Encyclopedia
The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the
Hyde Park neighborhood of
Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1890 by
John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago held its first classes on October 1, 1892. Chicago was one of the first universities in the country to be conceived as a combination of the American interdisciplinary
liberal arts college and the German
research university.
The University of Chicago is widely recognized as one of the world's foremost universities. The university is affiliated with 79
Nobel Prize laureates, exceeding all universities in the United States. Particularly notable are the university's 27
laureates in physics and 23 laureates in economics. Historically, the university is noted for its unique undergraduate core curriculum as well as other educational innovations pioneered by Robert Maynard Hutchins in the
1930s , and for influential academic movements such as the "Chicago School of Economics", the "Chicago School of Sociology," the "Chicago School of Literary Criticism," and the law and economics movement in legal analysis. The University of Chicago was the site of the world's first self-sustained
nuclear reaction. It is also home to the largest university press in the country.
Campus overview
The University of Chicago is principally located seven miles south of
downtown Chicago, in the neighborhoods of
Hyde Park and
Woodlawn. The University of Chicago's campus is bisected by Frederick Law Olmsted's
Midway Plaisance, a large linear park created for the
1893 World's Fair. The bulk of the campus, including the Main Quadrangle, is located north of the Midway, while several of the professional schools are located south of the Midway. The university's campus is noted for its neo-Gothic architecture, which was constructed entirely out of
limestone in the late 19th century, and is complemented by the Main Quandrangles' status as a
botanical garden. The buildings of the original quadrangles were deliberately patterned after the layouts of
Oxford University and
Cambridge University. Mitchell Tower, for example, is a smaller-sized reproduction of Oxford's Magdalen Tower, and the University Commons,
Hutchinson Hall, is a duplicate of Oxford's
Christ Church Hall.
Contemporary buildings have attempted to complement the style of the original architecture, with varying degrees of success. One of the most striking modern additions is the
Regenstein Library, designed by architect Walter Netsch and constructed on the grounds of the former Stagg Field, the site of the
world's first nuclear reaction. The campus is also home to
Rockefeller Chapel, designed by
Bertram Goodhue, and the
Robie House, designed by
Frank Lloyd Wright.
A recent two billion dollar campaign has brought unprecedented expansion to the university, including: the unveiling of the Max Palevsky Residential Commons, the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center, a new hospital, and a new science building. The Jules and Gwen Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery, a ten-story medical research center, as well as further additions to the medical campus are currently under construction.. The university plans to direct the next stage of its campaign towards revamping and consolidating dormitories, many of which are far from campus and aging poorly. Plans are underway for the construction of a new dormitory on land south of the Midway Plaisance.
The university also maintains several facilities apart from its main campus. The university's
Graduate School of Business maintains campuses in
Singapore,
London and in the Chicago Loop, while the Paris Center, a campus located on the left bank of the
River Seine in
Paris, hosts various undergraduate and graduate study programs.
Moreover, the university's
Yerkes Observatory, in
Williams Bay, Wisconsin constructed in 1897, is home to the
largest refracting telescope ever built. Although Yerkes was never able to match the observation conditions afforded by the mountaintop location of its main competitor, the
Lick Observatory, Yerkes was a leader in astrophysics. It was at Yerkes that the spiral structure the
Milky Way Galaxy was first demonstrated, and carbon first discovered in
stellar spectra.
The campus is furthermore home to the Oriental Institute, an internationally renowned
archeology museum and research center for ancient Near Eastern studies. The Institute is housed in an unusual
Gothic and
Art Deco building designed by the architectural firm Mayers Murray & Phillip. The Museum has artifacts from digs in
Egypt,
Israel,
Syria,
Turkey,
Iraq, and
Iran. Notable possessions include the famous Megiddo Ivories, various treasures from
Persepolis, the old
Persian capital, a 40-ton human-headed winged bull from
Khorsabad, the capital of
Sargon II, and a monumental
statue of
King Tutankhamun.
Across the street from Oriental Institute is the Seminary Co-op book store. The labyrinthine Co-op, located in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary on University Avenue, stocks the largest selection of academic volumes in the
United States.
History
Much of the information below is adapted from the University of Chicago's .The University of Chicago was founded by oil magnate
John D. Rockefeller, who later called it "the best investment I ever made." University's founding was part of a wave of university foundings that followed the
American Civil War. Incorporated in 1890, the University has dated its founding as July 1, 1891, when
William Rainey Harper became its first president. The first classes were held on October 1, 1892, with an enrollment of 594 students and a faculty of 120, including eight former college presidents.
Westward migration, population growth, and industrialization led to an increasing need for elite schools away from the East Coast, especially schools whose focus would be on issues vital to national development. Though Rockefeller was urged to build in New England or the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, he ultimately chose Chicago. His choice reflected his strong desire to realize
Thomas Jefferson's dream of a natural meritocracy's rise to prominence, determined by talent rather than familial heritage. Rockefeller's early fiscal emphasis on the physics department showed his pragmatic, yet deeply intellectual, desires for the school.
Though founded under
Baptist auspices, Chicago has never had a sectarian affiliation. The school's traditions of rigorous scholarship were established primarily by Presidents
William Rainey Harper and Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago opened its door to women and minorities from the very beginning, at a time when their access to other leading universities was extremely rare. It was the first major university to enroll women on an equal basis with men , as well as the first major, predominantly white university to offer a black professor a tenured post circa 1947.
Unlike many other American universities at the time , the University of Chicago was set up around a number of graduate research institutions, following
Germanic precedent. The
college itself remained quite small compared to its
East Coast peers until around the middle of the 20th century.
As a result, the graduate population of the university, to this day, dwarfs the undergraduate population 2:1 . The student-to-faculty ratio is also one of the lowest amongst national universities, at 4:1, and all faculty members are required to teach undergraduate courses.
During the presidency of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the university and the president of rival
Northwestern University met to discuss the future of the two institutions through the
Depression and the
looming war. Hutchins concluded that in order to secure the future of both universities, it was in the best interest of both for the two campuses to merge as the Universities of Chicago, with Northwestern's campus serving as undergraduate education, and the Hyde Park campus serving as the graduate studies campus. What President Hutchins had initially envisioned as the preeminent university in the world was eventually extinguished by Northwestern University's boards of trustees, a result that Hutchins called "one of the lost opportunities of American education."
As part of the
Manhattan Project, University of Chicago chemists, led by
Glenn T. Seaborg, began to study the newly manufactured radioactive element,
plutonium. The George Herbert Jones Laboratory was the site where, for the first time, a trace quantity of this new element was isolated and measured in September 1942. This procedure enabled chemists to determine the new element's atomic weight. Room 405 of the building was named a
National Historic Landmark in May 1967.
On December 2, 1942, the
world's first self-sustained nuclear reaction was achieved at Stagg Field on the campus of the university under the direction of professor
Enrico Fermi. A sculpture by
Henry Moore marks the location where the nuclear reaction took place . Stagg Field has since been demolished to make way for the
Regenstein Library.
In addition to its groundbreaking work involving nuclear energy, the University of Chicago is also recognized for numerous other significant discoveries, including:
- The technique of carbon-14 dating, developed in 1949 by Willard Frank Libby and his team during his tenure as a professor at the university. Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960 for this discovery.
- The discovery of the atmosphere's jet stream.
- The discovery of REM sleep.
- The procedure for the nation's first living-donor liver transplant.
- The famous Miller-Urey experiment, considered to be the classic experiment on the origin of life.
- The development of agent orange, a highly-toxic herbicide that would gain notoriety for its use during the Vietnam War.
In 1955, the University of Chicago became the birthplace of improvisational comedy with the formation of the undergraduate comedy troupe, the Compass Players.
In 1978, Hanna Holborn Gray, then the provost of
Yale University, became President of the university, the first woman ever to serve as the president of a major research university.
In 1999, then-President Hugo Sonnenschein announced plans to relax the university's famed core curriculum, including reducing the number of required courses from 21 to 15. When
The New York Times is a newspaper [i] published in New York City [i] by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. [i] ...
,
The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication of The Economist Newspaper Ltd ...
, and other major news outlets picked up this story, the university became the focal point of a national debate on education. The National Association of Scholars, for example, released a statement saying, "
It is truly depressing to observe a steady abandonment of the University of Chicago's once imposing undergraduate core curriculum, which for so long stood as the benchmark of content and rigor among American academic institutions." The changes were ultimately implemented, but the controversy led to Sonnenschein's resignation in 2000.
In 2006, the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute became the center of controversy when U.S. federal courts ruled to seize and auction its valuable collection of ancient
Persian artifacts, the proceeds of which would go to compensate the victims of a
1997 bombing in Jerusalem that the United States claim was funded by
Iran. The ruling threatens the university's invaluable collection of ancient clay tablets held by the Oriental Institute since the 1930s but officially owned by Iran.
Academics
Specific programs
The University of Chicago's
economics department is particularly well-known. In fact, an entire school of thought bears its name. Led by
Nobel Prize laureates such as
Milton Friedman, Ronald Coase, George Stigler,
Gary Becker,
Robert Lucas, James Heckman, and Robert Fogel, the university's economics department has played an important role in shaping ideas about the free market. The Chicago School of Economics is also famous for applying economic principles to every aspect of human life, as famously demonstrated by
Steven Levitt in his best-selling book,
Freakonomics is a book by University of Chicago [i] ...
.
The university is also known for creating the first
sociology department in the United States, which later gave birth to the Chicago School of Sociology. Scholars affiliated with this school are considered pioneers in the field and include Albion Small, George Herbert Mead, Robert E. Park, W. I. Thomas, and Ernest Burgess.
The university is home to several committees for interdisciplinary scholarship, the most famous of which is the Committee on Social Thought. One of several Ph.D-granting committees at the university, it was started in 1941 by University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins along with historian John U. Nef, economist Frank Knight, and anthropologist Robert Redfield. The committee is interdisciplinary, but it is not centered on any specific topic. Since its inception, the committee has drawn together noted academics and writers to "foster awareness of the permanent questions at the origin of all learned inquiry". Members of this program have included Hannah Arendt,
T. S. Eliot,
Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Nathan Tarcov,
Friedrich von Hayek,
Leon Kass, Mark Strand, Wayne Booth, and
J.M. Coetzee.
In 1983, the University of Chicago implemented the
University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, a comprehensive mathematics program for students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Today, an estimated 3.5 to 4 million students in elementary and secondary schools in every state and virtually every major urban area are now using UCSMP materials.
Divisions and schools
The University of Chicago currently maintains twelve units:
the College, four divisions of graduate research, six professional schools, and the Graham School of General Studies. The University of Chicago also operates the Library, the Press, the Lab Schools, and the Hospitals.
Faculty and students at the adjacent Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago also collaborate closely with the university.
The university also operates the
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools , the Hyde Park Day Schools , and the Orthogenic School . 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 country. It publishes a wide array of scholarly and academic texts, including the influential
Chicago Manual of Style, as well as several academic journals .
The University of Chicago's library system is also one of the largest in the country. The university's
Regenstein Library is committed to providing physical, "browsable" access to print books in a single location, rather than relying on offsite storage as many libraries do. A planned expansion will raise its collection from 6.5 million volumes to 8 million volumes, surpassing the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and making the Regenstein the largest such university library in the
United States. In 2005, funding was approved for the construction of a 38,000-square-foot addition to the library in order to accomodate the collection's expansion. It is scheduled to be completed by winter of 2009. The "Reg", as it is commonly called by students, is noted for its exceptional breadth and depth of material. Within its 2007 rankings, the
Princeton Review ranked it among the top three college libraries in the country.
The John Crerar Library is recognized as one of the best libraries in the country for research and teaching in the sciences, medicine, and technology. Completing the science quadrangle is the Kersten Physics Teaching Center, which is recognized as the most advanced facility in the U.S. for the teaching of undergraduate physics. Students in the College have access to all of the university’s special libraries, including the D’Angelo Law Library, Yerkes Observatory Library for astronomy and astrophysics, the Social Service Administration Library, and the Eckhart Library for mathematics and computer science.
Chicago also operates a number of off-campus scientific research institutions, including the
Argonne National Laboratory, part of the
United States Department of Energy's national laboratory system. The university also owns and operates the Oriental Institute and has a stake in the
Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot,
New Mexico. It is also a founding member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
In February 2006, the University of Chicago announced its bid for a
U.S. Department of Energy contract to obtain complete management rights to the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which maintains the
Tevatron, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator. Fermilab is currently one of the world's primary scientific research centers in the fields of
elementary particle physics and
astrophysics.
Undergraduate college
The centerpiece of the University of Chicago is the undergraduate college, known as the
College of the University of Chicago. The majority of undergraduate courses are small, discussion-based seminars, and undergraduate students routinely take their upper-level courses alongside graduate students.
The College of the University of Chicago grants Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in 52 majors and 14 minors in the biological, physical, and social sciences, as well as in the humanities and interdisciplinary areas. A major may provide a comprehensive understanding of a well-defined field, such as anthropology or mathematics, or it may be an interdisciplinary program such as African and African-American studies, environmental studies, biological chemistry, or cinema and media studies. A full list of offered majors and minors is available within the college's
main article.
Undergraduate students must undergo a rigorous core curriculum, the goal of which is to impart an education that is both timeless and a vehicle for interdisciplinary debate. Students must take courses designed to foster critical skills in a broad range of academic disciplines, including history, literature, science, mathematics, writing, and critical reasoning. Core curriculum classes at Chicago are capped at 25 students and are generally led by a full-time professor . Currently, 15 courses are required in addition to tested foreign language proficiency if no Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate examinations are used for exemption . While the science curriculum has largely followed the intellectual evolution of its respective fields, the requisite humanities and social science sequences now have several variants that encompass non-Western, non-canonical, and critical theory texts. While in totality the core curriculum’s goal is to impart an education that is both timeless and a vehicle for interdisciplinary debate, the increasing number of options to students within its confines produces a wide variety of backgrounds amongst graduates.
First-year students are assigned to one of 37 houses through the university's house system, modeled after the Oxbridge colleges. House sizes range from 25 to 100 members but typically consist of no more than 70 students. Each house is staffed with at least one upperclassman who acts as a Resident Assistant. Each house is also assigned a Resident Head family, typically upper level graduate students or staff at the university, who provide additional support. The house system serves as the focal point of university life, with each house offering amenities such as kitchens, common areas, and study rooms.
Rankings and reputation
The 2006 Academic Ranking of World Universities by
Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education ranked the University of Chicago the 8th best university in the world in terms of quality of scientific research leading towards numerous awards. In its 2006 evaluation of universities on the dual basis of distinction in research and international diversity,
Newsweek is a weekly newsmagazine [i] published in New York City [i] and distributed throughout the ...
ranked the University of Chicago among the top 20 universities in the world. The university is also consistently ranked as one of the top 20 universities in the world by the
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.
The University of Chicago was ranked 9th among undergraduate programs at national universities, according to the 2007 rankings list produced by
U.S. News and World Report is a weekly newsmagazine [i]. ...
. The university was also ranked 6th in a peer assessment by academic deans. In its 2007 rankings, the
Princeton Review rated the university 1st for having the "Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates" among all American colleges and universities.
Professional schools of particular prominence 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.
The university also operates the
University of Chicago Hospitals, which was ranked the fourteenth best hospital in the country by
U.S. News and World Report is a weekly newsmagazine [i]. ...
. It is the only hospital in Illinois ever to be included in the magazine's "Honor Roll" of the best hospitals in the
United States.
Athletics
Chicago's sports teams are called the
Maroons, and their colors are maroon and
white. They participate in the
NCAA's Division III as members of the
University Athletic Association . At one point, the University of Chicago's
football teams were among the best in the country, winning seven
Big Ten Conference titles from 1899 to 1924, including a national championship in 1905 while playing at the old Stagg Field. The University is also one of only a few schools to be undefeated in football against
Notre Dame. In 1935, Chicago's Jay Berwanger was the winner of the first-ever
Heisman Trophy. The following year, Berwanger also became the first player to be drafted by the
National Football League.
However, the university, , de-emphasized varsity athletics in 1939 when it dropped football and withdrew from the league in 1946. It would reinstate football as a Division III team in 1969, continuing to play its home games at the new Stagg Field. The University maintains an affiliation with the Big Ten schools through the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of twelve Midwestern research universities.
The school's mascot is the
Phoenix, chosen in honor of the city of Chicago's rebirth after the
Great Chicago Fire, and also in honor of the previous University of Chicago, which dissolved due to financial reasons . The
gargoyle has become an unofficial mascot of the university, owing to the ubiquitous statues of gargoyles that adorn many of the buildings on campus.
Student life
Student organizations
Notable extracurricular groups include the University of Chicago
College Bowl Team, which has won 118 tournaments and 15 national championships, leading both categories internationally. The has had a top four team at the American Parliamentary Debate Association's National Championship tournament four out of the past five years.
The university's independent student newspaper is the
Chicago Maroon. Founded in 1892, the same year as the university, the newspaper is published every Tuesday and Friday.
Chicago Business, published by students in the
Graduate School of Business, was founded in 1978.
The University of Chicago's is one of the oldest student-run theatre organizations in the country, involving as many as 500 members of the university community, producing 30 to 35 shows a year, and selling on the order of 10,000 tickets. It also operates Off-Off Campus, one of the University's improv comedy troupes, started in 1986 by Bernard Sahlins, one of the founders of Second City.
Though Greek life is not predominant among the undergraduate population, there are many active fraternities and sororities that have established histories with Chicago, including Alpha Delta Phi,
Alpha Epsilon Pi,
Alpha Phi Omega,
Delta Kappa Epsilon,
Delta Upsilon,
Lambda Phi Epsilon,
Phi Delta Theta,
Phi Gamma Delta,
Psi Upsilon, and
Sigma Phi Epsilon , as well as
Alpha Omicron Pi,
Delta Gamma,
Kappa Alpha Theta, and
Sigma Lambda Gamma . During the school year, Greek organizations usually throw house parties on every night of the week .
WHPK, a student-run and University-owned radio station, broadcasts out of the Reynolds Club on the university campus.
DJ "JP Chill" has had a
rap and
hip hop show on WHPK since 1986. It was one of the earliest rap shows in the country and the first in
Chicago.
In 2006, students at the university launched , a group designed to foster school spirit and unify the undergraduate student body. The administration has worked closely with students in recent years to combat the university's reputation as "where fun comes to die," which some claim have discouraged top students from taking the university into serious consideration when researching colleges.
Doc Films
Doc Films, founded in 1932 , is the oldest student film society in the country. In
Vanity Fairs "Film Snob's Dictionary", Doc Films is described as: "Hard-core beyond words and lay comprehension, the society is populated by 19-year olds who have already seen every film ever made, and boasts its own Dolby Digital-equipped cinema and an impressive roster of alumni that includes snob-revered critic Dave Kehr."
During the school year, Doc Films screens a different film on every night of the week. Foreign films and
documentaries are typically screened on weekdays, while recent, mainstream selections are shown on weekends. Occasionally, Doc Films screens works that have not yet been released to the general public, such as
Corpse Bride is a 2005 [i] Academy Award [i]-nominated stop-motion-animation [i] ...
and
Brokeback Mountain is an acclaimed and controversial Academy Award [i]-winning 2005 [i] ...
.
Doc Films has hosted many
Hollywood luminaries as guests, including
Alfred Hitchcock ,
Fritz Lang , and
Woody Allen . Most recently, in November 2005, director
Ang Lee and producer James Schamus visited the University of Chicago to screen the film
Brokeback Mountain is an acclaimed and controversial Academy Award [i]-winning 2005 [i] ...
a month before its American debut, and to participate in a question-and-answer session with students.
Traditions
