in the United States, and one of the largest in the world. Cabot Science Library, Lamont Library, and Widener Library are three of the most popular libraries for undergraduates to use, with easy access and central locations. There are rare books, manuscripts and other special collections throughout Harvard's libraries; Houghton Library, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, and the Harvard University Archives consist principally of rare and unique materials. America's oldest collection of maps, gazetteers, and atlases both old and new is stored in Pusey Library and open to the public. The largest collection of East-Asian language material outside of East Asia is held in the Harvard-Yenching Library.

University rankings

Harvard has been highly ranked by many university rankings. In particular, it has consistently topped the Academic Ranking of World Universities since 2003, and the THE World Reputation Rankings since 2011, when the first time such league tables were published. When the QS and Times were published in partnership as the THE-QS World University Rankings during 2004-2009, Harvard had also been regarded the first in every year. The University's undergraduate program has been continuously among the top two in the U.S. News & World Report. In 2014, Harvard topped the University Ranking by Academic Performance. It was ranked 8th on the 2013-2014 PayScale College Salary Report and 14th on the 2013 PayScale College Education Value Rankings. From a poll done by The Princeton Review, Harvard is the second most commonly named "dream college", both for students and parents in 2013, and was the first nominated by parents in 2009. In 2011, the Mines ParisTech : Professional Ranking World Universities ranked Harvard 1st university in the world in terms of number of alumni holding CEO position in Fortune Global 500 companies.

The Pennsylvania State University

The Pennsylvania State University (commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU) is a public, Flagship, state-related, Land-grant,Sea-grant, Space-grant, Sun-grant, research-intensive university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855, the university has a stated threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service. Its instructional mission includes undergraduate, graduate, professional and continuing education offered through resident instruction and online delivery. ItsUniversity Park campus, the flagship campus, lies within the Borough of State College and College Township. It has two law schools,Penn State Law, on the school's University Park campus, and Dickinson Law, located in Carlisle, 90 miles South of State College. The College of Medicine is located in Hershey. Penn State has another 19 commonwealth campuses and 5 special-mission campuses located across the state.Penn State has been labeled a candidate for being one of the "Public Ivies," a publicly funded university considered as providing a quality of education comparable to those of the Ivy League

Modern era

In the 1970s, the university became a state-related institution. As such, it now belongs to the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. In 1975, the lyrics in Penn State's alma mater song were revised to be gender-neutral in honor of International Women's Year; the revised lyrics were taken from the posthumously-published autobiography of the writer of the original lyrics, Fred Lewis Pattee, and Professor Patricia Farrell acted as a spokesperson for those who wanted the change.

In recent years, the university's role as a leader in education in Pennsylvania has become very well-defined. In 1989, the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport joined ranks with the university, and in 2000, so did the Dickinson School of Law. The university is now the largest in Pennsylvania, and in 2003, it was credited with having the second-largest impact on the state economy of any organization, generating an economic effect of over $17 billion on a budget of $2.5 billion. To offset the lack of funding due to the limited growth in state appropriations to Penn State, the university has concentrated its efforts on philanthropy (2003 marked the end of the Grand Destiny campaign—a seven-year effort that raised over $1.3 billion)