Encyclopedia
- See also: Hunter College High School
Hunter College of The City University of New York is a senior college of the
City University of New York , located on
Manhattan's
Upper East Side. Hunter, apart from being the largest of the CUNY colleges, is one of the oldest public colleges in the
United States. It is also one of the country's most diverse schools; Hunter has students hailing from 84 countries and speaking approximately 40 languages. The college is particularly noted for its professional schools in
education, health sciences,
nursing, and social work.
History
Founding
Hunter College has its origins in the nineteenth-century movement for normal school training which swept across the
United States. Hunter descends from the
Female Normal and High School , organized in
New York City in 1870. Founded by Irish immigrant Thomas Hunter, who was president of the school during the first 37 years, it was originally an all-female school for training teachers. The school, which was housed in an armory and saddle store at Broadway and East Fourth Street in Manhattan, was open to all qualified women, irrespective of race, religion or ethnic background, which was incongruent to the prevailing admission practices of other schools during this era. Created by the New York State Legislature, Hunter was deemed the only approved institution for those seeking to teach in New York City during this time. The school incorporated an elementary and high school for gifted children, where students practiced teaching. In 1887, a
kindergarten was established as well.
During Thomas Hunter's tenure as president of the school, Hunter became known for its impartiality regarding race, religion, ethnicity, financial or political favoritism; its pursuit of higher education for women; its high entry requirements; and its rigorous academics. The college's student population quickly expanded, and the college subsequently moved uptown, into a new
Gothic structure, now known as Thomas Hunter Hall, on Lexington Avenue between 68th and 69th Streets.
In 1888 the school was incorporated as a college under the statutes of New York State, with the power to confer the degree of A.B. This led to the separation of the school into two "camps": the "Normals," who pursued a four-year course of study to become licensed teachers, and the "Academics," who sought non-teaching professions and the Bachelor of Arts degree. After 1902 when the "Normal" course of study was abolished, the "Academic" course became standard across the student body.
Expansion
In 1914 the Normal College became Hunter College in honor of its first president. At the same time, the college was experiencing a period of great expansion as increasing student enrollments necessitated more space. The college reacted by establishing branches in the boroughs of
Brooklyn,
Queens, and
Staten Island. By 1920, Hunter College had the largest enrollment of women of any municipally financed college in the United States. In 1930, Hunter's Brooklyn campus merged with
City College's Brooklyn campus, and the two were spun off to form
Brooklyn College.
The late 1930s saw the construction of Hunter College in the Bronx . During the
Second World War, Hunter leased the Bronx Campus buildings to the
United States Navy who used the facilities to train 95,000 women volunteers for military service as
WAVES. When the Navy vacated the campus, the site was briefly occupied by the nascent
United Nations, which held its first Security Council sessions at the Bronx Campus in 1946, giving the school an international profile.
In 1943,
Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated a town house at 47-49 East 65th Street in Manhattan to the college. The house had been a home for the future
President and First Lady. Today it is known as Roosevelt House and is undergoing renovation to become an academic center.
The CUNY Era
Hunter became the women's college of the municipal system, and in the
1950s, when
City College became coeducational, Hunter started admitting men to its
Bronx campus. In 1964, the
Manhattan campus began admitting men also. The Bronx campus subsequently became Lehman College in 1968.
In 1968-1969, Black and Puerto Rican students struggled to get a department that would teach about their history and experience. These and supportive students and faculty expressed this demand through building take-overs, rallies, etc. In Spring 1969, Hunter College established Black and Puerto Rican Studies . An "open admissions" policy initiated in 1970 by the City University of New York opened the school's doors to historically underrepresented groups by guarenteeing a college education to any and all who graduated from NYC high schools. Many African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Puerto Ricans, and students from the developing world made their presence felt at Hunter, and even after the end of "open admissions" still comprise a large part of the school's student body. As a result of the this increase in enrollment, Hunter opened new buildings on Lexington Avenue during the early 1980s. In further advancing Puerto Rican studies, Hunter became home to the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños in 1982.
Today, Hunter College is a comprehensive teaching and research institution. Of the more than 20,000 students enrolled at Hunter, nearly 5,000 are enrolled in a graduate program, the most popular of which are
education and social work. Although less than 28% of students are the first in their families to attend college, the college maintains its tradition of concern for women's education, with nearly three out of four students being female. In 2006, Hunter became home to the
Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, which will run training programs for young women to build their leadership, public speaking, business and advocacy skills.
Princeton Review named the college as in its 2007 guide.
In recent years, the college has intergraded its undergraduate and graduate programs to successfully make advanced programs in fields such as - "Ph.D Program", - "Master's Program", - "Master's Program", - "
Biochemistry", - "Master's Program" along with the highly competative - "Master's Program" to which only a select few of student may enter the program based on excellent scholarship and preformance, and less than half will earn a Master's Degree by maintaining a nearly perfect academic record and thesis research.
Current Issues
In 2006, students of Hunter College petitioned for changes in the curriculum, namely in the Political Science Department. According to an independent study, Political Science Majors at the college received an average GPA of 3.47 , yet were assigned almost double the reading materials and writing assignments, which when compared to other schools, where found to be of difficulty beyond that required or expected of an undergraduate student. The students have expressed that they find this matter "unfair", since it may jeapordize their acceptance to either Graduate Schools or Law Schools by reflecting a lower GPA.
Similar concerns have been expressed by science majors at the college, namely Biology, Biochemistry, and Chemistry majors. However, those departments claim that "there is a price to pay in maintaining the level of education needed to ensure success after one's undergraduate degree, the rewards do not lie in a student's grades today, but in his or her success tomorrow". Students have in fact shown higher scores on exams such as the MCAT and the DAT when compared to other
CUNY schools.
In 2005, and then again in 2006, Hunter College had closed access to the 17th floor bathrooms due to a series of harrassment incidents that several young girls had claimed, "where just waiting to happen on an empty floor like the 17th". However, after these incidents had taken place, the college administration ordered for the 17th floor bathrooms to be put out of order, and for students to use safer restroom facilities that are slightly more populated to ensure security and to prevent these incidents from occurring ever again.
Trivia
The motto of Hunter College is "mihi cura futuri," meaning "the care of the future is mine." This was taken from book XIII of
Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Three female Hunter College students are known to have posed for
Playboy is an American [i] adult [i] entertainment [i] magazine [i], fo ...
magazine: Charlee Huffman, Laura Selway, and Sophia Arden.
The black sculpture in front of the West Building is called
Tau, by
Tony Smith, who taught at the college from 1962-1980.
Leonard Peikoff,
Ayn Rand's intellectual heir and founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, taught philosophy at Hunter College for approximately ten years.
A scene for the 2004 film
The Interpreter was filmed at the Brookdale Campus.
Campus
Hunter College's official street address is 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021.
The college is anchored by its at East 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, a modern complex of three towers — the East, West, and North Buildings — and Thomas Hunter Hall, all of which are interconnected by skywalks. The college boasts a Park Avenue address by virtue of the North Building, which stretches from 68th to 69th Streets along Park Avenue. The main campus is served by the No. 6 line of the
New York City Subway .
The health sciences schools, including the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing and the School of Health Sciences, are located at East 25th Street and First Avenue, in what is known as the Brookdale Campus. Prior to the opening of
City College's new "Towers," the Brookdale complex also housed the City University's only dormitory facility, which is home to over 600 undergraduate and graduate students. It also provides limited housing to nurses employed at Bellevue Hospital.
The School of Social Work is located on East 79th Street at Lexington Avenue. The Social Work campus is served by the No. 6 line of the
New York City Subway .
A college-affiliated shuttle bus service connects the 68th Street, health sciences, and social work campuses.
In addition, the college owns Roosevelt House, which will be used as a public policy academic center, located at 47-49 East 65th Street. The Department of Art also runs a campus at 450 West 41st Street, near
Times Square, which houses the college's Masters of Fine Arts program.
Notable alumni
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- actor
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- actor
References
External links
- , by Sandra S. Roff, et al.
