Reed College
Reed College is an independent liberal arts college in southeast Portland in the U. S. state of Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, a forested canyon nature preserve at its center. Reed is known for its academic rigor, mandatory freshman Humanities program, senior thesis, unusually high proportion of graduates who go on to earn doctorates and other postgraduate degrees; the college has many prominent alumni, including over a hundred Fulbright Scholars, 67 Watson Fellows, three Winston Churchill Scholars. Reed is ranked fourth in the U. S. of all colleges for the percentage of its graduates who go on to earn a PhD. The Reed Institute was founded in 1908, held its first classes in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon Gannett Amanda Reed. Simeon was an entrepreneur involved in several enterprises, including trade on the Willamette and Columbia Rivers with his close friend and associate, former Portland Mayor William S. Ladd.
Unitarian minister Thomas Lamb Eliot, who knew the Reeds from the church choir, is credited with convincing Reed of the need for "a lasting legacy, a'Reed Institute of Lectures,' and joked it would'need a mine to run it.'" Reed's will suggested his wife could "devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose, which shall be of permanent value and contribute to the beauty of the city and to the intelligence and happiness of the inhabitants". Ladd's son, William Mead Ladd, donated 40 acres from the Ladd Estate Company to build the new college. Reed's first president was William Trufant Foster, a former professor at Bates College and Bowdoin College in Maine. Contrary to popular belief, the college did not grow out of student revolts and experimentation, but out of a desire to provide a "more flexible, individualized approach to a rigorous liberal arts education".
Founded explicitly in reaction to the "prevailing model of East Coast, Ivy League education", the college's lack of varsity athletics and exclusive social clubs – as well as its coeducational and egalitarian status—gave way to an intensely academic and intellectual college whose purpose was to devote itself to "the life of the mind", that life being understood as the academic life. The college has a reputation for political liberalism. According to sociologist Burton Clark, Reed is one of the most unusual institutions of higher learning in the United States, featuring a traditional liberal arts and natural sciences curriculum, it requires freshmen to take Humanities 110, an intensive introduction to the Classics, covering ancient Greece and Rome as well as the Hebrew Bible and ancient Jewish history. Its program in the sciences is unusual with its TRIGA research reactor making it the only school in the United States to have a nuclear reactor operated by undergraduates. Reed requires all students to complete a thesis during the senior year as a prerequisite of graduation with successful completion of a junior qualifying exam at the end of the junior year a prerequisite to beginning the thesis.
Upon completion of the senior thesis, students must pass an oral exam that may encompass questions not only about the thesis but about any course taken. Reed maintains a 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio, its small classes emphasize a "conference" style where the teacher acts as a mediator for discussion rather than a lecturer. While large lecture-style classes exist, Reed emphasizes conference sections. Although letter grades are given to students, grades are de-emphasized at Reed and focus is placed on a narrative evaluation. According to the school, "A conventional letter grade for each course is recorded for every student, but the registrar's office does not distribute grades to students, provided that work continues at satisfactory levels. Unsatisfactory grades are reported directly to the student's adviser. Papers and exams are returned to students with lengthy comments but without grades affixed." There is no dean's list or honor roll per se, but students who maintain a GPA of 3.5 or above for an academic year receive academic commendations at the end of the spring semester which are noted on their transcripts.
Many Reed students graduate without knowing their cumulative GPA or their grades in individual classes. Reed claims to have experienced little grade inflation over the years, for example, that only ten students graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA in the period from 1983 to 2012. Although Reed does not award Latin honors to graduates, it confers several awards for academic achievement at commencement, including naming students to Phi Beta Kappa. Reed has no fraternities or sororities and few NCAA sports teams although physical education classes are required for graduation. Reed has several intercollegiate athletic clubs, most notably the rugby, Ultimate Frisbee, soccer teams. Reed's ethical code is known as "The Honor Principle". First introduced as an agreement to promote ethical academic behavior with the explicit end of relieving the faculty of policing student behavior, the Honor Pri
Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology referred to as Georgia Tech, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. It has satellite campuses in Savannah, Georgia; the school was founded in 1885 as the Georgia School of Technology as part of Reconstruction plans to build an industrial economy in the post-Civil War Southern United States. It offered only a degree in mechanical engineering. By 1901, its curriculum had expanded to include electrical and chemical engineering. In 1948, the school changed its name to reflect its evolution from a trade school to a larger and more capable technical institute and research university. Today, Georgia Tech is organized into six colleges and contains about 31 departments/units, with emphasis on science and technology, it is well recognized for its degree programs in engineering, business administration, the sciences and design. Georgia Tech is ranked 8th among all public national universities in the United States, 7th in the Best Engineering Schools ranking, 35th among all colleges and universities in the United States by U.
S. News & World Report rankings, 34th among global universities in the world by Times Higher Education rankings. Georgia Tech has been ranked as the "smartest" public college in America. Student athletics, both organized and intramural, are a part of alumni life; the school's intercollegiate competitive sports teams, the four-time football national champion Yellow Jackets, the nationally recognized fight song "Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech", have helped keep Georgia Tech in the national spotlight. Georgia Tech fields eight men's and seven women's teams that compete in the NCAA Division I athletics and the Football Bowl Subdivision. Georgia Tech is a member of the Coastal Division in the Atlantic Coast Conference; the idea of a technology school in Georgia was introduced in 1865 during the Reconstruction period. Two former Confederate officers, Major John Fletcher Hanson and Nathaniel Edwin Harris, who had become prominent citizens in the town of Macon, Georgia after the Civil War believed that the South needed to improve its technology to compete with the industrial revolution, occurring throughout the North.
However, because the American South of that era was populated by agricultural workers and few technical developments were occurring, a technology school was needed. In 1882, the Georgia State Legislature authorized a committee, led by Harris, to visit the Northeast to see firsthand how technology schools worked, they were impressed by the polytechnic educational models developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science. The committee recommended adapting the Worcester model, which stressed a combination of "theory and practice", the "practice" component including student employment and production of consumer items to generate revenue for the school. On October 13, 1885, Georgia Governor Henry D. McDaniel signed the bill to create and fund the new school. In 1887, Atlanta pioneer Richard Peters donated to the state 4 acres of the site of a failed garden suburb called Peters Park; the site was bounded on the south by North Avenue, on the west by Cherry Street.
He sold five adjoining acres of land to the state for US$10,000. This land was near Atlanta's northern city limits at the time of its founding, although the city has expanded several miles beyond it. A historical marker on the large hill in Central Campus notes the site occupied by the school's first buildings once held fortifications to protect Atlanta during the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War; the surrender of the city took place on the southwestern boundary of the modern Georgia Tech campus in 1864. The Georgia School of Technology opened in the fall of 1888 with two buildings. One building had classrooms to teach students, it was designed for students to produce goods to sell and fund the school. The two buildings were equal in size to show the importance of teaching both the mind and the hands, though, at the time, there was some disagreement to whether the machine shop should have been used to turn a profit. On October 20, 1905, U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt visited Georgia Tech.
On the steps of Tech Tower, Roosevelt delivered a speech about the importance of technological education. He shook hands with every student. Georgia Tech's Evening School of Commerce began holding classes in 1912; the evening school admitted its first female student in 1917, although the state legislature did not authorize attendance by women until 1920. Annie T. Wise became the first female graduate in 1919 and was Georgia Tech's first female faculty member the following year. In 1931, the Board of Regents transferred control of the Evening School of Commerce to the University of Georgia and moved the civil and electrical engineering courses at UGA to Tech. Tech replaced the commerce school with what became the College of Business; the commerce school would split from UGA and become Georgia State University. In 1934, the Engineering Experiment Station was founded by W. Harry Vaughan with an initial budget of $5,000 and 13 part-time faculty. Founded as the Georgia School of Technology, Georgia Tech assumed its pre
President of the United States
The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. In contemporary times, the president is looked upon as one of the world's most powerful political figures as the leader of the only remaining global superpower; the role includes responsibility for the world's most expensive military, which has the second largest nuclear arsenal. The president leads the nation with the largest economy by nominal GDP; the president possesses international hard and soft power. Article II of the Constitution establishes the executive branch of the federal government, it vests the executive power of the United States in the president. The power includes the execution and enforcement of federal law, alongside the responsibility of appointing federal executive, diplomatic and judicial officers, concluding treaties with foreign powers with the advice and consent of the Senate.
The president is further empowered to grant federal pardons and reprieves, to convene and adjourn either or both houses of Congress under extraordinary circumstances. The president directs the foreign and domestic policies of the United States, takes an active role in promoting his policy priorities to members of Congress. In addition, as part of the system of checks and balances, Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution gives the president the power to sign or veto federal legislation; the power of the presidency has grown since its formation, as has the power of the federal government as a whole. Through the Electoral College, registered voters indirectly elect the president and vice president to a four-year term; this is the only federal election in the United States, not decided by popular vote. Nine vice presidents became president by virtue of a president's intra-term resignation. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 sets three qualifications for holding the presidency: natural-born U. S. citizenship.
The Twenty-second Amendment precludes any person from being elected president to a third term. In all, 44 individuals have served 45 presidencies spanning 57 full four-year terms. Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms, so he is counted twice, as both the 22nd and 24th president. Donald Trump of New York is the current president of the United States, he assumed office on January 20, 2017. In July 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, the Thirteen Colonies, acting jointly through the Second Continental Congress, declared themselves to be 13 independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. Recognizing the necessity of coordinating their efforts against the British, the Continental Congress began the process of drafting a constitution that would bind the states together. There were long debates on a number of issues, including representation and voting, the exact powers to be given the central government. Congress finished work on the Articles of Confederation to establish a perpetual union between the states in November 1777 and sent it to the states for ratification.
Under the Articles, which took effect on March 1, 1781, the Congress of the Confederation was a central political authority without any legislative power. It could make its own resolutions and regulations, but not any laws, could not impose any taxes or enforce local commercial regulations upon its citizens; this institutional design reflected how Americans believed the deposed British system of Crown and Parliament ought to have functioned with respect to the royal dominion: a superintending body for matters that concerned the entire empire. The states were out from under any monarchy and assigned some royal prerogatives to Congress; the members of Congress elected a President of the United States in Congress Assembled to preside over its deliberation as a neutral discussion moderator. Unrelated to and quite dissimilar from the office of President of the United States, it was a ceremonial position without much influence. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured independence for each of the former colonies.
With peace at hand, the states each turned toward their own internal affairs. By 1786, Americans found their continental borders besieged and weak and their respective economies in crises as neighboring states agitated trade rivalries with one another, they witnessed their hard currency pouring into foreign markets to pay for imports, their Mediterranean commerce preyed upon by North African pirates, their foreign-financed Revolutionary War debts unpaid and accruing interest. Civil and political unrest loomed. Following the successful resolution of commercial and fishing disputes between Virginia and Maryland at the Mount Vernon Conference in 1785, Virginia called for a trade conference between all the states, set for September 1786 in Annapolis, with an aim toward resolving further-reaching interstate commercial antagonisms; when the convention failed for lack of attendance due to suspicions among most of the other states, Alexander Hamilton led the Annapolis delegates in a call for a convention to offer revisions to the Articles, to be held the next spring in Philadelphia.
Prospects for the next convention appeared bleak until James Madison and Edmund Randolph succeeded in securing George Washington's attendance to Philadelphia as a delegate for Virginia. When the Constitutional Convention convened in May 1787, the 12 state delegations in attendance (Rh
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of New York shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million endowment despite having never been to the South. Vanderbilt hoped that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War. Vanderbilt enrolls 12,800 students from all 50 U. S. states and over 100 foreign countries in four undergraduate and six graduate and professional schools. The university is in the process of converting its residence halls into an academic residential college system. Several research centers and institutes are affiliated with the university, including the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, Dyer Observatory. Vanderbilt University Medical Center part of the university, became a separate institution in 2016. With the exception of the off-campus observatory, all of the university's facilities are situated on its 330-acre campus in the heart of Nashville, 1.5 miles from downtown.
Despite its urban surroundings, the campus itself is a national arboretum and features over 300 different species of trees and shrubs. The Fugitives and Southern Agrarians were based at the university in the first half of the 20th century and helped revive Southern literature among others; the Jean and Alexander Heard Library, the campus library system, contains over 8 million items across ten libraries and stands as one of the nation's top research libraries. Vanderbilt Television News Archive holds the most extensive collection of television news coverage in the world, with over 40,000 hours of content. BioVU, Vanderbilt's DNA databank, is one of the largest of its kind in the world, running over 200 ongoing projects and holding over 225,000 samples. Additionally, Vanderbilt's Institute for Space and Defense Electronics, the largest of its type in the world, provides integral support to several companies and governmental units, including Boeing, NASA, the United States Department of Defense.
Vanderbilt has many distinguished alumni and affiliates, including 45 current and former members of the United States Congress, 17 U. S. Ambassadors, 13 governors, ten billionaires, seven Nobel Prize laureates, two Vice Presidents of the United States, two U. S. Supreme Court Justices. Other notable alumni include Rhodes Scholars, Pulitzer Prize winners, Academy Award winners, Grammy Award winners, MacArthur Fellows, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, heads of state and other leaders in foreign government, musicians, professional athletes, Olympians. Vanderbilt has more than 139,000 alumni, with 40 alumni clubs established worldwide. Vanderbilt is a founding member of the Southeastern Conference and has been the conference's only private school for a half-century. In the years prior to the American Civil War of 1861–1865, the Methodist Episcopal Church South had been considering the creation of a regional university for the training of ministers in a location central to its congregations. Following lobbying by Nashville bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire, church leaders voted to found "The Central University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South" in Nashville in 1872.
However, lack of funds and the ravaged state of the Reconstruction Era South delayed the opening of the college. The following year, McTyeire stayed at the New York City residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose second wife was Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt, a cousin of McTyeire's wife, Amelia Townsend McTyeire. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the wealthiest man in the United States at the time, was considering philanthropy as he was at an advanced age, he had been planning to establish a university on New York, in honor of his mother. However, McTyeire convinced him to donate $500,000 to endow Central University in order to "contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country."The endowment was increased to $1 million and would be only one of two philanthropic causes financially supported by Vanderbilt. Though he never expressed any desire that the university be named after himself, McTyeire and his fellow trustees rechristened the school in his honor.
Vanderbilt died in 1877 without seeing the school named after him. They acquired land owned by Texas Senator John Boyd inherited by his granddaughter and her husband, Confederate Congressman Henry S. Foote, who had built Old Central, a house still standing on campus; the first building, Main Building known as Kirkland Hall, was designed by William Crawford Smith, a Confederate veteran who designed the Parthenon. In the fall of 1875, about 200 students enrolled at Vanderbilt, in October the university was dedicated. Bishop McTyeire was named Chairman of the Board of Trust for life by Vanderbilt as a stipulation of his endowment. McTyeire named Landon Garland, his mentor from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and then-Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, as chancellor; as chancellor, he shaped the school's structure and hired the school's faculty, many of whom were renowned scholars in their respective fields. However, most of this faculty left after disputes including over pay rates; when the first fraternity chapter, Phi Delta Theta, was established on campus in 1876, it was shut down by the faculty, only to be reestablished as a secret society in 1877.
Meanwhile, Old Gym
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Winston-Salem is a city in and the county seat of Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States. With a 2019 estimated population of 251,907 it is the second largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region, the fifth most populous city in North Carolina, the eighty-ninth most populous city in the United States. With a metropolitan population of 676,673 it is the fourth largest metropolitan area in North Carolina and is expected to keep that fourth spot for many more years. Winston-Salem is home to the tallest office building in the region, 100 North Main Street the Wachovia Building and now known locally as the Wells Fargo Center. Winston-Salem is called the "Twin City" for its dual heritage and "City of the Arts and Innovation" for its dedication to fine arts and theater and technological research. "Camel City" is a reference to the city's historic involvement in the tobacco industry related to locally based R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company's Camel cigarettes. Many locals refer to the city as "Winston" in informal speech.
Another nickname, "the Dash," comes from the in the city's name, although technically it is a hyphen, not a dash. In 2012, the city was listed among the ten best places to retire in the United State by CBS MoneyWatch. Winston-Salem has seen an explosion in growth and urbanization in the downtown area with hotels and apartments being constructed. In 2017, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal ranked the city second in their lists of the most livable downtowns in America; the city of Winston-Salem is a product of the merging of the two neighboring towns of Winston and Salem in 1913. The origin of the town of Salem dates to January 1753, when Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg, on behalf of the Moravian Church, selected a settlement site in the three forks of Muddy Creek, he called this area "die Wachau" named after the ancestral estate of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. The land, just short of 99,000 acres, was subsequently purchased from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. On November 17, 1753, the first settlers arrived at what would become the town of Bethabara.
This town, despite its rapid growth, was not designed to be the primary settlement on the tract. Some residents expanded to a nearby settlement called Bethania in 1759. Lots were drawn to select among suitable sites for the location of a new town; the town established on the chosen site was given the name of Salem chosen for it by the Moravians' late patron, Count Zinzendorf. On January 6, 1766, the first tree was felled for the building of Salem. Salem was a typical Moravian settlement congregation with the public buildings of the congregation grouped around a central square, today Salem Square; these included the church, a Brethren's House and a Sisters' House for the unmarried members of the Congregation, which owned all the property in town. For many years only members of the Moravian Church were permitted to live in the settlement; this practice had ended by the American Civil War. Many of the original buildings in the settlement have been restored or rebuilt and are now part of Old Salem Museums & Gardens.
Salem was incorporated as a town in December 1856. Salem Square and "God's Acre", the Moravian Graveyard, since 1772 are the site each Easter morning of the world-famous Moravian sunrise service; this service, sponsored by all the Moravian church parishes in the city, attracts thousands of worshipers each year. In 1849, the Salem congregation sold land north of Salem to the newly formed Forsyth County for a county seat; the new town was called "the county town" or Salem until 1851 when it was re-named Winston for a local hero of the Revolutionary War, Joseph Winston. For its first two decades, Winston was a sleepy county town. In 1868, work began by Salem and Winston business leaders to connect the town to the North Carolina Railroad; that same year, Thomas Jethro Brown of Davie County rented a former livery stable and established the first tobacco warehouse in Winston. That same year, Pleasant Henderson Hanes of Davie, built his first tobacco factory a few feet from Brown's warehouse. In 1875, Richard Joshua Reynolds, of Patrick County, built his first tobacco factory a few hundred feet from Hanes's factory.
By the 1880s, there were 40 tobacco factories in the town of Winston. Hanes and Reynolds would compete fiercely for the next 25 years, each absorbing a number of the smaller manufacturers, until Hanes sold out to Reynolds in 1900 to begin a second career in textiles. In the 1880s, the US Post Office began referring to the two towns as Winston-Salem. In 1899, after nearly a decade of contention, the United States Post Office Department established the Winston-Salem post office in Winston, with the former Salem office serving as a branch. After a referendum the towns were incorporated as "Winston-Salem" in 1913; the Reynolds family, namesake of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, played a large role in the history and public life of Winston-Salem. By the 1940s, 60% of Winston-Salem workers worked either for Reynolds or in the Hanes textile factories; the Reynolds company imported so much French cigarette paper and Turkish tobacco for Camel cigarettes that Winston-Salem was designated by the United States federal government as an official port of entry for the United States, despite the city being 200 miles inland.
Winston-Salem was the eighth-largest port of entry in the United States by 1916. In 1917, the Reynolds company bought 84 acres of property in Winston-Salem and built 180 houses that it sold at cost to workers, to form a development called "Reynoldstown." By the ti
California State University, Northridge
California State University, Northridge is a public state university in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. With a total enrollment of 38,716 students, it has the largest undergraduate population as well as the second largest total student body of the 23-campus California State University system, making it one of the largest comprehensive universities in the State of California and the nation in terms of enrollment size; the size of CSUN has a major impact on the California economy, with an estimated $1.9 billion in economic output generated by CSUN on a yearly basis. As of Fall 2017, the university had 2,127 faculty. California State University, Northridge was founded first as the Valley satellite campus of California State University, Los Angeles, it became an independent college in 1958 as San Fernando Valley State College, with major campus master planning and construction. The university adopted its current name of California State University, Northridge in 1972. CSUN offers a variety of programs including 134 different bachelor's degrees, master's degrees in 70 different fields, 3 doctoral degrees, 24 teaching credentials.
CSUN ranks 10th in the U. S. in bachelor's degrees has over 300,000 alumni. Additionally, CSUN has been recognized as having one of the best film schools in the U. S. and in the world. CSUN is home to the National Center on Deafness and the university hosts the International Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities, held each year in San Diego. CSUN's Chicana and Chicano Studies Department is the largest in California; the establishment of CSUN began in 1952 with the proposal of a new satellite campus for Los Angeles State College. A Baldwin Hills location was planned in 1955, but San Fernando Valley advocates persuaded state officials to change the location to Northridge. In July 1958, the campus separated from Los Angeles State College and was renamed San Fernando Valley State College, with enrollment reaching 2,525 and tuition $29 per semester. In 1959, it became the first State College to have its own computer. In 1964, the pioneering computer lab was moved into quarters in the newly completed Sierra Hall building complex, student enrollment reached nearly 12,000.
The campus's quiet, moderately conservative and overwhelmingly white suburban setting did not shield it from a share of the noise and social upheavals of the Vietnam War era. As on many college campuses, there were large antiwar demonstrations and occasional draft card burnings. In 1966–67, there were only 23 Black and 7 Latino students. Responding to complaints about low minority representation, the administration made some attempts to boost enrollment of Latinos and Blacks in 1967. By the fall of 1968 the tally stood at about 150 75 Latino students. In March 1968, a presidential primary campaign speech by Robert F. Kennedy drew an orderly crowd of 10,000, but in the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April and Robert Kennedy himself in June, some events were not so peaceful. On November 4, 1968, a group of Black students held the college president and more than 30 staff members hostage in the Administration Building for several hours, pressing demands for greater outreach in minority enrollment and employment and the establishment of minority studies departments.
No one was hurt and, under duress, the president agreed to their demands. The administration kept its part of the bargain, but despite an included assurance of amnesty, 28 of the students involved were charged with kidnapping and false imprisonment. One month a fire started by an arsonist gutted the president's office. Several massive antiwar demonstrations took place during 1969–1970, variously resulting in campus shutdowns, heavy police responses, violent clashes, hundreds of arrests, in a few cases serious injuries to demonstrators; the last such demonstration was on the first anniversary of the Kent State shootings. The college renamed itself California State University, Northridge in June 1972. In 1975, the construction of the CSUN sculpture began at the southeast corner of campus. By 1977, enrollment at the university was 28,023, with tuition at $95. In 1981, the campus established a foreign exchange student program with Japan, Ukraine, South Korea, Taiwan and the Netherlands. In 1988, the campus had a $342 tuition fee.
In 1990, the Marilyn Magaram Center for Food Science and Dietetics was established. The 1994 Northridge earthquake struck on January 17 and caused $400 million in damage to the campus, the heaviest damage sustained by an American college campus; the epicenter was less than two miles away on a undiscovered blind thrust fault. The same month, Vice President Al Gore visited with a promise of funds to help with the reconstruction. Entire sections of the main library, the art building and several other major structures were either physically unusable or too hazardous to occupy, but classes soon continued in alternative locations and hastily erected temporary facilities. Among the structures judged to be so damaged that repair was not a practical option were the
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant research university in Gainesville, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida; the university traces its origins to 1853 and has operated continuously on its Gainesville campus since September 1906. The University of Florida is one of sixty-two elected member institutions of the Association of American Universities, the association of preeminent North American research universities, the only AAU member university in Florida; the university is classified as a Research University with Very High Research by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. After the Florida state legislature's creation of performance standards in 2013, the Florida Board of Governors designated the University of Florida as one of the three "preeminent universities" among the twelve universities of the State University System of Florida. For 2019, U. S. News & World Report ranked Florida as the eighth best public university in the United States.
The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Schools. It is the third largest Florida university by student population, is the eighth largest single-campus university in the United States with 54,906 students enrolled for the fall 2018 semester; the University of Florida is home to sixteen academic colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. It offers multiple graduate professional programs—including business administration, law, medicine and veterinary medicine—on one contiguous campus, administers 123 master's degree programs and seventy-six doctoral degree programs in eighty-seven schools and departments; the university's seal is the seal of the state of Florida, on the state flag. The University of Florida's intercollegiate sports teams known by their "Florida Gators" nickname, compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I and the Southeastern Conference. In their 111-year history, the university's varsity sports teams have won 41 national team championships, 36 of which are NCAA titles, Florida athletes have won 275 individual national championships.
In addition, University of Florida students and alumni have won 126 Olympic medals including 60 gold medals. The University of Florida traces its origins to 1853, when the East Florida Seminary, the oldest of the University of Florida's four predecessor institutions, was founded in Ocala, Florida. On January 6, 1853, Governor Thomas Brown signed a bill that provided public support for higher education in Florida. Gilbert Kingsbury was the first person to take advantage of the legislation, established the East Florida Seminary, which operated until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861; the East Florida Seminary was Florida's first state-supported institution of higher learning. James Henry Roper, an educator from North Carolina and a state senator from Alachua County, had opened a school in Gainesville, the Gainesville Academy, in 1858. In 1866, Roper offered his land and school to the State of Florida in exchange for the East Florida Seminary's relocation to Gainesville; the second major precursor to the University of Florida was the Florida Agricultural College, established at Lake City by Jordan Probst in 1884.
Florida Agricultural College became the state's first land-grant college under the Morrill Act. In 1903, the Florida Legislature, desiring to expand the school's outlook and curriculum beyond its agricultural and engineering origins, changed the name of Florida Agricultural College to the "University of Florida," a name the school would hold for only two years. In 1905, the Florida Legislature passed the Buckman Act, which consolidated the state's publicly supported higher education institutions; the member of the legislature who wrote the act, Henry Holland Buckman became the namesake of Buckman Hall, one of the first buildings constructed on the new university's campus. The Buckman Act organized the State University System of Florida and created the Florida Board of Control to govern the system, it abolished the six pre-existing state-supported institutions of higher education, consolidated the assets and academic programs of four of them to form the new "University of the State of Florida."
The four predecessor institutions consolidated to form the new university included the University of Florida at Lake City in Lake City, the East Florida Seminary in Gainesville, the St. Petersburg Normal and Industrial School in St. Petersburg, the South Florida Military College in Bartow; the Buckman Act consolidated the colleges and schools into three institutions segregated by race and gender—the University of the State of Florida for white men, the Florida Female College for white women, the State Normal School for Colored Students for African-American men and women. The City of Gainesville, led by its Mayor William Reuben Thomas, campaigned to be home to the new university. On July 6, 1905, the Board of Control selected Gainesville for the new university campus. Andrew Sledd, president of the pre-existing University of Florida at Lake City, was selected to be the first president of the new University of the State of Florida; the 1905-1906 academic year was a year of transition. Architect William A. Edwards designed the first official campus buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style.
Classes began on the new Gainesville campus with 102 students enrolled. In 1909, the school's name
