University of Chicago
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| University of Chicago | |
| | |
| Motto | Crescat scientia; vita excolatur. (Latin: Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.) |
| Established | 1890 by John D. Rockefeller |
| School type | Private coeducational |
| President | Don Michael Randel |
| Location | Chicago, Il., USA |
| Campus | Urban, parks, 211 acres (850,000 m²) |
| Enrollment | 4,400 undergraduate, 9,000 graduate |
| Faculty | |
| Sports teams | Maroons (mascot: Phoenix) |
| Homepage | www.uchicago.edu |
The University of Chicago is a university located in Chicago, Illinois. Just over a century old, it includes departments and committees of: Physics, Economics, Music (theory), Sociology, Linguistics, Political Science, Social Thought, International Relations, Anthropology, Mathematics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Ecology & Evolution, Jurisprudence, Business, Social Service Administration and Divinity many of which are highly regarded internationally. It is also highly regarded as a teaching institution, the last National Research Council peer review ranked the University of Chicago at the top in the list for both faculty quality and teaching.
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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 university is also noted for its gothic architecture, imported from English universities at the school's foundings (primarily Oxford). More contemporary buildings have attempted to complement the style of the original buildings with mixed success. One of the most striking buildings is the brutalist Regenstein Library.
A two billion dollar capital campaign (as of 2004 over half way completed) has brought unprecedented expansion to the school. The last few years have featured: the unveiling of a new first year oriented residential dormitory (Max Pavlevsky), a dining hall (Bartlett), a parking structure and office center, a downtown business and events center (the Gleacher Center), two business school centers in Barcelona and Singapore, the Paris Center (for study collegiate study abroad), several new wings of the University of Chicago Hospitals, an athletic center (Ratner) and an interdivisional science building. The University plans to direct the next stage of its “masterplan” towards revamping and consolidating dormitories at all levels, many of which are scattered throughout the architecturally aging local community. To do so, it will begin building in the immediate future south of the Midway Plesiance.
The campus is home to Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House.
History
The University was founded in 1892 by John D. Rockefeller (of Standard Oil fame). Its inception came at the end of a wave of university expansion from the middle of the 19th century until the turn of the 20th (MIT, Stanford, The California Institute of Technology, Northwestern, Washington University in Saint Louis, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt also came into being at this time). Westward movement, population growth, and the industrialization of America led to an increasing need for elite schools outside the East coast, 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," tried by talent as opposed to familial heritage, rise to national prominence (he himself having risen from obscurity by his own merits). 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 setup around a number of graduate research institutions following Germanic precedent. The College, or what one would today consider an undergraduate education, remained quite small numerically and in intrainstitutional 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 second smallest amongst top 15 universities, behind historically small Dartmouth). Nevertheless, most faculty members are both professors in their respective Schools, Divisions and Institutes, as well as professors in the College, the distinction being blurred.
Divisions and schools
The University currently maintains twelve divisions: the College, the Graduate Division of the Biological Sciences, the Graduate Division of the Social Sciences, the Graduate Division of the Physical Sciences, the Graduate Division of the Humanities, the Divinity School, the Law School, the Graduate School of Business, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Harris School of Public Policy and the School of Social Service Administration. The Graham School of General Studies, and administrative rather than a formal school within the University, administers a variety of degree and non-degree extension work for high school students through postgraduates; including the summer session (or quarter).
The University furthermore features the Laboratory Schools (grades K-12, founded by John Dewey and considered one of the leading University affiliated 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).
U.S. News & World Report currently ranks the College at the University of Chicago 14th in the nation, tied with Cornell University and Johns Hopkins University (US News) The college’s applicants, according to The Princeton Review "often prefer" Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, and apply to the full spectrum of top 15 schools, both Ivies and their associates. However, The Princeton Review has also rated the University as having the "Best Overall Educational Experience" for undergraduates among all American universities and colleges (the student-to-faculty ratio of 4:1, ranked the second lowest amongst top 50 American Universities, allows for small class sizes and exceptional faculty interaction). The difference between these rankings reflects the longstanding dichotomy between the College’s academic institutional quality (which is consistently grouped alongside Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, the California Institute of Technology and Stanford) and its far lagging admissions selectivity, which is more comparable to schools such as Emory and Carnegie Mellon Universities.
Ironically, the two factors which precipitate the latter admissions problem are the same factors which earned the school the highest accolades from The Princeton Review - academic zeal and rigor. First, The University of Chicago is marked as the place "where fun comes to die" (a contentious matter amongst students), which nevertheless deters many potential matriculants (for some time in the 1990's the college finished a few spots short of last amongst national rankings of party schools, alongside the service academies, e.g. West Point, and religious instituions such as Brigham Young and Wheaton). Secondly, the rigor of the school academically has led to notoriously low graduation rates (one in seven students do not finish, compared to one in fifty at Harvard College) and also GPA's ("In 1998, the National average GPA of those matriculating to allopathic medical schools [was a] 3.58; from the College [a] 3.48. This was the lowest for any college in North America" - The Univesity of Chicago Health Professions Handbook). Nevertheless, it has been reported that more students go on to graduate school from Chicago than at any other college in the country.
Its professional schools also rank highly: the Graduate School of Business ranks 6th (US News), 2nd (BusinessWeek) and 4th (Financial Times), the Law School ranks 6th (US News) and 2nd (Leiter), the School of Social Service Administration School ranks 3rd (US News)and 1st (Gourman Report), the Divinity School ranks 2nd (National Research Council), the Pritzker School of Medicine ranks 22nd (US News), while the The Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies ranks 17th (US News).
The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the country and publishes The Chicago Manual of Style, the definitive guide to American English usage. The University also operates a number of off-campus scientific research institutions, the best known of which is probably Fermilab, or the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, managed by the University of Chicago for the U.S. Department of Energy. The University also operates the Argonne National Laboratory, owns and operates Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, the Oriental Institute, and has a stake in Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. The University is also a founding member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
Sports and traditions
The school's sports teams are called the Maroons. They participate in the NCAA's Division III and in the University Athletic Association. At one time, the University of Chicago's football teams were among the best in the country (winning seven Big Ten titles), but the school, a founding member of the Big Ten Conference, de-emphasized varsity athletics in 1939. In 1935, Chicago's Jay Berwanger was the winner of the first-ever Heisman Trophy.
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 (thus making this a second and far more glorious incarnation of the University).
One of the more famous traditions of the University is the annual Scavenger Hunt, a multiple day event that pits teams (often composed of hundreds) against each other with the goal of getting all of the 300-plus items on the list. The event was created by a resident of the Snell-Hitchcock dormitory in 1987 and Snell-Hitchcock dorm continues with a long history of victories including 2004's Hunt. So far, 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). While items such as Michael Jordan have not appeared, lore maintains that in 1999 two students built a working nuclear reactor for Scavenger Hunt. Though more accurately they irradiated uranium with neutrons, and observed traces of plutonium.
The campus paper is the Chicago Maroon. Notable extracurricular groups include: The University of Chicago College Bowl Team, which has garned 101 tournament wins and 12 national championships - leading both catagories internationally, Model United Nations, which is an often a favorite at national conferences and hosts a large simulation annually, and the Chess Club, who likewise is a national powerhouse and whose ranks have included Masters of varying degrees.
Students, alumni and faculty
Main article: List of University of Chicago alumni
Called the "teacher of teachers", academia is the most popular career choice for its graduates, with one in seven taking an academic appointment (a rate matched by no other University). Scholars affiliated with Chicago have obtained a total of: 78 Nobel Prizes (the most by any institution in the world except Cambridge University), 26 MacArthur Fellowships (or "genius grants"), 220 Guggenheim Fellowships, 17 John Bates Clark Medals, 12 Pulitzer Prizes, 3 National Medals of the Arts, 11 National Humanities Medals / Charles Frankel Prizes, 13 National Medals of Science, several Turing awards and an Abel Prize. Chicago undergraduates in the past five years have won: five Rhodes, four Marshall, three Truman, three Churchill and two Gates Cambridge Scholarships. Moreover, in 2004, for the 18th consecutive year, University students won more Fulbright-Hays fellowships than any U.S. educational institution, with 23 students (68 percent of applicants) receiving awards. Chicago is also home to the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching (founded in 1938), and one which is highly coveted amongst faculty.
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ja:シカゴ大学 zh-cn:芝加哥大学
