The University of Chicago is an elite and prestigious private university principally located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1890 and opened in 1892. The University also includes several laboratories, research institutions, and campuses located at various national and international locales (such as the recently opened left-bank campus in Paris). The University was conceived as a combination of the American interdisciplinary liberal-arts college and German graduate research university models.
Historically, the University has been particularly noted for its unique undergraduate "core curriculum," and other educational innovations introduced by Robert Maynard Hutchins during the 1930s; for its contributions to the Manhattan Project during the Second World War; and for influential academic movements such as "The Chicago School of Economics", "The Chicago School of Literary Criticism", and "The Chicago School of Sociology".
Location and campus
The University is located eight miles (13 km) south of the Loop in the Chicago neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Woodlawn. The beautiful campus is noted for its English Collegiate Neo-Gothic architecture (carried out entirely in limestone); the buildings and layout of the historic Main Quadrangle were deliberately patterned after Oxford and Cambridge. The Mitchell tower is a shortened reproduction of Magdalen tower, Oxford, and the University Commons, Hutchinson Hall, is a duplicate of Christ Church hall, Oxford.[1] Buildings that are more contemporary have attempted to complement the style of the original buildings with mixed success. One of the most striking modern additions is Walter Netsch's brutalist Regenstein Library on the grounds of the former Stagg Field. The campus is home to several significant buildings, including Bertram Goodhue's Rockefeller Memorial Chapel (notable for its solid stone construction), the Oriental Institute, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. The campus spans the Midway Plaisance, a large linear public park that was a part of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The bulk of the campus, including the main quadrangle and the hospitals, are north of the Midway; several of the professional schools are located south of the Midway.
A recent $2 billion capital campaign has brought unprecedented expansion to the school, including: the unveiling of Max Palevsky dormitory (primarily for first year students); the conversion of Bartlett Gym into a dining hall, the opening of the new Ratner Athletic Center (a César Pelli design) and matching parking/office structure; the construction of the new Comer Children's Hospital; the Graduate School of Business' new Hyde Park Center (a Rafael Viñoly building); and an Interdivisional Research Building for sciences. The University has also expanded outside of Hyde Park, opening the new Paris Center on the Left Bank (for collegiate study abroad). The University plans to direct the next stage of its “master plan” towards revamping and consolidating dormitories, many of which are far from campus and aging poorly. For example, Shoreland Hall, a dormitory currently housing 650 students, has been sold to a company that will turn it into condos, and it will be turned over in 2008. Plans are being prepared for the construction of a new undergraduate dormitory on land south of the Midway. In 2005, construction began on a ten-story medical research center, expected to be the tallest building on campus when completed in 2008, financed by donors Jules and Gwen Knapp. The Graduate School of Business also maintains campuses in Singapore and London.
History
The University of Chicago was founded by John D. Rockefeller, on the trailing edge of the wave of university foundings that followed the Civil War. Incorporated in 1890, the university has always dated its founding as July 1, 1891, when William Rainey Harper became its first president. Westward migration, population growth, and the industrialization of America led to an increasing need for elite schools away from the East coast - schools whose focus would be on issues vital to national development. Rockefeller’s choice of Chicago – he was urged to build in the New England or the Mid-Atlantic States – demonstrated his outspoken desire to see Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a "natural aristocracy," determined by talent rather than familial heritage, rise to national prominence (he having pulled himself up by the figurative bootstraps). His early fiscal emphasis on the Physics department showed his pragmatic, yet nevertheless intellectually rigorous, desires for the school. Founded under Baptist auspices, the university today lacks a sectarian affiliation. The school's traditions of rigorous scholarship were established by Presidents William Rainey Harper and Robert Maynard Hutchins. Allowing women and minorities to matriculate from its inception, when their access to other leading universities was an extreme rarity, the university counts among its alumni many prominent pioneers from both groups.
Different from many other universities, the school was first set up around a number of graduate research institutions, following Germanic precedent. The college remained quite small (numerically and in intra-institutional importance) compared to its East Coast peers until the middle of the twentieth century. As a result, graduate research and professional programs at the university continue to dwarf undergraduate education by a two-to-one student ratio (its undergraduate student body remains the third smallest amongst top 15 universities). Furthermore, the student-faculty ratio is the second-highest amongst national universities at four-to-one; it is superseded only by Caltech in this category. Nevertheless, most faculty members have dual appointments to their respective Schools, Divisions or Institutes, as well as to the undergraduate college.
Gargoyles adorning the Hull Gate entrance to the University's biology quadrangle
The University's Yerkes Observatory, built in 1897 is home to what is still the largest refracting telescope ever successfully built (though Yerkes was never able to match the observation conditions afforded by the mountaintop location of its competitor, Lick). In March 2005, the university announced plans to sell the observatory and its land, and proposals for historic preservation are under consideration.
An important event in the development of nuclear energy took place at the university. On December 2, 1942 the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reaction was achieved at Stagg Field on the campus of the university under the direction of Enrico Fermi. A sculpture by Henry Moore marks the location where this reaction took place, which has since become a National Historic Landmark. The stadium has since been demolished to make way for the Regenstein Library.
Divisions and schools
The university currently maintains twelve units, grouped into divisions for graduate research, professional schools, the undergraduate College, the Library, the Press, the Lab Schools, and the Hospitals.
The Divisions: Biological Sciences, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Humanities.
The Professional Schools: the Divinity School, the University of Chicago Law School, the Graduate School of Business, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the School of Social Service Administration, and the Graham School of General Studies. Computer science faculty and students at the adjacent Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago also collaborate closely with the school.
Henry Moore's Nuclear Energy (1967) sculpture, designating the location of the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reaction
The university furthermore features the Laboratory Schools (day care through high school, founded by John Dewey and considered one of the leading preparatory schools in the United States), the Hyde Park Day Schools (ages 6-15, for the learning disabled of otherwise exceptional ability) and the Orthogenic School (a residential treatment program for ages 5-20 with behavioral and emotional problems). The university also administers two unaffiliated public charter schools on the South Side of Chicago.
The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It publishes a wide array of academic texts, The Chicago Manual of Style, and several academic journals including Critical Inquiry.
The University's Joseph Regenstein Library is also the largest open-stacks (browsable) library in the country, and the largest research library in the Midwest.
The university also operates a number of off-campus scientific research institutions, including membership in the Universities Research Association that operates Fermilab, or the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, as well as Argonne National Laboratory, part of U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratory system. The university also owns and operates the Oriental Institute, and has a stake in Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. It is additionally a founding member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
The economics department is particularly well-known, so much so that an entire school of economics thought ("The Chicago School") bears its name. Characterized by conservative thinkers and Nobel Prize winners like Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Gary Becker and Robert Lucas, the department has played an important part in shaping thought on the efficacy of the free market.
The school is also known for the creation of the first Department of Sociology in the United States, which founded its own Chicago school of sociology. Scholars affiliated with this first school are considered widely important to the field and include Albion Small, George Herbert Mead, Robert E. Park, W. I. Thomas, and Ernest Burgess.
The University also has a preperatory high school. Many notable scholars have gone there, including Ainah Tan.
The University is home to several committees for interdisciplinary scholarship, the most noteworthy of which is the Committee on Social Thought, members of which have included Hannah Arendt, TS Eliot, Friedrich Hayek, Leon Kass, and Mark Strand.
Faculty and alumni
- Main article: List of University of Chicago people
University of Chicago graduates and faculty have included (click on link above for a more comprehensive list):
- Science: Luis Alvarez, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Arthur Compton, James Cronin, Enrico Fermi, James Franck, Edwin Hubble, Ernest Lawrence, Leon Lederman, Albert Abraham Michelson, Robert Millikan, Carl Sagan, Harold Urey, James Dewey Watson, Frank Wilczek and Chen Ning Yang.
- Philosophy: Hannah Arendt, Arnold Davidson, John Dewey, Charles Hartshorne, John Haugeland, Jonathan Lear, Jean-Luc Marion, George Herbert Mead, Martha Nussbaum, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty, and Leo Strauss.
- Social sciences and economics: Gary Becker, James M. Buchanan, Ronald Coase, Constantin Fasolt, Robert Fogel, Milton Friedman, Erving Goffman, Friedrich Hayek, James Heckman, Frank Knight, Lawrence Kohlberg, Steven Levitt, Robert Lucas Jr, John Mearsheimer, Merton H. Miller, Kevin M. Murphy, Robert Redfield, Marshall Sahlins, Paul Samuelson, George Stigler and William I. Thomas.
- Literature and art: Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom, Wayne C. Booth, JM Coetzee, TS Eliot, Philip Glass, Tucker Max, Mike Nichols, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, George Steiner, Mark Strand, Kimberly Peirce, and Kurt Vonnegut.
- Government and law: John Ashcroft, Ahmed Chalabi, Ramsey Clark, Jon S. Corzine, Paul Douglas, Richard Epstein, Jesse Jackson, Leon Kass, Carol Moseley-Braun, Charles Percy, Richard Posner, Justice John Paul Stevens, Barack Obama, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Paul Wolfowitz.
Ranking and reputation
Faculty, students, and researchers affiliated with Chicago have obtained a total of 79 Nobel Prizes. For details, see Nobel Prize laureates by university affiliation.
For a survey of Chicago scholars receipt of other major awards, e.g. Rhodes Scholarships, see the university’s news service report fact sheet.
The university is ranked amongst the top 15 institutions worldwide according to the The Times Higher Education Supplement, as well as among the top 10 by The Economist/Shanghai World Rankings . The Princeton Review in 2004 rated the university as having the "Best Overall Educational Experience" for undergraduates among all American universities and colleges, while the problematic U.S. News and World Report rankings currently rate the College at 15th in the nation.
High-ranking professional schools include the Graduate School of Business , the Law School, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the School of Social Service Administration, and the Divinity School.[2]
Sports and traditions
The school's sports teams are called the Maroons and their athletic colors are maroon and white. [3] They participate in the NCAA's Division III and in the University Athletic Association. At one time the University of Chicago's football teams, the original Monsters of the Midway, were among the best in the country, winning seven Big Ten titles from 1895 to 1939, including a national championship in 1905 while playing at Stagg Field. The university is also the only school ever to be undefeated in football against Notre Dame. In 1935, Chicago's Jay Berwanger was the winner of the first-ever Heisman Trophy. However, the school, a founding member of the Big Ten Conference, de-emphasized varsity athletics in 1939 when it dropped football and withdrew from the league in 1946. An often cited but apocryphal quote attributed to then University President Robert Maynard Hutchins epitomized the school's new indifference to serious athletic endevours like Big Ten football in the post-war era: "Whenever I feel like exercising, I lie down until the feeling passes," [4] Chicago maintains an affiliation with the Big Ten schools in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which is a consortium of the twelve [5] Midwestern research universities.[6]
Grotesque on Anatomy building with Bartlett Hall in the background
The school's mascot is the Phoenix, so chosen for two reasons: in honor of Chicago's rebirth after the great fire and also in honor of the previous University of Chicago (whose origins were unrelated to the current), which folded due to financial reasons (making the current University of Chicago the second university to carry the name).
One notorious tradition is the annual Scavenger Hunt, a multi-day event in which large teams compete to obtain all the items on a list. Created in 1987, each year has also involved a lengthy road trip to find many of these items in obscure parts of the United States, involving treks as far as New Jersey, or as mind-bogglingly obtuse as Zion, Illinois (where students had to "flip the switch at the last city of man," a reference to the city of Zion in The Matrix).
Students by the Kent Chemical Laboratory
A famous former campus tradition was the Sleepout, which took place each spring on the weekend before the opening of registration for the next year's classes. The tradition began when students wishing to get into the most popular courses would sleep out on the quads in order to be first in line. Eventually, the queueing was organized with a lottery for places in line taking place 24 hours in advance of registration. Under the presidency of Hugo Sonnenschein, Sleepout was ended in 1993. In 1997 course registration was changed to use an Internet-based system.
The campus paper is the Chicago Maroon, founded in 1892, the same year as the university. It is published every Tuesday and Friday. Notable extracurricular groups include the University of Chicago College Bowl Team, which has garnered 118 tournament wins and 15 national championships - leading both categories internationally, and the Model United Nations team, which is the reigning Model UN "triple crown" winner. The Mock Trial and Parliamentary Debate teams have also fared well at the national level in recent years. WHPK is the student-run community radio station of the university.
Popular among students are University of Chicago t-shirts bearing various self-deprecatory sayings, including: "Where fun comes to die"; "Where the end of the world began!" (with appropriate mushroom cloud picture); "The level of hell that Dante forgot"; ": Where the squirrels are more aggressive than the guys"; "Where the squirrels are cuter than the girls"; and "Our Ivory Tower is bigger than yours." [7]
References
- ^ The Law School ranks 6th (U.S. News & World Report: America's Best Graduate Schools 2006) [8] and 1st [9](Leiter). The School of Social Service Administration ranks 3rd (U.S. News and World Report)[10] and 1st (Gourman Report)[11]. The Pritzker School of Medicine ranks 19th among research-based medical schools (U.S. News & World Report) [12] and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies ranks 17th (U.S. News and World Report)[13]. The Divinity School ranks second according to the National Research Council [14].
Notes
The University of Chicago is the successor institution to the former Baptist College of the same name, now known to posterity as the Old University of Chicago.
The University of Chicago is sometimes confused with the University of Illinois at Chicago, a public university.
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Chicago under GFDL
