Michigan State University

Michigan State University

Michigan State University (MSU) is a public research university located in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. MSU was founded in 1855 and became the nation's first land-grant institution under the Morrill Act of 1862, serving as a model for future land-grant universities.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging, hospitality business, plant biology, supply chain management, and telecommunication. U.S. News & World Report ranks several MSU graduate programs in the nation's top 10, including African history, industrial and organizational psychology, osteopathic medicine, and veterinary medicine, and identifies its graduate programs in elementary education, secondary education, and nuclear physics as the best in the country.Following the introduction of the Morrill Act, the college became coeducational and expanded its curriculum beyond agriculture. Today, MSU is the seventh-largest university in the United States (in terms of enrollment), with over 50,085 students and 5,100 faculty members. There are approximately 532,000 living MSU alumni worldwide.

MSU's Division I sports teams are called the Spartans, which compete in the Big Ten Conference. MSU's football team won the Rose Bowl in 1954, 1956, 1988 and 2014 and six national championships. Its men's basketball team won the NCAA National Championship in 1979 and 2000 and enjoyed a streak of seven Final Four appearances since the 1998-1999 season. Its men's ice hockey won national titles in 1966, 1986 and 2007. Historically, cross country is Michigan State's most successful sport.During the early 20th century, M.A.C. expanded its curriculum well beyond agriculture. By 1925 it had expanded enough that it changed its name to Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (M.S.C.). In 1941 the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, John A. Hannah, became president of the College. He began the largest expansion in the institution's history, with the help of the 1945 G.I. Bill, which helped World War II veterans to receive an education. One of Hannah's strategies was to build a new dormitory building, enroll enough students to fill it, and use the income to start construction on a new dormitory. Under his plan, enrollment increased from 15,000 in 1950 to 38,000 in 1965. In 1957 Hannah continued MSU's expansion by co-founding Michigan State University–Oakland, now Oakland University, with Matilda Dodge Wilson. Hannah also got the chance to improve the athletic reputation of M.S.C. when the University of Chicago resigned from the Big Ten Conference in 1946. Hannah lobbied hard to take its place, gaining admission in 1949. Six years later, in its Centennial year of 1955, the State of Michigan renamed the College as Michigan State University of Agriculture and Applied Science. Nine years after that, the University governing body changed its name from the State Board of Agriculture to the MSU Board of Trustees. The State of Michigan allowed the University to drop the words "Agriculture and Applied Science" from its name. Since 1964 the institution has gone by the name of Michigan State.

The Michigan Constitution of 1850 called for the creation of an "agricultural school," though it was not until February 12, 1855, that Michigan Governor Kinsley S. Bingham signed a bill establishing the United States' first agriculture college, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan. Classes began on May 13, 1857, with three buildings, five faculty members, and 63 male students. The first president, Joseph R. Williams, designed a curriculum that required more scientific study than practically any undergraduate institution of the era. It balanced science,liberal arts, and practical training. The curriculum excluded Latin and Greek studies, since most applicants did not study any classical languages in their rural high schools. However, it did require three hours of daily manual labor, which kept costs down for both the students and the College.Despite Williams' innovations and his defense of education for the masses, the State Board of Education saw Williams' curriculum as elitist. They forced him to resign in 1859 and reduced the curriculum to a two-year vocational program.The college first admitted women in 1870, although at that time there were no female residence halls. The few women who enrolled either boarded with faculty families or made the arduous stagecoach trek from Lansing. From the early days, female students took the same rigorous scientific agriculture courses as male students. In 1896, the faculty created a "Women Course" that melded a home economics curriculum with liberal arts and sciences. That same year, the College turned the old Abbot Hall male dorm into a women's dormitory. It was not until 1899 that the State Agricultural College admitted its first African American student, William O. Thompson. After graduation, he taught at what is now Tuskegee University. President Jonathan L. Snyder invited its president Booker T. Washington to be the Class of 1900 commencement speaker. A few years later, Myrtle Craig became the first woman African-American student to enroll at the College. Along with the Class of 1907, she received her degree from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, commencement speaker for the Semi-Centennial celebration. The City of East Lansing was incorporated in that same year, and two years later the college officially changed its name to Michigan Agricultural College (M.A.C.).Michigan State ranks 92nd in the world, according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, which measures scientific research.U.S. News & World Report ranks MSU 75th in the U.S. and 29th among public universities. The 2011 QS World University Rankings placed Michigan State University at 164th internationally.The university has over 200 academic programs. U.S. News has ranked MSU's graduate-level elementary education,[58] secondary education,[59] and Industrial and Organizational Psychology[60] programs number one for the last 19 years. The National Communication Association (NCA) ranks MSU's PhD programs as number one in educating researchers in the rapidly growing fields of health communication and communication technology.MSU is also ranked number four in several other fields, including international/intercultural communication, mass communication, and interpersonal communication based on the November 2004 NCA report.The Eli Broad College of Business was ranked No. 42nd among undergraduate institutions nationally by Business week. Ninety-four percent of the school's graduates received job offers in 2014. The 2014 U.S. News ranked Michigan State's supply chain management program in the Eli Broad College of Business No. 1 in the nation for the third consecutive year. In addition, the Eli Broad College of Business undergraduate accounting program is ranked 13th, the master's accounting program is ranked 15th, and the doctoral program is ranked 11th, according to the 2013 Public Accounting Report's Annual Survey of Accounting Professors.The MBA program is ranked 19th in the U.S. by Forbes magazine.

The College of Communication Arts and Sciences was established in 1955 and was the first of its kind in the United States.The college's Media and Information Studies doctoral program was ranked No. 2 in 2007 by The Chronicle of Higher Education in the category of mass communication. The communication doctoral program was ranked No. 4 in a separate category of communication in The Chronicle of Higher Education's 2005 Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index, published in 2007.The college's faculty and alumni include eight Pulitzer Prize winners and a two-time Emmy Award winning recording mixer.MSU's graduate program in nuclear physics is ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News. In primary medical care, U.S. News ranks MSU's College of Osteopathic Medicine at No.5, College of Veterinary Medicine at No.9, and the College of Human Medicine at No.18.[67] MSU's graduate program in Mathematics has been ranked 23rd in the US according to the latest National Research Council ranking.

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University (also known informally as Vandy) is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, founded in 1873. The university is named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the South. Vanderbilt hoped that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War.

Today, Vanderbilt enrolls approximately 12,000 students from all 50 U.S. states and over 90 foreign countries in four under graduate and six graduate and professional schools. Several research centers and institutes are affiliated with the university, including the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, Dyer Observatory, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the only Level I trauma center in Middle Tennessee. With the exception of the off-campus observatory and satellite medical clinics, all of the university's facilities are situated on its 330-acre (1.3 km) campus in the heart of Nashville, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from downtown. Despite its urban surroundings, the campus itself is a national arboretum and features over 300 different species of trees and shrubs.

And the years prior to the American Civil War of 1861–1865, the Methodist Episcopal Church South had been considering the creation of a regional university for the training of ministers in a location central to its congregations. Following lobbying by Nashville bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire (1824–1889), church leaders voted to found "Central University" in Nashville in 1872. However, lack of funds and the ravaged state of the Reconstruction Era South delayed the opening of the college.

The following year, McTyeire stayed at the New York City residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose second wife was Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt (1839–1885), a cousin of McTyeire's wife, Amelia Townsend McTyeire (1827–1891); both women were from Mobile, Alabama. Indeed, the McTyeires had met at St. Francis Street Methodist Church in Mobile.[9] Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was the wealthiest man in the United States at the time, was considering philanthropy as he was at an advanced age. He had been planning to establish a university on Staten Island, New York, in honor of his mother. However, McTyeire convinced him to donate $500,000 to endow Central University in order to "contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country."

The endowment was eventually increased to $1 million (equivalent to $20,311,664 in 2013 dollars) and would be only one of two philanthropic causes financially supported by Vanderbilt. Though he never expressed any desire that the university be named after himself,McTyeire and his fellow trustees rechristened the school in his honor. Vanderbilt died in 1877 without seeing the school named after him.

In the fall of 1875, about 200 students enrolled at Vanderbilt, and in October the university was dedicated. Bishop McTyeire was named Chairman of the Board of Trust for life by Vanderbilt as a stipulation of his endowment.[8] McTyeire named Landon Garland (1810–1895), his mentor from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and then-Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, as chancellor. Garland shaped the school's structure and hired the school's faculty, many of whom were renowned scholars in their respective fields. However, most of this crop of star faculty left after disputes with Bishop McTyeire.

In 1979, Vanderbilt acquired its neighbor, Peabody College.

In the early 1980 s, Vanderbilt University was an early financial backer of the Corrections Corporation of America prior to its IPO.

Racism and racial slavery returned to the forefront on the campus in 2002, when the university decided to rename Confederate Memorial Hall, a residence hall on the Peabody campus as Memorial Hall.[27] Nationwide attention resulted, in part due to a lawsuit by the Tennessee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who had helped pay for the building's construction in 1933 with a $50,000 contribution.] The Davidson County Chancery Court dismissed the lawsuit in 2003, but the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled in May 2005 that the university must pay damages based on the present value of the United Daughters of the Confederacy's contribution if the inscription bearing the name "Confederate Memorial Hall" was removed from the building or altered.The Court of Appeals' decision has been critiqued by legal scholars. In late July 2005, the university announced that although it had officially renamed the building and all university publications and offices will refer to it solely as Memorial Hall, the university would neither appeal the matter further, nor remove the inscription and pay damages.

In 2009, Vanderbilt instituted a no-loan policy. The policy states that any student granted admission and a need-based aid package will have an award that includes no student loans.

In 2011, the Oakland Institute, an Oakland, California-based think tank, exposed Vanderbilt University's US$26 million investment in Emergent Asset Management, later known as EMVest, a hedge fund "accused of "land grabbing," or taking over agricultural land used by local communities through exploitative practices and using it for large-scale commercial export farming" [...] "in five sub-Saharan African countries, including Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe." The revelation made international headlines, with coverage in The Guardian, and led to student protests on campus in 2012.By 2013, Vanderbilt administrators had caved in to the public outcry and divested from EMInvest.

Since the opening of the university in 1875, only eight individuals have served as chancellors. Landon Garland was the university's first chancellor, serving from 1875 to 1893. Garland organized the university and hired its first faculty. Garland Hall, an academic building on campus, is named in his honor.

The next chancellor was James Kirkland—serving from 1893 to 1937, he had the longest tenure of any Vanderbilt chancellor. He was responsible for severing the university's ties with the Methodist Church and relocating the medical school to the main campus. Vanderbilt's Main Building was renamed Kirkland Hall after Kirkland left in 1937.

The longest-tenured chancellor was followed by one of the shortest-tenured. Oliver Carmichael served Vanderbilt for just nine years, 1937 to 1946. Carmichael developed the graduate school, and established the Joint University Libraries for Vanderbilt, Peabody, and Scarritt College. Carmichael Towers, a set of high-rise dormitories on the northern edge of campus, were named for Chancellor Carmichael.

Carmichael's successor was Harvie Brans-comb. Brans comb presided over a period of major growth and improvement at the university that lasted from 1946 until 1963. He was responsible for opening the admissions policy to all races. Brans-comb Quadrangle is a residence hall complex named for the chancellor.

Alexander Heard, for whom the campus's 10-library system (with 3.3 million total volumes) is named, served as chancellor from 1963 to 1982. During his 20-year tenure, the Owen Graduate School of Management was founded, and Vanderbilt's merger with Peabody College was negotiated.[39] He also survived calls for his ouster because of his accommodating stance on desegregation.

After a fire, Old Main hall was rebuilt with one tower and renamed Kirkland Hall. It is currently home to Vanderbilt's administration.

Joe B. Wyatt was the chancellor who served immediately after Heard, from 1982 until 2000. Wyatt oversaw a great increase in the university's endowment, an increase in student diversity, and the renovation of many campus buildings] Wyatt placed great emphasis on improving the quality of faculty and instruction, and during his tenure Vanderbilt rose to the top 25 in the U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings for the first time. The Wyatt Center on Peabody's campus is named for Wyatt and his wife.

Gee was appointed chancellor by the Board of Trust in February 2000. The Board of Trust has since established a committee to monitor more closely the spending by the chancellor's office.

After Gordon Gee's departure in 2007, Zeppos was named interim chancellor He was named chancellor suojure on March 1, 2008, by the university's Board of Trust.

Rice University

Rice University

William Marsh Rice University,commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a 295-acre (1.19 km) campus in Houston, Texas, United States. The university is situated near the Houston Museum District and is adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. It is consistently ranked among the top 20 universities in the U.S. and the top 100 in the world.

Opened in 1912 after the murder of its namesake William Marsh Rice, Rice is now a research university with an undergraduate focus. Its emphasis on education is demonstrated by a small student body and 5:1 student-faculty ratio. The university has a very high level of research activity for its size, with $115.3 million in sponsored research funding in 2011.Rice is noted for its applied science programs in the fields of artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, signal processing, space science, and nanotechnology. It was ranked first in the world in materials science research by the Times Higher Education (THE) in 2010. Rice is a member of the Association of American Universities.

Rice is noted for its entrepreneurial activity, and has been recognized as the top ranked business incubator in the world by the Stockholm-based UBI Index for both 2013 and 2014.

The university is organized into eleven residential colleges and eight schools of academic study, including the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the School of Social Sciences, and the School of Humanities. Graduate programs are offered through the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, School of Architecture, Shepherd School of Music, and Susanne M. Glass cock School of Continuing Studies.[12][13][14] Rice students are bound by the strict Honor Code, which is enforced by a uniquely student-run Honor Council.

Rice competes in 14 NCAA Division I varsity sports and is a part of Conference USA, often competing with its cross-town rival the University of Houston. Intramural and club sports are offered in a wide variety of activities such as jiu jitsu, water polo, and crew.

The history of Rice University began with the untimely demise of Massachusetts businessman William Marsh Rice, who made his fortune in real estate, railroad development and cotton trading in the state of Texas. In 1891, Rice decided to charter a free-tuition educational institute in Houston, bearing his name, to be created upon his death, earmarking most of his estate towards funding the project. Rice's will specified the institution was to be "a competitive institution of the highest grade" and that only white students would be permitted to attend.[16] On the morning of September 23, 1900, Rice was found dead by his valet, and presumed to have died in his sleep. Shortly thereafter, a suspiciously large check made out to Rice's New York City lawyer, signed by the late Rice, was noticed by a bank teller due to a misspelling in the recipient's name. The lawyer, Albert T. Patrick, then announced that Rice had changed his will to leave the bulk of his fortune to Patrick, rather than to the creation of Rice's educational institute. A subsequent investigation led by the District Attorney of New York resulted in the arrests of Patrick and of Rice's butler and valet Charles F. Jones, who had been persuaded to administer chloroform to Rice while he slept. Rice's friend and personal lawyer in Houston,James A. Baker, Sr., aided in the discovery of what turned out to be a fake will with a forged signature. Jones was not prosecuted since he cooperated with the district attorney, and testified against Patrick. Patrick was found guilty of conspiring to steal Rice's fortune and convicted of murder in 1901, although he was pardoned in 1912 due to conflicting medical testimony.[17] Baker helped Rice's estate direct the fortune, worth $4.6 million in 1904 ($121 million today), towards the founding of what was to be called the Rice Institute. The Board took control of the assets on April 29 of that year.

In 1907, the Board of Trustees selected the head of the Department of Mathematics and Astronomy at Princeton University, Edgar Odell Lovett, to head the Institute, which was still in the planning stages. He came recommended by Princeton's president, Woodrow Wilson. In 1908, Lovett accepted the challenge, and was formally inaugurated as the Institute's first president on October 12, 1912. Lovett undertook extensive research before formalizing plans for the new Institute, including visits to 78 institutions of higher learning across the world on a long tour between 1908 and 1909. Lovett was impressed by such things as the aesthetic beauty of the uniformity of the architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, a theme which was adopted by the Institute, as well as the residential college system at Cambridge University in England, which was added to the Institute several decades later. Lovett called for the establishment of a university "of the highest grade," "an institution of liberal and technical learning" devoted "quite as much to investigation as to instruction." [We must] "keep the standards up and the numbers down," declared Lovett. "The most distinguished teachers must take their part in undergraduate teaching, and their spirit should dominate it all."He Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations was held at Rice in 1990. In 1993, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy was created. In 1997, the Edythe Bates Old Grand Organ and Recital Hall and the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, renamed in 2005 for the late Nobel Prize winner and Rice professor Richard E. Smalley, were dedicated at Rice. In 1999, the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology was created. The Rice Owls baseball team was ranked #1 in the nation for the first time in that year (1999), holding the top spot for eight weeks.

In 2003, the Owls won their first national championship in baseball, which was the first for the university in any team sport, beating Southwest Missouri State in the opening game and then the University of Texas and Stanford University twice each en route to the title. In 2008, President David Leebron issued a ten-point plan titled "Vision for the Second Century" outlining plans to increase research funding, strengthen existing programs, and increase collaboration. The plan has brought about another wave of campus constructions, including the erection the newly renamed Bio Science Research Collaborative building (intended to foster collaboration with the adjacent Texas Medical Center), a new recreational center and the renovated Autry Court basketball stadium, and the addition of two new residential colleges, Duncan College and McMurtry College.

Beginning in late 2008, the university considered a merger with Baylor College of Medicine, though the merger was ultimately rejected in 2010. Select Rice undergraduates are currently guaranteed admission to Baylor College of Medicine upon graduation as part of the Rice/Baylor Medical Scholars program. According to History Professor John Boles' recent book University Builder: Edgar Odell Lovett and the Founding of the Rice Institute, the first president's original vision for the university included hopes for future medical and law schools.

Rice's campus is a heavily-wooded 285-acre (1.15 km) tract of land located close to the city of West University Place, in the museum district of Houston.

Five streets demarcate the campus: Greenbriar Street, Rice Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, Main Street, and University Boulevard. For most of its history, all of Rice's buildings have been contained within this "outer loop". In recent years, new facilities have been built close to campus, but the bulk of administrative, academic, and residential buildings are still located within the original pentagonal plot of land. The new Collaborative Research Center, all graduate student housing, the Greenbriar building, and the Wiess President's House are located off-campus.

Rice prides itself on the amount of green space available on campus; there are only about 50 buildings spread between the main entrance at its easternmost corner, and the parking lots and Rice Stadium at the West end. The Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum, consisting of more than 4000 trees and shrubs (giving birth to the legend that Rice has a tree for every student), is spread throughout the campus.

The university's first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, intended for the campus to have a uniform architecture style to improve its aesthetic appeal. To that end, nearly every building on campus is noticeably Byzantine in style, with sand and pink-colored bricks, large archways and columns being a common theme among many campus buildings. Noteworthy exceptions include the glass-walled Bernstein Pavilion,Lovett College with its Brutalist-style concrete gratings, and the eclectic-Mediterranean Duncan Hall. In September 2011, Travel+Leisure listed Rice's campus as one of the most beautiful in the United States.

Lovett Hall, named for Rice's visionary first president, is the university's most iconic campus building. Through its Sallyport arch, new students symbolically enter the university during matriculation and depart as graduates at commencement. Duncan Hall, Rice's computational engineering building, was designed to encourage collaboration between the four different departments situated there. The building's colorful Martel Foyer, drawn from many world cultures, was designed by the architect to symbolically express this collaborative purpose.

The campus is organized in a number of quadrangles. The Academic Quad, anchored by a statue of founder William Marsh Rice, includes Ralph Adams Cram's masterpiece, the asymmetrical Lovett Hall, the original administrative building; Fondren Library; Herzstein Hall, the original physics building and home to the largest amphitheater on campus; Sewall Hall for the social sciences and arts; Rayzor Hall for the languages; and Anderson Hall of the Architecture department. The Humanities Building, winner of several architectural awards, is immediately adjacent to the main quad. Further west lies a quad surrounded by McNair Hall of the Jones Business School, the Baker Institute, and Alice Pratt Brown Hall of the Shepherd School of Music. These two quads are surrounded by the university's main access road, a one-way loop referred to as the "inner loop". In the Engineering Quad, a trinity of sculptures by Michael Heizer, collectively entitled 45 Degrees, 90 Degrees, 180 Degrees, are flanked by Abercrombie Laboratory, the Cox Building, and the Mechanical Laboratory, housing the Electrical, Mechanical, and Earth Science/Civil Engineering departments, respectively. Duncan Hall is the latest addition to this quad, providing new offices for the Computer Science, Computational and Applied Math, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Statistics departments.

A stone bench in the Academic Quad Roughly three-quarters of Rice's undergraduate population lives on campus. Housing is divided among eleven residential colleges, which form an integral part of student life at the University (see Residential colleges of Rice University). The colleges are named for university historical figures and benefactors, and while there is wide variation in their appearance, facilities, and dates of founding, are an important source of identity for Rice students, functioning as dining halls, residence halls, sports teams, among other roles. Rice does not have or endorse a Greek system, with the residential college system taking its place. Five colleges, McMurtry, Duncan, Martel, Jones, and Brown are located on the north side of campus, across from the "South Colleges", Baker, Will Rice, Lovett, Hanszen, Sid Richardson, and Wiess, on the other side of the Academic Quadrangle. Of the eleven colleges, Baker is the oldest, originally built in 1912, and the twin Duncan and McMurtry colleges are the newest, and opened for the first time for the 2009-10 school year. Will Rice, Baker, and Lovett colleges are undergoing renovation to expand their dining facilities as well as the number of rooms available for students.McNair Hall, home to the Jones School of Business.The on-campus football facility, Rice Stadium, opened in 1950 with a capacity of 70,000 seats. After improvements in 2006, the stadium is currently configured to seat 47,000 for football but can readily be reconfigured to its original capacity of 70,000, more than the total number of Rice alumni, living and deceased. The stadium was the site of Super Bowl VIII and a speech by John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962 in which he challenged the nation to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade.The recently renovated Tudor Field house, formerly known as Autry Court, is home to the basketball and volleyball teams. Other stadia include the Rice Track/Soccer Stadium and the Jake Hess Tennis Stadium. A new Rec Center now houses the intramural sports offices and provide an outdoor pool, training and exercise facilities for all Rice students, while athletics training will solely be held at Tudor Field house and the Rice Football Stadium.

The university and Houston Independent School District jointly established The Rice School, a kindergarten through 8th grade public magnet school in Houston. The school opened in August 1994. Through Cy-Fair ISD Rice University offers a credit course based summer school for grades 8 through 12. They also have skills based classes during the summer in the Rice Summer School.