ETH Zürich (German: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich)

   

  ETH Zürich (German: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich) is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. Like its sister institution Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), it is an integral part of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain (ETH Domain) that is directly subordinate to Switzerland's Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research.

ETH Zürich is consistently rated among the top universities in the world. It is currently ranked 4th in Europe overall, and 3rd best university in the world in engineering, science and technology. Twenty-one Nobel Prizes have been awarded to students or professors of the Institute in the past, the most famous of which is Albert Einstein in 1921, and the most recent is Richard F. Heck in 2010. It is a founding member of the IDEA League and the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) and a member of the CESAER network.

The school was founded by the Swiss Federal Government in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, serve as a national center of excellence in science and technology and provide a hub for interaction between the scientific community and industry.

History
ETH was founded in 1854 by the Swiss Confederation and began giving its first lectures in 1855 as a polytechnic institute (Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule). It was initially composed of six faculties: architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry, forestry, and an integrated department for the fields of mathematics, natural sciences, literature, and social and political sciences. It is locally still known as Poly, derived from the original name Eidgenössische polytechnische Schule,which translates to "Federal polytechnic school".

ETH is a federal institute (i.e., under direct administration by the Swiss government), whereas the University of Zürich is a cantonal institution. The decision for a new federal university was heavily disputed at the time, because the liberals pressed for a "federal university", while the conservative forces wanted all universities to remain under cantonal control, worried that the liberals would gain more political power than they already had. In the beginning, both universities were co-located in the buildings of the University of Zürich.

From 1905 to 1908, under the presidency of Jérôme Franel, the course program of ETH was restructured to that of a real university and ETH was granted the right to award doctorates. In 1909 the first doctorates were awarded. In 1911, it was given its current name, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. In 1924, another reorganization structured the university in 12 departments. However, it now has 16 departments.


Interior skylights in the main building
ETH Zürich, the EPFL, and four associated research institutes form the "ETH Domain" with the aim of collaborating on scientific projects.      

Read more ...

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology                        (MIT)                                                                  is a private reasearch university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. Researchers worked on computers, radar, and inertial guidance during World War II and the Cold War. Post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian. The current 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 mile (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin.

MIT, with five schools and one college which contain a total of 32 departments, is traditionally known for research and education in the physical sciences and engineering, and more recently in biology, economics, linguistics, and management as well. The "Engineers" sponsor 31 sports, most teams of which compete in the NCAA Division III's New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference; the Division I rowing programs compete as part of the EARC and EAWRC.

MIT is often cited as among the world's top universities.As of 2014, 81 Nobel laureates, 52 National Medal of Science recipients, 45 Rhodes Scholars, 38 MacArthur Fellows, and 2 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT. MIT has a strong entrepreneurial culture and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world.

History
In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to use newly filled lands in Back Bay, Boston for a "Conservatory of Art and Science", but the proposal failed. A proposal by William Barton Rogers a charter for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signed by the governor of Massachusetts on April 10, 1861.

Rogers, a professor from the University of Virginia, wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances.He did not wish to found a professional school, but a combination with elements of both professional and liberal education, proposing that
"The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws."

The Rogers Plan reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories.      

Read more ...

Imperial College London

      Imperial College London (legally The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine)is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. Its origins lie with Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who championed creating a centre for science, technology and the arts in the area around South Kensington, which came to be known as "Albertopolis" and also comprises the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Science Museum. Imperial has grown through mergers, including with St Mary's Hospital Medical School (in 1988), the National Heart and Lung Institute (in 1995) and Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School (in 1997). Queen Elizabeth II opened the the recently established Imperial College Business School building in 2004.A former constituent college of the University of London, it became independent during its centennial celebration in 2007.

Imperial is organised into four faculties - science, engineering, medicine and business - within which there are more than 40 departments, institutes and research centres. The main campus is located in Kensington with additional campuses in Chelsea, Hammersmith, Paddington, Berkshire and in Singapore. Imperial is a major centre for biomedical research and is part of the Imperial College Healthcare academic health science centre. It is a member of numerous university associations including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, European University Association, G5, Association of MBAs, League of European Research Universities and Russell Group and forms part of the "golden triangle" of leading English universities.

Imperial is consistently included among the best universities in the world, ranking 2nd in the QS World University Rankings (2014) and 9th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2014).According to a corporate study in The New York Times its graduates are among the 10 most valued in the world.Imperial's faculty and alumni include 15 Nobel laureates, 2 Fields Medalists, 70 Fellows of the Royal Society, 82 Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering and 78 Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

History
The Great Exhibition was organised by Prince Albert, Henry Cole, Francis Fuller and other members of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. The Great Exhibition made a surplus of £186,000 used in creating an area in the South of Kensington celebrating the encouragement of the arts, industry, and science. Albert insisted the Great Exhibition surplus should be used as a home for culture and education for everyone. The vision built the Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Geological Museum, Royal College of Science, Royal College of Art, Royal School of Mines, Royal School of Music, Royal College of Organists, Royal School of Needlework, Royal Geographical Society, Institute of Recorded Sound, Royal Horticulatural Gardens, Royal Albert Hall and the Imperial Institute.Several Royal Colleges and the Imperial Institute merged to form what is now Imperial College London.      

Read more ...

The California Institute of Technology

   The California Institute of Technology (or Caltech) is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering. Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
 

Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910, and the college assumed its present name in 1921. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities, and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán.The university is one among a small group of Institutes of Technology in the United States which tends to be primarily devoted to the instruction of technical arts and applied sciences.

Despite its small size, 33 Caltech alumni and faculty have won a total of 34 Nobel Prizes (Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes) and 71 have won the United States National Medal of Science or Technology. There are 112 faculty members who have been elected to the National Academies. In addition, numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA. Caltech managed $332 million in 2011 in sponsored research.

First year students are required to live on campus, and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus house system. Although Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks, student life is governed by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations. The Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

History

Caltech started as a vocational school founded in Pasadena in 1891 by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop. The school was known successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute (and Manual Training School), and Throop College of Technology, before acquiring its current name in 1920. The vocational school was disbanded and the preparatory program was split off to form an independent Polytechnic School in 1907.

At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, George Ellery Hale, a solar astronomer from the University of Chicago, founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904. He joined Throop's board of trustees in 1907, and soon began developing it and the whole of Pasadena into a major scientific and cultural destination. He engineered the appointment of James A. B. Scherer, a literary scholar untutored in science but a capable administrator and fund raiser, to Throop's presidency in 1908. Scherer persuaded retired businessman and trustee Charles W. Gates to donate $25,000 in seed money to build Gates Laboratory, the first science building on campus.

World Wars
In 1910, Throop moved to its current site. Arther Fleming donated the land for the permanent campus site. Theodore Roosevelt delivered an address at Throop Institute on March 21, 1911, and he declared:

I want to see institutions like Throop turn out perhaps ninety-nine of every hundred students as men who are to do given pieces of industrial work better than any one else can do them; I want to see those men do the kind of work that is now being done on the Panama Canal and on the great irrigation projects in the interior of this country—and the one-hundredth man I want to see with the kind of cultural scientific training that will make him and his fellows the matrix out of which you can occasionally develop a man like your great astronomer, George Ellery Hale.

In the same year, a bill was introduced in the California Legislature calling for the establishment of a publicly funded "California Institute of Technology," with an initial budget of a million dollars, ten times the budget of Throop at the time. The board of trustees offered to turn Throop over to the state, but the presidents of Stanford University and the University of California successfully lobbied to defeat the bill, which allowed Throop to develop as the only scientific research-oriented education institute in southern California, public or private, until the onset of the World War II necessitated the broader development of research-based science education.The promise of Throop attracted physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes from MIT to develop the institution and assist in establishing it as a center for science and technology.      

Read more ...

Kars4Kids

        Kars4Kids is an American non-profit national car donation organization based in Lakewood, New Jersey which donates proceeds to Jewish children and their families through the funding of Oorah, a national non-profit organization.
       

Background
Kars4Kids is a registered 501(c)3 operating in 49 states, and takes donations of vehicles, accepting over 40,000 cars annually.

In 2010, Kars4Kids reported revenue of $29.1 million and expenses of $31.1 million.

Donations to Kars4Kids benefit the Oorah (Joy for Our Youth, or J.O.Y.), a national organization with a stated goal of addressing the "educational, material, emotional and spiritual needs of Jewish children and their families."

Work
The organization hosts regular coat and clothing giveaways for the needy nationwide, including in Harlem, Washington, DC, and in Newark, New Jersey where they held a give-away together with Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

Prior to the start of the 2012 school year, the Chairman of the NYC Housing Authority in partnership with Kars4Kids distributed school supplies and backpacks to more than 3,000 children in Queens Housing projects. Around that same time period with New York City Councilman James Vacca they distributed free backpacks in the Bronx as part of a "back-to-school initiative aimed at helping struggling families with the rising expenses of school supplies."  In Brooklyn, Congressman Ed Towns and Kars 4 Kids distributed winter jackets to underprivileged children, including at the legendary Marcy Avenue Houses.

The organization saw a boom in donated cars following Hurricane Sandy, with owners donating cars totaled by hurricane damage.

The charity auctioned off a 2003 Ford Explorer in which two children drowned after being swept from their mother's arms during Hurricane Sandy. The charity had been contacted by the NYPD on behalf of the parents. The auction proceeds went to raise money for coats for the needy.

Kars 4 Kids worked with United States Representative Michael Grimm to distribute over 1,000 children’s coats and other assorted clothing items to Staten Island residents affected by the hurricane.

Jingle
Kars4Kids is well known for its radio jingle, described by Peter Hartlaub as an "assault on [the] senses".

Disclosure concerns
The organization has been criticized for concealing its Jewish educational work. In 2009, Joy for Our Youth paid $65,000 in fines in Pennsylvania; while Kars4Kids paid $65,000 in fines in Oregon in settlements reached with the respective state attorneys general as a result of their contention that the organization had to more clearly state that the beneficiaries were of a "certain religious affiliation." In Oregon, the attorney general added that Kars4Kids failed to disclose that its offer of a "free vacation" for vehicle donors was designed to recruit people to attend timeshare presentations.      

Read more ...

Yale University

      

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the "Collegiate School" by a group of Congregationalist ministers and chartered by the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. In 1718, the school was renamed "Yale College" in recognition of a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. Established to train Connecticut ministers in theology and sacred languages, by 1777 the school's curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences. During the 19th century Yale gradually incorporated graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph.D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887.

Yale is organized into twelve constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and ten professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the University owns athletic facilities in Western New Haven, including the Yale Bowl, a campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forest and nature preserves throughout New England. The University's assets include an endowment valued at $23.9 billion as of September 27, 2014, the second largest of any educational institution in the world.

Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.The Yale University Library, serving all twelve schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Besides academic studies, students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League.

Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 13 living billionaires, and many foreign heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress and many high-level U.S. diplomats, including former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry. Fifty-two Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University as students, faculty, or staff, and 230 Rhodes Scholars graduated from the University.

HISTORY

Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School," passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701, while meeting in New Haven. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers: Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, James Noyes, James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb and Timothy Woodbridge, all alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders".

Originally known as the "Collegiate School," the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, in Killingworth (now Clinton). The school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1716 the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut.


First diploma awarded by Yale College, granted to Nathaniel Chauncey, 1702.
Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president Increase Mather and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not.

In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted a successful businessman named Elihu Yale, who lived in Wales but had been born in Boston and whose father David had been one of the original settlers in New Haven, to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune through trade while living in Madras (now called Chennai) during the British Raj as a representative of the East India Company, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum at the time. Yale also donated 417 books and a portrait of King George I. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College in gratitude to its benefactor, and to increase the chances that he would give the college another large donation or bequest.      

Read more ...

Columbia University

  in the City of New York, or simply Columbia University, is an American private Ivy League research university located in Morningside Heights, in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the State of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution.
    Columbia University

The university was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. After the American Revolutionary War, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. The University now operates under a 1787 charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees, and in 1896 it was further renamed Columbia University.That same year, the university's campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights, where it occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres .Today the university operates Columbia Global Centers overseas in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and Nairobi.

The university encompasses twenty schools and is affiliated with numerous institutions, including Teachers College (which is Columbia University's Graduate School of Education), Barnard College, and the Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America as well as the Juilliard School.

Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize. In addition, 101 Nobel Prize laureates have been affiliated with the university as students, faculty, or staff. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree. Notable alumni and former students of the university and its predecessor, King's College, include five Founding Fathers of the United States; nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court; 43 Nobel Prize laureates; 20 living billionaires; 29 Academy Award winners; and 29 heads of state, including three United States Presidents.

History

Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province of New York began as early as 1704, when Colonel Lewis Morris wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the missionary arm of the Church of England, persuading the society that New York City was an ideal community in which to establish a college; however, not until the founding of Princeton University across the Hudson River in New Jersey did the City of New York seriously consider founding a college. In 1746 an act was passed by the general assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. In 1751, the assembly appointed a commission of ten New York residents, seven of whom were members of the Church of England, to direct the funds accrued by the state lottery towards the foundation of a college.

Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the college's first president, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the college's first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan.The college was officially founded on October 31, 1754, as King's College by royal charter of King George II, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.

In 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his chief opponent in discussions at the College was an undergraduate of the class of 1777, Alexander Hamilton. The American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, and was catastrophic for the operation of King's College, which suspended instruction for eight years beginning in 1776 with the arrival of the Continental Army. The suspension continued through 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. Loyalists were forced to abandon their King's College in New York, which was seized by the rebels and renamed Columbia University. The Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded what is now the University of King's College.      

Read more ...

Duke University

    Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892.In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James B. Duke established The Duke Endowment, at which time the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.



The university's campus spans over 8,600 acres (35 km2) on three contiguous campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. Duke's main campus—designed largely by architect Julian Abele—incorporates Gothic architecture with the 210-foot (64 m) Duke Chapel at the campus' center and highest point of elevation. The first-year-populated East Campus contains Georgian-style architecture, while the main Gothic-style West Campus 1.5 miles away is adjacent to the Medical Center.

Duke's research expenditures in the 2012 fiscal year were $1.01 billion, the seventh largest in the nation. The University was ranked among the top 25 by most national and global league tables,while coming 31st and 26th in ARWU and Washington Monthly respectively. In 2014, Thomson Reuters named 32 Duke professors to its list of Highly Cited Researchers, making it the fourth worldwide. Competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Duke's athletic teams, known as the Blue Devils, have captured 16 team national championships, including five by its high profile men's basketball team.

History

Duke started in 1838 as Brown's Schoolhouse, a private subscription school founded in Randolph County in the present-day town of Trinity. Organized by the Union Institute Society, a group of Methodists and Quakers, Brown's Schoolhouse became the Union Institute Academy in 1841 when North Carolina issued a charter. The academy was renamed Normal College in 1851 and then Trinity College in 1859 because of support from the Methodist Church. In 1892 Trinity College moved to Durham, largely due to generosity from Julian S. Carr and Washington Duke, powerful and respected Methodists who had grown wealthy through the tobacco and electrical industries. Carr donated land in 1892 for the original Durham campus, which is now known as East Campus. At the same time, Washington Duke gave the school $85,000 for an initial endowment and construction costs—later augmenting his generosity with three separate $100,000 contributions in 1896, 1899, and 1900—with the stipulation that the college "open its doors to women, placing them on an equal footing with men.

In 1924 Washington Duke's son, James B. Duke, established The Duke Endowment with a $40 million trust fund. Income from the fund was to be distributed to hospitals, orphanages, the Methodist Church, and four colleges (including Trinity College). William Preston Few, the president of Trinity at the time, insisted that the institution be renamed Duke University to honor the family's generosity and to distinguish it from the myriad other colleges and universities carrying the "Trinity" name. At first, James B. Duke thought the name change would come off as self-serving, but eventually he accepted Few's proposal as a memorial to his father. Money from the endowment allowed the University to grow quickly. Duke's original campus, East Campus, was rebuilt from 1925 to 1927 with Georgian-style buildings. By 1930, the majority of the Collegiate Gothic-style buildings on the campus one mile (1.6 km) west were completed, and construction on West Campus culminated with the completion of Duke Chapel in 1935.      

Read more ...

The University of Chicago

                The University of Chicago (U of C, UChicago, or simply Chicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago was incorporated in 1890; William Rainey Harper became the university's first president in 1891, and the first classes were held in 1892. Both Harper and future president Robert Maynard Hutchins advocated for Chicago's curriculum to be based upon theoretical and perennial issues rather than applied sciences and commercial utility.

 

The university consists of the College of the University of Chicago, various graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees organized into four divisions, six professional schools, and a school of continuing education. Chicago is particularly well known for its professional schools, which include the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Booth School of Business, the Law School, and the Divinity School. The university enrolls approximately 5,000 students in the College and about 15,000 students overall.

University of Chicago scholars have played a major role in the development of various academic disciplines, including: the Chicago school of economics, the Chicago school of sociology, the law and economics movement in legal analysis, the Chicago school of literary criticism, the Chicago school of religion, the school of political science known as behavioralism, and in the physics leading to the world's first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The university is also home to the University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in the United States.

The University of Chicago is home to many prominent alumni. 89 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as visiting professors, students, faculty, or staff, the fourth most of any institution in the world. When its affiliate, the Marine Biological Laboratory, is included, Chicago has produced more Nobel prize winners than any other university in the world. In addition, Chicago's alumni include 49 Rhodes Scholars, 9 Fields Medalists, 20 National Humanities Medalists  and 13 billionaire graduates.


History

The University of Chicago was created and incorporated as a coeducational, secular institution in 1890 by the American Baptist Education Society and a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller on land donated by Marshall Field. Organized as an independent institution legally, it replaced the first Baptist university of the same name, which had closed in 1886 due to extended financial and leadership problems. William Rainey Harper became the modern university's first president on July 1, 1891, and the university opened for classes on October 1, 1892.

The business school was founded in 1898, and the law school was founded in 1902. Harper died in 1906, and was replaced by a succession of three presidents whose tenures lasted until 1929. During this period, the Oriental Institute was founded to support and interpret archeological work in what was then called the Near East.

In the 1890s, the University of Chicago, fearful that its vast resources would injure smaller schools by drawing away good students, affiliated with several regional colleges and universities: Des Moines College, Kalamazoo College, Butler University, and Stetson University. Under the terms of the affiliation, the schools were required to have courses of study comparable to those at the University, to notify the university early of any contemplated faculty appointments or dismissals, to make no faculty appointment without the university's approval, and to send copies of examinations for suggestions. The University of Chicago agreed to confer a degree on any graduating senior from an affiliated school who made a grade of A for all four years, and on any other graduate who took twelve weeks additional study at the University of Chicago. A student or faculty member of an affiliated school was entitled to free tuition at the University of Chicago, and Chicago students were eligible to attend an affiliated school on the same terms and receive credit for their work. The University of Chicago also agreed to provide affiliated schools with books and scientific apparatus and supplies at cost; special instructors and lecturers without cost except travel expenses; and a copy of every book and journal published by the University of Chicago Press at no cost. The agreement provided that either party could terminate the affiliation on proper notice. Several University of Chicago professors disliked the program, as it involved uncompensated additional labor on their part, and they believed it cheapened the academic reputation of the University. The program passed into history by 1910.      

Read more ...

Western Governors University (WGU)

  Western Governors University (WGU)              
 is a private, nonprofit, online American university based in Salt Lake City, Utah. The university was founded by 19 U.S. governors in 1997 after the idea was formulated at a 1995 meeting of the Western Governors Association. The university uses a competency-based learning model, with students working online in coordination with faculty mentors, with whom frequent phone communication is kept, and taking proctored tests online via webcam and other online proctoring technologies. Robert Mendenhall is the current university president. The university has the distinction of having been the first and only university to receive regional accreditation simultaneously from four regional accrediting commissions.Today its accreditation is through the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. It was also the first online university to have its teacher-preparation programs accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the specialized accrediting body for teacher preparation.

HISTORY

WGU was officially founded in 1997 in the United States by the governors of 19 U.S. states.[4] It was first proposed by then-governor of Utah Mike Leavitt at the annual meeting of the Western Governors Association in June 1995. It was formally proposed the following November and officially founded in June 1996, with each signing state governor committing $100,000 toward the launch of the new competency-based university. While the seed money was provided from government sources, the school was to be established as a self-supporting private, nonprofit institution. In January 1997, 13 governors were on hand to sign the articles of incorporation formally beginning the new university.

In 2001, the United States Department of Education awarded $10 million to found the Teachers College, and the first programs were offered in Information Technology. In 2003, the university became the first school to be accredited in four different regions by the Interregional Accrediting Committee. In 2006, the fourth college, the College of Health Professions, was founded, and the school's Teachers College became the first online teacher-preparation program to receive NCATE accreditation. In 2010, the first state-established offshoot WGU Indiana, was founded by Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, and the school reached 20,000 students for the first time. In 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided $4.5 million for WGU Indiana and the creation of WGU Texas and WGU Washington.

On January 8, 2013, Bill Haslam, governor of Tennessee, announced the creation of the state-affiliated WGU Tennessee. On January 28, 2013, Jay Nixon of Missouri, in his annual State of the State address, announced the founding of WGU Missouri, creating the fifth state-affiliated campus. The state-affiliated offshoots of WGU share the same academic model, faculty, services, accreditation, and curricula as WGU and were established to give official state endorsement and increased name recognition to WGU in those states; however, WGU has students and graduates in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, parts of Canada, and on U.S. military bases worldwide.
      

Read more ...