Columbia University in the City of New York
(commonly known as
Columbia University, or simply
Columbia) is a private
university in the United States and a member of
the
Ivy League.
Columbia's main campus
lies in the Morningside Heights
neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan
, in New York City. It was founded in 1754 as
King's College by
royal charter of
George II of Great
Britain, and is one of only two United States universities to
have been founded under such authority.
Columbia is the oldest
institution of higher learning in the state of New York
, and is the sixth oldest in the United States
making it one of the country's original colonial colleges. After the
American Revolutionary
War, it was briefly chartered as a state entity from 1784-1787.
The university now operates under a 1787 charter that places the
institution under a private
board of
trustees.
Columbia annually awards the
Pulitzer
Prizes and is one of 14 founding members of the
Association of American
Universities. More
Nobel Prize
winners are affiliated with Columbia than with any other
institution in the world.
Notable alumni and affiliates include five
Founding Fathers
of the United States, four United States Presidents, nine
Justices of the Supreme Court of the United
States
, 96 Pulitzer Prize
winners, 92 Nobel Prize winners, and 20
Academy Award winners.
Columbia
University currently has two global centers in Amman
, Jordan
and Beijing, China
. It
was ranked 4th in the world in the 2009
Global University Ranking out of
over 15,000 universities.
Campus
Morningside Heights
The
majority of Columbia's graduate and undergraduate studies are
conducted in Morningside Heights
on Seth Low's late-19th
century vision of a university campus where all disciplines could
be taught in one location. The campus was designed along
Beaux-Arts principles by
acclaimed architects
McKim, Mead,
and White.
Columbia's
main campus occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (132,000 m²), in
Morningside
Heights
, New York City, a neighborhood that contains a
number of academic institutions. The university owns over
7,800 apartments in Morningside Heights, housing faculty, graduate
students, and staff. Almost two dozen undergraduate dormitories
(purpose-built or converted) are located on campus or in
Morningside Heights. Columbia University has an extensive
underground tunnel system more
than a century old, with the oldest portions predating the present
campus. Some of these remain open to students, while others are
closed to the public.
New buildings and
structures
on the campus, especially those built after
Second World War, have often only been
constructed after a contentious process often involving open debate
and community protest. Often the complaints raised during periods
of expansion have included issues beyond the debate over
construction of designs that diverged from the original McKim,
Mead, and White plan. Protests often involved complaints against
the university administration. This was the case with Uris Hall,
built in the 1960s and more recently with
Alfred Lerner Hall, a
deconstructivist structure completed in
1998 and designed by Columbia's then-Dean of Architecture,
Bernard Tschumi.
These same issues have
surfaced in the debate over future expansion into Manhattanville
.
Columbia's
library
system includes over 9.5 million volumes.
Several buildings on the Morningside Heights campus are listed on
the
National
Register of Historic Places.
Low Memorial Library
, a National
Historic Landmark and the centerpiece of the campus, is listed
for its architectural significance. Philosophy
Hall
is listed as the site of the invention of FM radio. Also listed is Pupin Hall
, another National Historic Landmark, which
houses the physics and astronomy departments. Here the first
experiments on the fission of uranium were conducted by
Enrico Fermi.
The uranium atom was split there ten days
after the world's first atom-splitting in Copenhagen,
Denmark
.
Other campuses
Health-related schools are located at the
Columbia University
Medical Center, located in the neighborhood of Washington
Heights
, fifty blocks uptown. Columbia also owns
the Baker Field, which includes the Lawrence
A.
Wien Stadium
as well as facilities for field sports, outdoor
track and tennis, at the northern tip of Manhattan island (in the
neighborhood of Inwood).
There is
a third campus on the west bank of the Hudson River, the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory
in Palisades, New York
. A fourth is the Nevis Laboratories in Irvington,
New York
. A satellite site in Paris holds classes at
Reid Hall.
University Hospital
New York-Presbyterian
Hospital is affiliated with medical schools of both Columbia
University and Cornell
University
. According to the
US News and World
Reports "Americas Best Hospitals 2009", it is ranked sixth
overall and third among university hospitals. Columbia Medical
School has a strategic partnership with New York State Psychiatric
Institute. Columbia is also affiliated with nineteen hospitals in
the US and four hospitals overseas.
Alma Mater

Alma Mater
This name
refers to a statue on the steps (see right) of Low Memorial
Library
by sculptor Daniel
Chester French. There is a small owl "hidden" on the
sculpture. Alma Mater is also the subject of many Columbia legends.
The main legends include that the first student in the freshmen
class to find the hidden owl on the statue will be valedictorian,
and that any subsequent Barnard student who finds it will marry a
Columbia man, given that Barnard is a
women's college.
Butler Library
The main library, packed during midterms and finals weeks, has
three main parts: the stacks, the study rooms, and the cafe. During
finals, to get a spot at Butler, students awaken early and compete
for a seat.Butler houses 1.9 million of the university's 9.2
million volumes, mostly in the humanities and history. Unlike the
libraries of most other schools, Butler remains at least partially
open 24 hours a day and acts as a center of late night studying.
Butler also houses Columbia University's Rare Books and Manuscripts
Library (including the Columbiana University Archives), the Philip
L. Milstein Undergraduate Library, the Oral History collection, and
the Butler Media Collection. Butler Library is one of two dozen
libraries on campus, mostly distinguished by subject
disciplines.
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library

Avery Hall
The Avery Library is the largest library of
architecture in the United States and among, if
not the, largest in the world. The library contains more than
400,000 volumes, of which most are non-circulating and must be read
on site. One of the library's major undertakings is the "Avery
Index to Architectural Periodicals", which is one of the foremost
international resources for locating citations to architecture and
related topics in periodical literature. The Avery Index covers
periodicals thoroughly from present day back to the 1930s, with
limited coverage dating to the nineteenth century.
Residence halls
First-year students usually live in one of the large residence
halls situated around South Lawn:
Hartley
Hall,
Wallach Hall ,
John Jay Hall,
Furnald
Hall or
Carman Hall. The
East Campus is another
large on-campus residential complex. There are several dorms
immediately off-campus, such as
Hogan
Hall, McBain Hall,
Schapiro Hall,
Broadway Hall,
Wien Hall, River, Harmony Hall and a variety of
smaller buildings.
The Steps
"The Steps", alternatively known as "Low Steps" or the "Urban
Beach", are a popular meeting area for Columbia students. The term
refers to the long series of granite steps leading from the lower
part of campus (South Field) to its upper terrace. On warm days,
the steps become crowded with students conversing, reading, or
sunbathing. Occasionally, they play host to film screenings and
concerts. The
King's
Crown Shakespeare Troupe annually performs an outdoor play on
the steps. The design of the steps is modeled after the
architecture in Raphael's "The School of Athens", a fresco in the
Vatican.
Sundial

The sundial as it originally appeared
before the removal of the granite sphere
This elevated stone pedestal at the center of the main campus
quadrangle now serves as a podium for speeches. Originally there
was a large granite sphere on the pedestal that marked the time
with its shadow. It sat upon the pedestal from approximately 1914
to 1946, when it was removed due to cracking. The ball was assumed
destroyed until it was discovered intact in a Michigan field in
2001. As of 2006, it seems unlikely that the sundial will be
restored.
Online
Columbia's most famous online contribution has been
Go Ask Alice!, which, since 1993, has provided
students and the general public with frank and progressive answers
to anonymously posted health questions. Topics covered include
drug abuse,
sexuality, and interpersonal and romantic
relationships. The site receives approximately 2,000 questions a
week.
In recent years, new outlets for Columbia student life have opened
online. Some, such as the Bwog, the
blog of the
undergraduate magazine
The Blue
and White and a medium for campus gossip, and the
professor ratings site CULPA (the Columbia Underground Listing of
Professor Ability), have flourished. CULPA, established in 1997 and
unaffiliated officially with the university, allows students to
anonymously post their own reviews of their professors. It is
regarded as one of the most useful tools for students looking to
enroll in a class, boasting over 10,000 reviews. Because of the
candid nature of the submissions, the site has occasionally been
accused of harboring biased reviews and misrepresenting professors.
Still, it is the main source of professor review currently
available to the Columbia student body.
Students have launched a number of other, sometimes pioneering,
websites. CU Community was a popular online networking website
created by Adam Goldberg (SEAS ´06) containing 85% of the
undergraduate student body, that later rebranded itself
CampusNetwork and launched across several universities, before
succumbing to its long-time competitor,
Facebook. The
Columbia Daily Spectator launched a
blog called SpecBlogs, but this has also since been shut down.
Other ventures have been more successful.
Carsplit, also created by Adam Goldberg (SEAS ´06),
launched in 2005 as a way for students to split the cost of taking
a taxi to the airport. Usage peaks during winter break where, last
year, over 1,000 students used the service. CU Snacks, authored by
Brandon Arbiter (SEAS ´06) was one of the first online, late night
snack delivery services. It started from Wien Residence Hall in
2004 and, although it remains completely student-run, it is now
part of the experiential education program of Columbia's Center for
Career Education. A more recent launch was WikiCU,, a student-run
wiki about Columbia University and its surrounding neighborhood of
Morningside Heights.
History
Columbia
is the oldest institution of higher education in the state of
New
York
. Founded and chartered as King's College in
1754, Columbia is the sixth-oldest such institution in the United
States (by date of founding; fifth by date of chartering). After
the
American Revolutionary
War, King's College was renamed Columbia College in 1784, and
in 1896 it was further renamed Columbia University. Columbia has
grown over time to encompass twenty schools and affiliated
institutions.
King's College: 1754–1784

Trinity Church schoolyard, the first
home of King's College c.1755, as imagined in a 1954 illustration
created for Columbia's bicentennial.
(Columbia University Archives)
Discussions regarding the foundation of a
college in the Province of New
York began as early as 1704, but serious consideration of such
proposals was not entertained until the early 1750s, when local
graduates of Yale
and members
of the congregation of Trinity Church
(then Church of
England, now Episcopal)
in New York City became alarmed by the establishment of the College
of New Jersey (now Princeton University
). Concerns arose both because it was founded
by "new-light"
Presbyterians
influenced by the evangelical
Great Awakening and, as it was located
in the province just across the
Hudson
River, because it provoked fears of New York developing a
cultural and intellectual inferiority. They established their own
'rival' institution, King's College, and elected as its first
president
Samuel Johnson.
Classes began on July 17, 1754 in Trinity Church yard, with Johnson
as the sole faculty member. A few months later, on October 31,
1754, Great Britain's
King
George II officially granted a royal charter for the college.
In 1760,
King's College moved to its own building at Park Place, near the
present City
Hall
, and in 1767 it established the first American
medical school to grant the M.D. degree.
Controversy surrounded the founding of the new college in New York,
as it was a thoroughly Church of England institution dominated by
the influence of
Crown officials in its
governing body, such as the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Secretary of State
for the Colonies. Fears of the establishment of a Church of
England
episcopacy and of
Crown influence in America through King's
College were underpinned by its vast wealth, far surpassing all
other
colonial colleges of the
period.

King's College Hall, 1770
The
American Revolution and the
subsequent
war were
catastrophic for King's College. It suspended instruction in 1776,
and remained so for eight years, beginning with the arrival of the
Continental Army in the spring of
that year and continuing with the military occupation of New York
City by British troops until their
departure in 1783. The college's
library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a
military hospital first by American and then British forces.
Additionally, many of the college's alumni, primarily
Loyalists, fled to Canada or
Great Britain in the war's aftermath, leaving its future governance
and financial status in question.
Although the college had been considered a bastion of
Tory sentiment, it nevertheless produced many key
leaders of the
Revolutionary generation - individuals later instrumental in
the college's revival. Among the earliest students and trustees of
King's College were five
"founding fathers" of the
United States:
John Jay, who negotiated
the
Treaty of Paris between
the United States and Great Britain, ending the Revolutionary War,
and who later became the first
Chief Justice of the United
States;
Alexander Hamilton,
military aide to General
George
Washington, author of most of the
Federalist Papers, and the first
Secretary of the
Treasury;
Gouverneur Morris,
the author of the final draft of the
United States Constitution; and
Robert R. Livingston, a member of the
Committee of Five that drafted the
Declaration of
Independence.
Hamilton's first experience with the
military came while a student during the summer of 1775, after
the
outbreak of fighting at Boston
. Along with
Nicholas Fish,
Robert
Troup, and a group of other students from King's he joined a
volunteer militia company called the "
Hearts of Oak" – Hamilton
achieving the rank of Lieutenant. They adopted distinctive
uniforms, complete with the words "Liberty or Death" on their
hatbands, and drilled under the watchful eye of a former British
officer in the graveyard of the nearby
St. Paul's Chapel.
In August 1775, while
under fire from the HMS Asia, the Hearts of Oak (a.k.a.
the "Corsicans") participated in a successful raid to seize cannon
from the
Battery
, becoming an artillery unit thereafter.
Ironically, in 1776 Captain Hamilton would engage in and survive
the
Battle of Harlem
Heights, which took place on and around the site that would
become home to his Alma Mater over a century later, only to be -
after his dueling death twenty-eight years later - entombed on the
site of the first home for King's College in the
Trinity Church yard.
Early Columbia College: 1784–1857
After the war, the remaining members of the Board of Governors of
King's sought to resuscitate the college, petitioning the
Legislature of New York to "make such alterations in the Charter as
the changed condition of affairs might demand." The Legislature
agreed, and on May 1, 1784, it passed "an Act for granting certain
privileges to the College heretofore called King's College." The
Act created a Board of Regents to oversee the resuscitation of
King's, giving them the power to hire a college president and
appoint professors, but prohibiting the College from administering
any "religious test-oath" to its faculty. Finally, in an effort to
demonstrate its support for the new Republic, the Legislature
stipulated that "the College within the City of New York heretofore
called King's College be forever hereafter called and known by the
name of
Columbia
College."
On May 5, 1784, the Regents held their first meeting, instructing
Treasurer
Brockholst
Livingston and Secretary
Robert
Harpur (who was Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy
at King's) to recover the books, records and any other assets that
had been dispersed during the war, and appointing a committee to
supervise the repairs of the college building. In addition, the
Regents moved quickly to rebuild Columbia's faculty, appointing
William Cochran
instructor of Greek and Latin.
In the summer of 1784, after the legislature passed the act
restoring the college, Major General
James
Clinton, a hero of the revolutionary war, brought his son
DeWitt Clinton to New York on his way
to enroll him as a student at the College of New Jersey. When
James Duane, the Mayor of New York and a
member of the Regents, heard that the younger Clinton was leaving
the state for his education, he pleaded with Cochran to offer him
admission to the reconstituted Columbia. Cochran agreed - in no
small part due to the fact that DeWitt's uncle,
George Clinton, the Governor
of New York, had recently been elected Chancellor of the College by
the Regents - and DeWitt Clinton became one of nine students
admitted to Columbia that year.
As the state proved negligent in its funding of the institution,
this arrangement became increasingly unsatisfactory for both. An
expansion of the Regents to 20 New York City residents had placed
Hamilton and Jay at the helm, and they, along with Duane, argued
for privatization of the college. In 1787 a new charter was adopted
for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private
board of Trustees. Samuel Johnson's son,
William Samuel Johnson, became its
president.

College Hall in 1790
a period in the 1790s, with New York City as the federal and state
capital and the country under successive
Federalist governments, a
revived Columbia thrived under the auspices of Federalists such as
Hamilton and Jay.
George
Washington, notably, attended the commencement of 1790, and
nascent interest in legal education commenced under Professor
James Kent. As the state and country
transitioned to a considerably more
Jeffersonian era, however, the
college's good fortunes began to dry up.
The primary
difficulty was funding; the college, already receiving less from
the state following its privatization, was beset with even more
financial difficulties as hostile politicians took power and as new
upstate colleges, particularly Hamilton and Union
, lobbied
effectively for subsidies. What Columbia did receive was
Manhattan real estate, which would only later prove
lucrative.
Columbia's performance flagged for the remainder of the 19th
century's first half. The law faculty never managed to thrive
during this period, and in 1807 the medical school, hoping to
arrest its decline, broke off to merge with the independent College
of Physicians and Surgeons. Contention between students and faculty
were highlighted by the "Riotous Commencement" of 1811, in which
students violently protested the faculty's decision not to confer a
degree upon John Stevenson, who had inserted objectionable words
into his commencement speech. Though the college was finally able
to shake its embarrassing reputation for structural shabbiness by
adding several wings to College Hall and refinishing it in the more
fashionable
Greek Revival style, the
effort failed to halt Columbia's long-term downturn, and was soon
overshadowed by the Gibbs Affair of 1854, in which famed chemistry
professor
Oliver Wolcott Gibbs
was denied a professorship at the college, from which he had
graduated, due to his
Unitarian
affiliation. The event demonstrated to many, including frustrated
diarist and trustee
George
Templeton Strong, the narrow-mindedness of the institution. By
July, 1854 the
Christian Examiner of Boston, in an article
entitled "The Recent Difficulties at Columbia College", noted that
the school was "good in classics" yet "weak in sciences", and had
"very few distinguished graduates".
Expansion and the move to Madison Avenue
In 1857, the College moved from Park Place to a primarily
Gothic Revival campus on 49th Street and
Madison Avenue, where it remained for
the next fifty years. The transition to the new campus coincided
with a new outlook for the college; during the commencement of that
year, College President
Charles King
proclaimed Columbia "a university". During the last half of the
nineteenth century, under the leadership of President
F.A.P. Barnard, the institution
rapidly assumed the shape of a true modern university.
Columbia Law School was founded in 1858,
and in 1864 the
School of Mines, the
country's first such institution and the precursor to today's
Fu
Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, was
established.
Barnard College
for women, established by the eponymous Columbia
president, was established in 1889; the Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons came under the
aegis of the University in 1891, followed by Teachers College, Columbia
University in 1893. The Graduate Faculties in Political
Science, Philosophy, and Pure Science awarded its first PhD in
1875. This period also witnessed the inauguration of Columbia's
participation in intercollegiate sports, with the creation of the
baseball team in 1867, the organization of the football team in
1870, and the creation of a
crew team
by 1873.
The first intercollegiate Columbia football
game was a 6-3 loss to Rutgers
. The
Columbia Daily Spectator began
publication during this period as well, in 1877.
Morningside Heights

Development of the Morningside Heights
campus by 1915
In 1896, the trustees officially authorized the use of yet another
new name, Columbia University, and today the institution is
officially known as "Columbia University in the City of New York."
Additionally, the engineering school was renamed the "School of
Mines, Engineering and Chemistry."
At the same time, University president
Seth Low moved the campus again, from 49th
Street to its present location, a more spacious (and, at the time,
more rural) campus in the developing neighborhood of Morningside
Heights
. The site was formerly occupied by the
Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum. One of the asylum's buildings, the
warden's cottage (later known as East Hall and Buell Hall), is
still standing today.
The
building often depicted as emblematic of Columbia is the
centerpiece of the Morningside Heights campus, Low Memorial
Library
. Constructed in 1895, the building is still
referred to as "Low Library" although it has not functioned as a
library since 1934. It currently houses the offices of the
President and Provost, the Visitor's Center, the Trustees' Room and
Columbia Security.
Patterned loosely on the Classical Pantheon
, it is surmounted by the largest all-granite dome
in the United States.
Under the leadership of Low's successor,
Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia
rapidly became the nation's major institution for research, setting
the "multiversity" model that later universities would adopt. On
the Morningside Heights campus, Columbia centralized on a single
campus the College, the School of Law, the Graduate Faculties, the
School of Mines (predecessor of the Engineering School), and the
College of Physicians & Surgeons. Butler went on to serve as
president of Columbia for over four decades and became a giant in
American public life (as one-time vice presidential candidate and a
Nobel Laureate). His introduction of
"downtown" business practices in university administration led to
innovations in internal reforms such as the centralization of
academic affairs, the direct appointment of registrars, deans,
provosts, and secretaries, as well as the formation of a
professionalized university bureaucracy, unprecedented among
American universities at the time.
In 1893 the
Columbia
University Press was founded in order to "promote the study of
economic, historical, literary, scientific and other subjects; and
to promote and encourage the publication of literary works
embodying original research in such subjects." Among its
publications are
The
Columbia Encyclopedia, first published in 1935, and
The Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World, first
published in 1952.
In 1902, New York newspaper magnate
Joseph Pulitzer donated a substantial sum to
the University for the founding of a school to teach journalism.
The
result was the 1912 opening of the Graduate School of Journalism
— the only journalism school in the Ivy
League. The school is the administrator of the
Pulitzer Prize and the
duPont-Columbia Award in broadcast
journalism.
In 1904 Columbia organized adult education classes into a formal
program called Extension Teaching (later renamed University
Extension). Courses in Extension Teaching eventually give rise to
the Columbia Writing Program, the
Columbia Business School, and the
School of Dentistry and Oral Surgery.
Columbia Business School
was added in the early 20th century.
During the first half
of the 20th Century Columbia and Harvard University
had the largest endowments in the United
States.

Archetypal Columbia man, from a 1902
poster
By the late 1930s, a Columbia student could study with the likes of
Jacques Barzun,
Paul Lazarsfeld,
Mark Van Doren,
Lionel Trilling, and
I. I. Rabi. The University's graduates during this time
were equally accomplished — for example, two alumni of Columbia's
Law School,
Charles Evans
Hughes and
Harlan Fiske Stone
(who also held the position of Law School dean), served
successively as Chief Justices of the United States.
Dwight Eisenhower served as Columbia's
president from 1948 until he became the
President of the United
States in 1953.
Research into the atom by faculty members
John R. Dunning, I. I. Rabi,
Enrico Fermi and
Polykarp Kusch placed Columbia's Physics
Department in the international spotlight in the 1940s after the
first nuclear pile was built to start what became the
Manhattan Project.
Following the end of World War II, the School of International
Affairs was founded in 1946. Focusing on developing
diplomats and
foreign
affairs specialists, the school began by offering the
Master of International
Affairs. To satisfy an increasing desire for skilled
public service professionals at home and
abroad, the School added the
Master of Public
Administration degree in 1977. In 1981, the School was renamed
the
School of
International and Public Affairs (SIPA). The School introduced
an MPA in
Environmental
Science and
Policy in 2001
and, in 2004, SIPA inaugurated its first doctoral program — the
interdisciplinary Ph.D. in
Sustainable Development.
In 1947, to meet the needs of
GIs
returning from World War II, University Extension was reorganized
as an undergraduate college and designated the
Columbia
University School of General Studies. While the former
university extension had granted the B.S. degree since 1921, the
School of General Studies first granted the B.A. degree in 1968 and
is now considered one of the three colleges of Columbia University
(CC, SEAS, GS).

Earl Hall houses the Department of
Religion at Columbia.

Pro Ecclesia Dei, St. Paul's
Chapel of Columbia University offers sanctuary for spiritual solace
on campus.
Columbia
College first admitted women in the fall of 1983, after a decade of
failed negotiations with Barnard College
, an all female institution affiliated with the
University, to merge the two schools. Barnard College still
remains affiliated with Columbia, and all Barnard graduates are
issued diplomas authorized by both Columbia University and Barnard
College.
In 1990 the Faculty of Arts & Sciences was created, unifying
the faculties of Columbia College, the School of General Studies,
the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of
International and Public Affairs.
In 1997, the Columbia Engineering School was renamed the
Fu
Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, in honor
of Chinese businessman
Z. Y. Fu, who gave Columbia
$26 million. The school is popularly referred to as "SEAS" or
simply "the engineering school."
Manhattanville Campus Expansion
As of
April 2007, the university had purchased more than two-thirds of
the sought for a new campus in Manhattanville
, an industrial neighborhood to the north of the
Morningside Heights campus. Stretching from
125th Street to 133rd Street, the new campus
would house buildings for Columbia's schools of business and the
arts and allow the construction of the Jerome L. Greene Center for
Mind, Brain, and Behavior, where research will occur on
neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The
$7 billion expansion plan includes demolishing all buildings,
except three that are historically significant, eliminating the
existing light industry and storage warehouses, and relocating
tenants in 132 apartments. Replacing these buildings will be of
space for the University. The space will be used for additional
teaching, critical research, and auxiliary services. Designed by
Pritzker prize winning architect
Renzo
Piano, the will include more accessible pedestrian streets and
additional public open spaces.
According to the 2006 Environmental Impact Statement certified by
the Department of City Planning, almost 300 people would be
displaced from the project zone, and almost 3,300 would be
displaced from areas surrounding it. Community activist groups in
West Harlem fought the expansion for reasons ranging from property
protection and fair exchange for land, to residents' rights.
Subsequent public hearings drew neighborhood opposition. Most
recently, as of December 2008, the State of New York's
Empire State Development
Corporation approved use of eminent domain, which, through
declaration of Manhattanville's "blighted" status, gives
governmental bodies the right to appropriate private property for
public use. On May 20, 2009, the New York Public Authorities
Control Board approved the Manhanttanville expansion plan.
Academics
Admissions and financial aid

Van Am Quad
In 2009, Columbia College admitted 8.9% of applicants for the Class
of 2013, one of the lowest rates in the country. The Fu Foundation
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences admitted 14.4%, a record
for the School.
Columbia is also a racially diverse school, with approximately 52%
of all students identifying themselves as persons of color.
Additionally, 50.3% of all undergraduates in the Class of 2013 will
be receiving financial aid. The average financial aid package for
these students exceeds $30,000, with an average grant size of over
$20,000.
On April 11, 2007, Columbia University announced a $400m to $600m
donation from media billionaire alumnus
John
Kluge to be used exclusively for undergraduate financial aid.
The donation is among the largest single gifts to higher education.
Its exact value will depend on the eventual value of Kluge's estate
at the time of his death; however, the generous donation has helped
change financial aid policy at Columbia. The University was able to
extend financial aid offerings to more students; Columbia now has
one of the most comprehensive
financial aid policies among the
nation's colleges and universities.
Undergraduate students in Columbia College and the Fu Foundation
School of Engineering and Applied Science with family income under
$60,000 are not expected to pay tuition, room, board, and other
fees. At the same time, all students who are eligible for financial
aid (regardless of income), in lieu of loans, will be awarded
University grants. However, this does not apply to international
students, transfer students, nor students from the School of
General Studies.
Whether a prospective international Columbia College student can
pay the fees, will affect the admission decision:"Foreign students
seeking financial aid should be aware that their admissions
applications are read in a more selective process"
http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/admission.php
Organization
Columbia has three undergraduate institutions:

Rotunda in Low Library
Columbia also has a number of graduate and professional schools,
including:
- Columbia Law School : offers
the LLM, JD, and JSD degrees
- Columbia Business
School : offers the MBA and PhD degrees
- Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons : offers the MD
degree
- Columbia
University College of Dental Medicine: offers the DDS
degree
- School of Nursing: offers the
BS, MS, and PhD degrees
- Mailman
School of Public Health: offers the MPH, DrPH, and Ph.D degrees
- Graduate School of Journalism
: founded by Joseph Pulitzer, offers the MA, MS, and
PhD degrees
- School of
International and Public Affairs : offers MIA, MPA, PEPM, EMPA,
and PhD degrees
- The
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation :
offers the MArch, MS, and PhD degrees
- Graduate School of
Arts and Sciences : offers the MA, MS, and PhD degrees
- The School of
the Arts : offers the MfA degree in four disciplines (film,
theater, visual arts, and writing)
- Columbia
University School of Social Work: offers the MS and PhD
degrees
- The Fu
Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science : in
addition to undergraduate studies, students may also pursue MS and
PhD degree programs in engineering.
- Columbia
University's School of Continuing Education offers MS degrees,
classes for non-matriculated elective course students,
Post-baccalaureate Certificates, English Language Programs,
Overseas Programs, Summer Session, and High School Programs.
- Teachers
College, Columbia University Columbia's Graduate and
Professional school of Education.
The
university is affiliated with Barnard College
, Teachers College, the
Union Theological Seminary
, and the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America
, all located nearby in Morningside Heights.
A joint
undergraduate program is available through the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America
as well as through the Juilliard School
.
Rankings
The
undergraduate school of Columbia University is ranked 8th (tied
with University
of Chicago
) among national universities by U.S. News & World Report
(USNWR),.
Columbia College is
the third most selective school in the Ivy League behind Harvard
and Yale. Columbia is ranked third, behind Harvard and Yale, among
Ivy League institutions, by the Times Higher Education
Supplement.
Columbia
is ranked 7th among world universities and 6th among universities
in the Americas by Shanghai Jiao Tong University
, 13th by Forbes, 2nd in
Internet Media Buzz by the Global Language Monitor,, 10th in the
top 50 for Social Sciences,10th among world universities and 6th in
North America by the THES - QS World University
Rankings, 10th among "global universities" by Newsweek, and 1st in the U.S. among both national
research universities by the Center for Measuring
University Performance. According to the
National Research
Council, graduate programs are ranked 2nd nationally.
According to the
U.S.
News & World
Report, The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism,
home to the Pulitzer Prize, ranks #1.
Teachers College (Columbia's Graduate
School of Education) ranks #3. School of Social Work ranks #4. The
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP)
ranks #3, according to Architect magazine's November 2007 issue.
Columbia Law School ranks #4. The Mailman School of Public Health
ranks #3. Columbia Business School ranks #9, #2 according to The
Financial Times, and #3 according to
Fortune Magazine. Columbia's
medical school, called the College of Physicians and Surgeons,
ranks #10. According to
Foreign
Policy magazine, the School of International & Public
Affairs (SIPA) PhD program (overall) in international relations is
ranked #2, and the Master's program (policy area) is ranked #2.
Finally, Columbia's Institute of Human Nutrition ranks #1,
according to The Chronicle for Higher Education.
Columbia received an overall grade of "A-" on the Sustainable
Endowment Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2009.
Columbia was one of 15 schools, out of 300 in the U.S. and Canada,
to receive this grade. No college received an "A."
High School Programs
Columbia University's Summer Program for High School Students
offers highly motivated students the opportunity of classes in the
summer. The Summer Programs for High School Students in New York
City, Barcelona, and the Middle East are renowned for their
academic rigor and instructional excellence.
Columbia also offers a program called the
Columbia University
Science Honors Program, which attracts high school students
(sophomores, juniors, and seniors). The program is highly
competitive, admitting about one-sixth of applicants who are
selected based on their transcripts, student-written essays, a
teacher recommendation, and a three-hour science and math test. It
offers college-level courses in science and math every Saturday
during the academic year.
Student life
Publications

Journalism School Building
Columbia University is home to a rich diversity of undergraduate,
graduate, and professional publications.
The
Columbia Daily
Spectator is the nation's second-oldest student newspaper;
and
The Blue and White,
a monthly literary magazine established in 1890, has recently begun
to delve into campus life and local politics in print and on its
daily blog, dubbed the
Bwog.
Political publications include
The Current ,
a journal of politics, culture and Jewish Affairs; the
Columbia Political Review,
the multi-partisan political magazine of the Columbia Political
Union; and
AdHoc, which denotes itself as the
"progressive" campus magazine and deals largely with local
political issues and arts events.
Arts and literary publications include the
Columbia
Review, the nation's oldest college literary magazine;
Columbia, a nationally
regarded
literary journal; the
Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism; and
The Mobius
Strip, an online arts and literary magazine.
Inside New York is an
annual guidebook to New York City, written, edited, and published
by Columbia undergraduates. Through a distribution agreement with
Columbia University Press,
the book is sold at major retailers and independent
bookstores.
Columbia is home to numerous undergraduate academic publications.
The
Journal of
Politics & Society, is a journal of undergraduate
research in the social sciences, published and distributed
nationally by the
Helvidius Group;
the Columbia East Asian Review allows undergraduates throughout the
world to publish original work on China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, and
Vietnam and is supported by the
Weatherhead East Asian
Institute; and
The Birch, is
an undergraduate journal of Eastern European and Eurasian culture
that is the first national student-run journal of its kind; and the
Columbia Science Review is a science magazine
that prints general interest articles, faculty profiles, and
student research papers.
The Fed a
triweekly satire and investigative newspaper; and the
Jester of Columbia, the newly (and
frequently) revived campus humor magazine both inject humor into
local life.
Other publications include
The Columbian, the second
oldest collegiate yearbook in the nation; the
Gadfly, a
biannual journal of popular philosophy produced by undergraduates;
and
Rhapsody in Blue, an undergraduate urban studies
magazine.
Professional journals published by academic departments at Columbia
University include
Current Musicology and
The Journal of Philosophy.
During the spring semester, graduate students in the Journalism
School publish
The Bronx Beat, a bi-weekly newspaper covering
the South Bronx. Teachers College publishes the
Teachers College
Record, a journal of research, analysis, and commentary in
the field of education, published continuously since 1900.
Broadcasting
Columbia is home to two pioneers in undergraduate student
broadcasting, WKCR-FM and CTV.
WKCR
, the
student run radio station broadcasts to the Tri-State area and
claims to be the oldest FM radio station in the world, owing to the
University's affiliation with Major Edwin Armstrong. The
station currently has its studios on the second floor of Alfred
Lerner Hall on the Morningside campus with its main transmitter
tower at 4 Times Square in Midtown Manhattan.
Columbia Television (CTV) is the nation's second oldest student
television station and home of CTV News, a weekly live news program
produced by undergraduate students. CTV transmits a cablecast and
webcast from its studio in Alfred Lerner Hall.
Speech and debate
The
Philolexian Society is a
literary and debating club founded in 1802, making it the oldest
student group at Columbia, as well as the third oldest collegiate
literary society in the country. It has many famous alumni, and
administers the Joyce Kilmer Bad Poetry Contest (see
below).
The Columbia Parliamentary Debate Team, competes in tournaments
around the country as part of the
American Parliamentary
Debate Association, and hosts both high school and college
tournaments on Columbia's campus, as well as public debates on
issues affecting the university.
Greek life
Columbia University is home to many
fraternities, sororities, and
co-educational Greek organizations. Approximately 10–15% of
undergraduate students are associated with Greek life. There has
been a Greek presence on campus since the establishment in 1842 of
the Lambda Chapter of
Psi Upsilon.
Today, there are thirteen
NIC fraternities
on the campus, four
NPC sororities five
multicultural Greek organizations, and five historically Black
Fraternities and Sororities.
Entrepreneurship at Columbia
The Columbia University Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs (CORE)
was founded in 1999. The student-run group aims to foster
entrepreneurship on campus. Each year CORE hosts dozens of events,
including a business plan competition and a series of seminars.
Recent seminar speakers include
Mark
Cuban, owner of the
Dallas
Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet, and
Blake Ross, creator of
Mozilla Firefox. As of 2006, CORE has
awarded graduate and undergraduate students with over $100,000 in
seed capital. Events are possible through the contributions of
various private and corporate groups; previous sponsors include
Deloitte & Touche,
Citigroup, and i-Compass.
There are currently over 2,000 members in CORE. The organization is
governed by its executive board, which comprises fifteen
undergraduates.
The
Fu
Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science offers a
minor in Technical Entrepreneurship through its
enter for Technology, Innovation, and Community
Engagement, while the Graduate School of Business offers a
program in Entrepreneurship.
Other
The Columbia University Orchestra was founded by composer Edward
MacDowell in 1896, and is the oldest continually operating
university orchestra in the United States. Undergraduate student
composers at Columbia may choose to become involved with Columbia
New Music, which sponsors concerts of music written by
undergraduate students from all of Columbia's schools.
The
Columbia
University Marching Band, America's first college marching band
to convert to the "
scramble band"
format, is perhaps Columbia's most notorious student group, due to
both its penchant for edgy humor and its central role in campus
traditions such as
Orgo Night. For this
reason, the Band is frequently seen on campus performing as more of
a humor or comedy group rather than or in addition to its role as a
spirit group, although it does also cheer and play songs at
Columbia football and basketball games, just as a traditional
marching band would.
There are a number of performing arts groups at Columbia dedicated
to producing student theater, including the Columbia Players,
King's Crown Shakespeare Troupe (KCST), Columbia Musical Theater
Society (CMTS), New and Original Material Authored by Students
(NOMADS), Columbia University Performing Arts League (CUPAL), Black
Theatre Ensemble (BTE), sketch comedy group Chowdah, and
improvisational troupes Fruit Paunch and Alfred.
The
Columbia Queer Alliance
is the central Columbia student organization that represents the
lesbian, gay, transgender, and questioning student population. It
is the oldest gay student organization in the world, founded as the
Student
Homophile League in 1966 by
students including lifelong activist
Stephen Donaldson.
Columbia University campus military groups include the U.S.
Military Veterans of Columbia University and Advocates for Columbia
ROTC. In the 2005-06 academic year, the Columbia Military Society,
Columbia's student group for ROTC cadets and Marine officer
candidates, was renamed the Hamilton Society for "students who
aspire to serve their nation through the military in the tradition
of
Alexander Hamilton". (Hamilton
served with
George Washington
during the
American
Revolution.)
The University also houses an independent nonprofit organization,
Community Impact. Community Impact strives to serve disadvantaged
people in the Harlem, Washington Heights, and Morningside Heights
communities. Community Impact strives to provide high quality
programs, advance the public good, and foster meaningful volunteer
opportunities for students, faculty, and staff of Columbia
University. Many of the university's student body and staff keep
the program in operation through volunteerism, as well as off
campus volunteers.
Athletics
A member institution of the
National Collegiate
Athletic Association, Columbia fields varsity teams in 29
sports.
The football Lions play home games at the
17,000-seat Lawrence A.
Wien Stadium
at Baker
Field
. One hundred blocks north of the main campus
at Morningside Heights, the Baker Athletics Complex also includes
facilities for baseball, softball, soccer, lacrosse, field hockey,
tennis, track and rowing. The basketball, fencing, swimming &
diving, volleyball and wrestling programs are based at the Dodge
Physical Fitness Center on the main campus.
The Columbia mascot is a lion named Roar-ee. At football games, the
Columbia University Marching Band plays "Roar, Lion, Roar" each
time the team scores and "Who Owns New York?" with each first down.
At halftime, alumni stand and sing the alma mater, "Sans Souci."
Notable among a number of songs commonly played and sung at various
events such as
commencement and
convocation, and athletic games are: Colossus of
Columbia the Columbia University
fight
song.

Soccer Stadium
Columbia
became the third school in the United States to play
intercollegiate football when it sent a squad to New Brunswick,
N.J., in 1870 to play a team from Rutgers
. Three years later, Columbia students joined
representatives from Princeton
, Rutgers and Yale
to ratify
the first set of rules to govern intercollegiate play.
During the first half of the 20th century, the Lions had consistent
success on the gridiron.
Under Hall of Fame coach Lou Little, the 1934 squad shut out heavily
favored Stanford
in the Rose Bowl
winning what was the precursor to the national
championship. During World War II football players were
recruited to move uranium in support of the school's participation
in the
Manhattan Project.Little's
1947 edition beat defending national champion
Army, then riding a
32-game win streak, in one of the most stunning upsets of the
century. Greats of the era included the
All-American Sid
Luckman, the quarterback who would lead the
Chicago Bears to four NFL championships in the
1940s while ushering football into the modern era with the
T formation.
Since
sharing their only Ivy League title with Harvard
in 1961, the football Lions have had only three
winning seasons (6-3 in 1971, 5-4-1 in 1994 and 8-2 in
1996). Norries
Wilson, a runner-up for national assistant coach of the year
while at the University of Connecticut
in 2004, is the latest head coach brought in to try
to turn the program around. Several Lions players have gone
on to success in the
National
Football league in the past few decades, including quarterback
John Witkowski, offensive lineman
George Starke, and linebacker
Marcellus Wiley.
The Lions boast a rich athletic tradition. The
wrestling team is the oldest in the
nation, and the
football team was
the third to join intercollegiate play. A Columbia
crew was the first from outside Britain to win
at the
Henley Royal Regatta.
Former
students include baseball Hall of Famers
Lou Gehrig and Eddie Collins and football Hall of Famer Sid Luckman.
More recently, Columbia has excelled at
archery,
cross
country,
fencing and
wrestling. In 2008,
Olympic silver
medal fencer James L. Williams along with
three teammates, including
Keeth Smart,
Class of 2010 at
Columbia
Business School, earned the first American medal in men's
fencing since 1984. In 2000,
Olympic
gold medal swimmer
Cristina Teuscher became the first
Ivy League student to win the
Honda-Broderick Cup, awarded to the best
collegiate woman athlete in the nation. Five years later, Caroline
Bierbaum, Womens' Cross Country/Track and Field, won the Honda
award for Cross Country following a third-place finish at the NCAA
meet and five All-American selections in Cross Country, Indoor and
Outdoor Track. In 2007, the Men's Track Team became the first Ivy
League school to win a Championship of America race at the
prestigious Penn Relays by capturing the 4x800. The team of Michael
Mark, Jonah Rathbun, Erison Hurtalt and Liam Boylan-Pett ran
7:22.64, outkicking the anchor legs of national powerhouses
Michigan, Villanova, and Oral Roberts. The team has finished no
lower than fifth in the past three years. That year, Erison
Hurtault '07 completed a career sweep of the Indoor and Outdoor Ivy
League 400m, winning all eight races he competed in. In addition to
being a nine-time Ivy League champion and All-American, Erison
represented Dominica at both the the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and
the 2009 Berlin World Championships. Women's Track and Field
graduate and current coach Delilah DiCrescenzo has been ranked as
high as 5th in the nation in the 3000m steeplechase.
The baseball team hosted the first sporting event ever televised in
the United States.
On May 17, 1939 fledgling NBC broadcast a doubleheader between the Columbia Lions
vs. Princeton
Tigers at Columbia's Baker Field.
In basketball, perhaps the greatest player to wear Columbia Blue
was
All-American Chet Forte, the 1957 national college player of
the year. George Gregory, Jr. became the first African-American
All-American in 1931. The 1968 Ivy League championship team
included future
NBA
player
Jim McMillian.
Controversies and student demonstrations
Protests of 1968
Students initiated a major demonstration in 1968 over two major
issues.
The first was Columbia's proposed gymnasium
in neighboring Morningside Park
; this was seen by the protesters to be an act of
aggression aimed at the black residents of neighboring Harlem
.
A second
issue was the Columbia administration's failure to resign its
institutional membership in the Pentagon
's weapons research think-tank, the Institute for Defense
Analyses (IDA). Students barricaded themselves inside
Low
Library
, Hamilton Hall, and
several other university buildings during the protests, and New
York City police were called onto the campus to arrest or forcibly
remove the students.
Protests against racism and apartheid
Further student protests, including hunger strike and more
barricades of
Hamilton Hall and the
Business School during the late 1970s and early 1980s, were aimed
at convincing the university trustees to divest all of the
university's investments in companies that were seen as active or
tacit supporters of the
apartheid
regime in
South Africa. A notable
upsurge in the protests occurred in 1978, when following a
celebration of the tenth anniversary of the student uprising in
1968, students marched and rallied in protest of University
investments in South Africa. The Committee Against Investment in
South Africa (CAISA) and numerous student groups including the
Socialist Action Committee, the Black Student Organization and the
Gay Students group joined together and succeeded in pressing for
the first partial divestment of a U.S. University.
The initial (and partial) Columbia divestment,focused largely on
bonds and financial institutions directly involved with the South
African regime. It followed a year long campaign first initiated by
students who had worked together to block the appointment of former
United States Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger to an
endowed chair at the University in 1977.
Broadly backed by a diverse array of student groups and many
notable faculty members the Committee Against Investment in South
Africa held numerous teach-ins and demonstrations through the year
focused on the trustees ties to the corporations doing business
with South Africa. Trustee meetings were picketed and interrupted
by demonstrations culminating in May 1978 in the takeover of the
Graduate School of Business. These initial successes set a pattern
which was later repeated at many more campuses across the country,
resulting in the eventual divestment at hundreds of colleges and
universities.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visit and speech controversy

Students protest Ahmadinejad's
visit.
The
School of
International and Public Affairs traditionally extends
invitations to many heads of state and heads of government who come
to New York City for the opening of the fall session of the United
Nations General Assembly.
In 2007, Iranian
President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was one of those invited to speak on campus.
Ahmadinejad accepted his invitation and spoke on September 24, 2007
as part of Columbia University's World Leaders Forum. The
invitation proved to be highly controversial. Thousands of
demonstrators swarmed the campus on September 24 and the speech
itself was televised worldwide. University President
Lee Bollinger tried to triangulate the
controversy by letting Ahmadenijad speak, but with a
extraordinarily negative introduction (given personally by
Bollinger.) This did not mollify those who were displeased with the
fact that the Iranian leader had been invited onto the
campus.
During
his speech, Ahmadinejad criticized Israel
's policies
towards the Palestinians; called
for research on the historical accuracy of Holocaust; raised questions as to who
initiated the 9/11 attacks;
expressed the self-determination
of Iran's nuclear power
program, criticizing the United
Nation's policy of sanctions on his country; and criticized
U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East. In response to a question
about Iran's
treatment of
women and
homosexuals, he asserted that women are
respected in Iran and that "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like
in your country... In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't
know who's told you that we have it." The latter statement drew
laughter from the audience.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office accused Columbia of
accepting grant money from the
Alavi
Foundation to support faculty "sympathetic" to Iran's Islamic
republic.
ROTC ban
Since 1969, during the Vietnam War, the university has not allowed
the US military to have
Reserve Officers' Training
Corps (ROTC) programs on campus. However, even after 1969,
Columbia students could participate in ROTC programs at other
nearby colleges and universities. A few undergraduate
Military Science courses were taught at
Columbia as late as the 1970s.
At a forum at the university during the
2008 presidential
election campaign, both
John McCain
and
Barack Obama said that the
university should consider reinstating ROTC on campus. After the
debate, the President of the University,
Lee Bollinger stated that he did not favor
reinstating Columbia's ROTC program, because of the military's
anti-gay policies. In November 2008, Columbia's undergraduate
student body held a referendum on the question of whether or not to
invite ROTC back to campus, and the students who voted were almost
evenly divided on the issue. ROTC lost the vote (which would not
have been binding on the administration, and did not include
graduate students, faculty, or alumni) by a fraction of a
percentage point.
Traditions
Orgo Night
On the day before the Organic Chemistry exam — which is often on
the first day of finals — at precisely the stroke of midnight, the
Columbia University
Marching Band occupies
Butler
Library to distract diligent students from studying. After a
forty-five minutes or so of jokes and music, the procession then
moves out to the lawn in front of Hartley, Wallach and John Jay
residence halls to entertain the residents there.
The Band then plays
at various other locations around Morningside Heights, including
the residential quadrangle of Barnard College
, where students of the all-women's school, in
mock-consternation, rain trash - including notes and course packets
- and water balloons upon them from their dormitories above.
The Band tends to close their Orgo Night performances before
Furnald Hall, known among students as the more studious and
reportedly "anti-social" residence hall, where the underclassmen in
the Band serenade the graduating seniors with an entertaining,
though vulgar, mock-hymn to Columbia, composed of quips that poke
fun at the various stereotypes about the Columbia student
body.
Tree-Lighting and Yule Log ceremonies

College Walk is illuminated in the
winter months
The campus Tree-Lighting Ceremony is a relatively new tradition at
Columbia, inaugurated in 1998. It celebrates the illumination of
the medium-sized trees lining College Walk in front of Kent and
Hamilton Halls on the east end and Dodge and Journalism Halls on
the west, just before finals week in early December. The lights
remain on until February 28. Students meet at the sun-dial for free
hot chocolate, performances by various
a cappella groups,
and speeches by the university president and a guest.
Immediately following the College Walk festivities is one of
Columbia's older holiday traditions, the lighting of the Yule Log.
The ceremony dates to a period prior to the
Revolutionary War, but lapsed before being
revived by University President
Nicholas Murray Butler in the early
20th century. A troop of students dressed as
Continental Army soldiers carry the
eponymous log from the sun-dial to the lounge of John Jay Hall,
where it is lit amid the singing of seasonal carols. The ceremony
is accompanied by a reading of
A Visit From St. Nicholas by
Clement Clarke Moore (Columbia
College class of 1798) and
Yes, Virginia, There is a
Santa Claus by
Francis Pharcellus Church (Class
of 1859).
The Varsity Show

Entrance to The Miller Theatre
An annual musical written by and for students and is one of
Columbia's oldest traditions. Past writers and directors have
included Columbians
Richard Rodgers
and
Oscar Hammerstein,
Lorenz Hart,
I.A.L. Diamond,
and
Herman Wouk. The show has one of the
largest operating budgets of all university events.
Faculty and research
Columbia was the first North American site where the
Uranium atom was split. It was the birthplace of
FM radio and the
laser. The
MPEG-2 algorithm of
transmitting high quality audio and video over limited bandwidth
was developed by
Dimitris
Anastassiou, a Columbia professor of electrical engineering.
Biologist
Martin Chalfie was the
first to introduce the use of
Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) in
labelling cells in intact organisms. Other inventions and products
related to Columbia include
Sequential Lateral
Solidification (SLS) technology for making LCDs,
System Management Arts (SMARTS),
Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) (which is used for audio, video, chat, instant
messaging and whiteboarding),
pharmacopeia,
Macromodel (software for computational
chemistry), a new and better recipe for
glass concrete, Blue
LEDs,
Beamprop (used in photonics), among
others.Columbia scientists are credited with about 175 new
inventions in the health sciences each year. More than 30
pharmaceutical products based on discoveries and inventions made at
Columbia are on the market today. These include
Remicade (for arthritis),
Reopro (for blood clot complications),
Xalatan (for glaucoma),
Benefix,
Latanoprost (a
glaucoma treatment), shoulder prosthesis,
homocysteine (testing for cardiovascular
disease), and
Zolinza (for cancer
therapy).
Columbia's Science and Technology Ventures currently manages some
600 patents and more than 250 active license agreements.
Patent-related deals earned Columbia more than $230 million in the
2006 fiscal year, according to the university.
In 2004, Columbia
made $178 million (compared to $24 million made by Harvard
).
As of October 2009, 79 Columbia University graduates, faculty, and
affiliates have been honored with Nobel Prizes for their work in
physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics. In
the last 12 years (1996-2008), 18 Columbia affiliates have won
Nobel Prizes, of whom eight are current faculty members. However,
currently, eleven Nobel Laureates are affiliated with the
University of whom nine are faculty, one is an adjunct senior
research scientist (
Daniel Tsui), and
the other a Global Fellow (
Kofi
Annan).
Columbia faculty awarded the Nobel Prize in the last 10 years
(1999-2009) include
Martin Chalfie
(Chemistry, 2008),
Orhan Pamuk
(Literature, 2006),
Edmund Phelps
(Economics, 2006),
Richard Axel, a
Columbia graduate (Physiology/Medicine, 2004),
Joseph Stiglitz (Economics, 2001),
Eric Kandel (Physiology/Medicine, 2000), and
Robert Mundell (Economics, 1999).
Columbia affiliates awarded the Nobel Prize in the last 10 years
(1999-2009) include
Barack Obama
(Peace, 2009),
Al Gore (Peace, 2007),
John Mather (Physics, 2006),
Robert Grubbs (Chemistry, 2005),
Linda Buck (Physiology/Medicine, 2004),
William Standish Knowles
(Chemistry, 2001), and
James Heckman
(Economics, 2000).
Other
awards and honors won by current faculty include 29 MacArthur Foundation Award winners, 4
National Medal of Science
recipients, 43 National Academy of Sciences
Award winners, 20 National Academy of
Engineering Award winners, 38 Institute of Medicine of the
National Academies Award recipients and 143 American
Academy of Arts and Sciences
Award winners.
Notable Columbians
Alumni and famous past students
Three
United States Presidents, nine Justices of the Supreme Court
of the United States
and 40 Nobel Prize
winners have studied at Columbia. Alumni also have received
more than 20
National Book
Awards and 96
Pulitzer Prizes.
(See
List of Columbia
University people--National Book Awards, Pulitzer prizes.) Four
United States
Poet Laureates received
their degrees from Columbia. Today, two
United States Senators and 16 current
Chief Executives of
Fortune 500
companies hold Columbia degrees, as do three of the 25 richest
Americans and 16 billionaires. Alumni of the University have served
(in more than 70 positions) as members of U.S. Presidential
Cabinets or as U.S. Presidential advisers. More than 40 U.S.
senators, 90 U.S. congresspersons, and 35 U.S. governors have
received their education at Columbia. Alumni have founded or been
the president of more than fifty-five universities and colleges in
the nation and the world.
Attendees of King's College, Columbia's predecessor, included
Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton,
John Jay,
Robert R. Livingston,
Egbert Benson, and
Gouverneur Morris.
U.S.
Supreme Court
Chief Justices Harlan
Fiske Stone, Charles Evans
Hughes and Associate Justices Benjamin Cardozo, William O. Douglas, and
Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from
Columbia law school. Chief Justice
John Jay
and Associate Justice
Samuel
Blatchford studied law at and graduated from King's College and
Columbia
College, respectively, before the establishment of the law
school. Associate Justices
Stanley
Foreman Reed and
Joseph McKenna
attended Columbia Law but did not graduate. Former U.S. Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt and
Franklin Delano Roosevelt also
attended the law school without graduating as it was common at the
time for young men to enter the bar after completing only a year or
two of legal education.
Former U.S. President
Dwight D.
Eisenhower served as President
of the University. Other significant figures in American history to
attend the university were
John
L. O'Sullivan, the journalist
who coined the phrase "manifest destiny",
Alfred Thayer Mahan, the geostrategist
who wrote on the significance of sea power,
Jewish philanthropist
Sampson Simson and progressive
intellectual
Randolph Bourne. Former
Secretary of State
Alexander Haig
studied at
Columbia Business
School between 1954 and 1955.
Wellington Koo, a Chinese diplomat who argued
passionately against Japanese and Western imperialism in Asia at
the
Paris Peace
Conference, is a
graduate, having honed his debating skills in Columbia's
Philolexian Society, as is Dr.
Bhimrao Ambedkar, one of the founding
fathers of India and chief architect of its
constitution. Local politicians have
been no less represented at Columbia, including
Seth Low, who served as both President of the
University and Mayor of the City of New York, and New York
governors
Thomas Dewey, also an
unsuccessful presidential candidate,
DeWitt Clinton, who presided over the
construction of the
Erie Canal,
Hamilton Fish, later to become U.S. Secretary
of State, and
Daniel D. Tompkins, who was a Vice President of the
United States.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the
President of Estonia, received his BA in psychology at Columbia in
1976.
Abdul
Zahir received his
M.D. from
Columbia University.
Philip
Gunawardena joined Columbia in 1925 for his post-graduate
studies. General, historian, and author
John Watts de Peyster attended
Columbia College and later received a
M.A. degree at Columbia.
More recent political figures educated at Columbia include U.S.
President
Barack Obama, former U.S.
Senator
Mike Gravel of Alaska
, current
U.S. Senators Judd
Gregg of New
Hampshire
and
Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey
, Governor of New
York David Paterson and his Chief
of Staff Charles J.
O'Byrne, U.S. Attorney General
Eric Holder, former U.S. Secretary of
State
Madeleine Albright, UN
weapons inspector
Hans Blix, former UN
Secretary General
Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, conservative commentators
Patrick J. Buchanan,
John McLaughlin and
Norman Podhoretz, U.S. Supreme Court
Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank
Alan Greenspan,
George Stephanopoulos, Senior Advisor
to former U.S. President Bill Clinton,
George Pataki, the former governor of New York
State, and
Mikhail Saakashvili,
the current President of the country of Georgia.
Louisiana Lieutenant
Governor,
Lether Frazar, who was
president of two universities in his state, obtained his Ph.D. from
Columbia in 1942.
Warlick Carr, a
prominent attorney in Lubbock
attended Columbia for a year.
Scientists
Stephen Jay Gould,
Robert Millikan and
Michael Pupin, cultural historian
Jacques Barzun, literary critic
Lionel Trilling, sociologists
Immanuel Wallerstein and
Seymour Martin Lipset, behavioral
psychologist
Charles Ferster,
poet-professor
Mark Van Doren,
philosophers
Irwin Edman and
Robert Nozick, and economists
Milton Friedman, Former Afghan Finance
Minister
Ashraf Ghani,
Nur Mohammed Taraki (Prime Minister and
President of Afghanistan, 1978–1979),
Daniel C. Kurtzer, and communications economist
Harvey J.
Levin all
obtained degrees from Columbia. J.P Morgan associate
Temple Bowdoin graduated in 1885.
In culture and the arts,
Rodgers
and Hammerstein,
Lorenz Hart,
screenwriters
Sidney Buchman and
I.A.L. Diamond, critic and biographer
Tim Page, musician
Art Garfunkel, and children's songwriter
Bobby Susser, are all among Columbia's
alumni. The poets
Langston Hughes,
Federico García Lorca,
Joyce Kilmer and
John Berryman; the writers
Eudora Welty,
Isaac
Asimov,
J. D. Salinger,
Upton Sinclair,
Jack Kerouac,
Allen
Ginsberg,
Phyllis Haislip,
Roger Zelazny,
Herman Wouk,
Hunter S. Thompson,
Aravind Adiga,
Apostolos Doxiadis, and
Paul Auster; playwrights
Tony Kushner and
Eulalie Spence; the architects
Robert A. M. Stern,
Ricardo Scofidio,
Peter Eisenman and
Christine Wang; the composer
Béla Bartók; and film director and
screenwriter
Cetywa Powell also
attended the university.
Kate Millett
turned her Ph.D. thesis into the book
Sexual Politics.
Trappist monk, author, and humanist
Thomas Merton is an alumnus both as an
undergraduate and graduate student.
Silent
Film actress
Miriam Cooper
attended writing courses at the school during her later years.
Urban theorist and cultural critic
Jane
Jacobs spent time at the School of General Studies, and
educator
Elisabeth Irwin received
her M.A. there in 1923.
Vampire
Weekend band members
Ezra Koenig,
Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Tomson, and Chris Baio graduated from the
College in 2006 and 2007.
Grammy
Award-winning R&B singers
Lauryn
Hill and
Alicia Keys attended
Columbia for one year. Singer and songwriter
Sean Lennon as well as Japanese-American
pop-star
Hikaru Utada and
Korean-American pop-star
Lena Park briefly
attended the College.
Allison
Starling and
Remy Zaken, both
Broadway actresses, are currently attending the College. Young
adult author
Maureen Johnson
graduated from Columbia with an M.F.A.
Baseball legend
Lou Gehrig, along with
football quarterback
Sid Luckman and
sportscaster
Roone Arledge, and
women's Olympic weight lifter
Karyn
Marshall are alumni.
Celebrities who graduated from Columbia include the actors
Maggie Gyllenhaal,
Casey Affleck,
Julia
Stiles,
Rachel Nichols,
Amanda Peet,
Matthew Fox,
Famke Janssen,
Brian
Dennehy,
Jesse Bradford,
Ben Stein,
George
Segal,
Rider Strong,
James Franco and
Mario Van Peebles.
Academy Award-winning actors
James Cagney and
Anna
Paquin, and
Academy
Award-nominated actors
Ed Harris and
Jake Gyllenhaal attended Columbia
for a time. Radio personality
Tom
Griswold of the nationally syndicated morning radio show
The Bob and Tom Show
graduated from Columbia. Television talk show host
Sally Jesse Raphael is a graduate and
Claire-Aimee "Claire" Unabia from Cycle 10 of
America's Next Top Model is a
graduate of the School of General Studies.
Amelia Earhart also enrolled at
Columbia as a pre-med student in 1919.
Pete Slosberg, founder of
Pete's Brewing Company, is a graduate
of Columbia's
School
of Engineering and Applied Science.
Founding members of the nostalgia rock band
Sha Na Na, George Leonard and Robert Leonard, were
also graduates from Columbia. The original band line-up, all
Columbia students, featured 12 performers:
Alan Cooper,
Robert
Leonard,
Frederick 'Denny'
Greene,
Henry Gross,
John 'Jocko' Marcellino,
Joe Witkin,
Scott
Powell,
Tony Santini,
Donald 'Donny' York,
Elliot Cahn,
Rich
Joffe,
Dave Garrett and
Bruce 'Bruno' Clark..
Faculty and affiliates
Jacques Barzun,
Lionel Trilling, and
Mark Van Doren were legendary Columbia
faculty members as well as graduates, teaching alongside such
luminaries as the philosopher
John Dewey,
American historians
Richard
Hofstadter,
John A. Garraty,
Charles
Beard and
Reinhard H Luthin,
educator
George Counts, sociologists
Daniel Bell,
C. Wright
Mills,
Robert K. Merton, and
Paul
Lazarsfeld, art historian
Meyer
Schapiro, and Renaissance scholar
Donald M. Frame. The history of the discipline of
anthropology practically begins at
Columbia with
Franz Boas.
Margaret Mead, a Barnard College
alumna, along with Columbia graduate Ruth Benedict, continued this tradition by
bringing the discipline into the spotlight. Nuclear
physicists
Enrico Fermi,
John R. Dunning,
I.
I. Rabi, and
Polykarp Kusch helped develop the
Manhattan Project at the
university, and pioneering geophysicist
Maurice Ewing made great strides in the
understanding of plate tectonics.
Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered the
chromosomal basis for genetic inheritance at his famous "fly room"
at the university, laying the foundation for modern genetics.
Philosopher
Hannah Arendt was a
visiting professor in the 1960s. Noted Chinese author and
illustrator,
Chiang Yee taught Chinese
from 1955 to 1977, and retired as Emeritus Professor of Chinese. In
1978
Frank Daniel began his Columbia
teaching career; he is most notable for his development of the
sequence paradigm of
screenwriting.
Melvil Dewey, creator of the
Dewey Decimal Classification,
was librarian of the University and also founded the first library
school in the U.S. at Columbia.More recently, architects
Bernard Tschumi,
Santiago Calatrava and
Frank Gehry have taught at the school. The
postcolonial scholar
Edward Said taught
at Columbia, where he spent virtually the entirety of his academic
career, until his death in 2003.
Current faculty (2008-2009 Academic Year) includes nine Nobel
Laureates: R. Axel, M. Chalfie, E. Kandel, T.D. Lee, R. Mundell, O.
Pamuk, E. Phelps, J. Stiglitz, and H. Stormer.
Also, celebrated faculty members include string-theory expert
Brian Greene, Ricci flow inventor
Richard Hamilton,
American historian
Eric Foner, Middle
Eastern studies expert
Richard
Bulliet, Eric Kandel, a
Nobel prize
winner who conducted fundamental research in neuroscience, New York
City historian
Kenneth T.
Jackson, Je Tsong Khapa Professor
of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies
Robert
Thurman, composers
Tristan
Murail,
Fred Lerdahl and
George Lewis, conductor
Igor Buketoff, biomedical engineering
professor Clark T. Hung, literary theorist
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
philosopher
Philip Kitcher, British
historian
Simon Schama, art historian
Rosalind Krauss, director
Mira Nair, East Asian studies expert
William Theodore de Bary, scientist,
critic, writer and physician
Oliver
Sacks,
This American
Life producer
Alex Blumberg,
Turkish author and Nobel prize winner
Orhan
Pamuk, and economists
Jeffrey
Sachs,
Jagdish Bhagwati,
Joseph Stiglitz,
Edmund Phelps,
Xavier Foupa-Pokam, and
Robert Mundell.
Sunil Gulati, President of
US Soccer, is a professor of Economics at the
University. Dr. Michael Stone is a Professor of Psychiatry. He is
the star of the I.D. show Most Evil, and a foreleading expert in
forensic psychiatry.
In geography
The
Columbia
Glacier
, one of the largest in Alaska
's College Fjord
, is named after the university, where it sits among
other glaciers named for the Ivy League
and Seven Sisters
schools. Mount Columbia
in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness
of Colorado
also takes its name from the university and is
situated among peaks named for Harvard
, Yale
, Princeton
, and Oxford
.
See also
- 116th Street – Columbia University
a station in the New York City subway
system
- Columbia/Barnard Hillel,
a Jewish student organization at Columbia University
- Columbia Blue, a standardized
color combination in the Pantone Matching System, used as a school
color by Columbia University
- Columbia
Center for New Media Teaching and Learning
- Columbia-Chicago School of
Economics
- Columbia
College of Columbia University, the main undergraduate college
at Columbia University, New York
- Columbia Daily
Spectator, a student newspaper at Columbia University, New
York
- Columbia Glacier
, a glacier in Alaska
, USA,
named for Columbia University
- Columbia
Grammar & Preparatory School, New York City
- Columbia
Institute for Tele-Information, New York City
- Columbia Journalism
Review, a bimonthly journal published by the Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism
- Columbia Law School
- * Columbia Business
Law Review, a monthly journal published by students at
Columbia Law School
- * Columbia
Human Rights Law Review, a law review published by
students at Columbia Law School
- * Columbia Law
Review, a monthly law review published by students at
Columbia Law School
- * Columbia
Business and Law Association, Columbia Law School's
organization dedicated to the interaction of law and
business[631]
- * Columbia
Encyclopedia
References
-
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2009/10/18/columbia-plans-new-global-centers
- Columbia University Office of Undergraduate
Admissions - Housing & Dining
- Sources vary; e.g. : "9.5 million printed volumes"; : 9,277,042
"volumes held."
- Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Acquires Early Thirteenth-Century Manuscript Bible
- Columbia University Libraries
- According to the Royal Institute of British
Architects (R.I.B.A.)
- Schecter, Barnet. The Battle for New York: The City at the
Heart of the American Revolution. Walker & Company. New
York. October 2002. ISBN 0-8027-1374-2
- McCullough, David. 1776. Simon & Schuster. New
York. May 24, 2005. ISBN 978-0743226714
- Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. Penguin Books,
(2004) (ISBN 1-59420-009-2)
- Columbia College Student Life Timeline
- "Columbia University's Lunatic Past." Ephemeral
New York website. May 5, 2008
- [http://www.barnard.edu/about/facts.html Link text.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/nyregion/21gas.html
- Wall Street Journal article breaking the news about
Kluge's donation
- [1]
- Columbia College Academics > Special Programs
> Juilliard
-
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=adE_FmC1UxXY&refer=us
Harvard Bar to Entry Rises as College Offers More Aid, Bloomberg
News, March 31, 2009
-
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=243&pubCode=1
- Harvard Tops Columbia in Media Buzz
- Top 50 universities for Social Sciences
2007
- http://www.tcrecord.org/About.asp
- Office of Undergraduate Admissions site about
Campus Life, retrieved 2007-09-12
- Columbia University Orchestra
- CQA Main Page
- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ci/index.html
- Why They Called It the Manhattan Project by William
J. Broad - New York Times - October 30, 2007
- Baker Field: Birthplace of Sports
Television
- "Columbia's Radicals of 1968 Hold a Bittersweet
Reunion", New York Times, April 28, 2008
- Columbia University - 1968
- "Disinvestment from South Africa #University
campuses"
- http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/202820.php
- Iran backers funding US universities, Nov. 23, 2009, Jerusalem
Post,[2]
- Feith, David J., " Duty, Honor, Country… and Columbia",
National
Review, September 15, 2008.
-
http://www.fordham.edu/academics/special_programs/fordham_army_rotc/partner_schools_29928.asp
Partner Schools
-
http://www.afrotc.com/colleges/detachment_info.php?recruiter_id=860
- http://home.manhattan.edu/~afrotc/CROSSTOWNS.htm AFROTC
Detachment 560, "The Bronx Bombers", CROSS-TOWN SCHOOLS. Accessed
01/14/2009.
- McGurn, William, " A Columbia Marine To Obama: Help!", Wall Street
Journal, September 30, 2008, Page 17.
- NAVY ROTC IN NEW YORK CITY
- Colleges and Universities with NROTC Units
- [3]
- [4]
- [5]f>
- [6]
- The 400 Richest Americans - Forbes.com
- [7]
- US National Park Service. "The Presidents of the United States - Biographical
Sketches." [Accessed 08/13/08]
- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/08/11/obama.html
Further reading
- Robert A. McCaughey: Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia
University in the City of New York, 1754-2004, Columbia
University Press, 2003, ISBN 0231130082
- Living Legacies at Columbia, ed. by Wm Theodore De
Bary, Columbia University Press, 2006, ISBN 0231138849
External links