Wikipedia Article Content Source: July 14, 2010 from Wikipedia: Syracuse University

Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College. Following several years of debate over relocating the college to Syracuse, the university was founded independent of the college in 1870.

Since 1920, the university has identified itself as nonsectarian, although it still maintains an affiliation with the United Methodist Church. Syracuse was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1966. The campus is located in the University Hill neighborhood of Syracuse, east and southeast of downtown, on one of the larger hills. Its large campus features an eclectic mix of buildings, ranging from nineteenth-century

Romanesque structures to contemporary buildings. SU is organized into 13 schools and colleges, with nationally-recognized programs in information studies and library science, architecture, communications, business administration, public administration, and engineering.

Founding

The Genesee Wesleyan Seminary was founded in 1832 by the Genesee Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lima, New York, south of Rochester. In 1850, it was resolved to enlarge the institution from a seminary into a college, or to connect a college with the seminary, becoming Genesee College. However, the location was soon thought by many to be insufficiently central. Its difficulties were compounded by the next set of technological changes: the railroad that displaced the Erie Canal as the region's economic engine bypassed Lima completely. The trustees of the struggling college then decided to seek a locale whose economic and transportation advantages could provide a better base of support. The college began looking for a new home at the same time that Syracuse, ninety miles to the east, was engaged in a search to bring a university to the city, having failed to convince Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White to locate Cornell University there rather than in Ithaca.

There were several years of dispute between the Methodist ministers, Lima, and contending cities across the state, over proposals to move Genesee College to Syracuse. While libraries, students, faculty, and two secret societies all relocated to Syracuse, at its founding on March 24, 1870, the state of New York granted the University its charter independent of Genesee College. Bishop Jesse Truesdell Peck was elected the first president of the Board of Trustees.George F. Comstock, a member of the new University's Board of Trustees, had offered the school 50 acres of farmland on a hillside to the southeast of the city center. Comstock intended Syracuse University and the hill to develop as an integrated whole; a contemporary account described the latter as "a beautiful town ... springing up on the hillside and a community of refined and cultivated membership ... established near the spot which will soon be the center of a great and beneficent educational institution."

Expansion

Coeducation at Syracuse traced its roots to the early days of the Genesee College where suffragists like Frances Willard and Belva Lockwood began to distinguish themselves nationally. However, the progressive "co-ed" policies initiated at Genesee would soon find controversy at the new university in Syracuse.  Colleges and universities admitted few women students in the 1870s. Administrators and faculty argued women had inferior minds and could not master mathematics and the classics. Dr. Erastus Otis Haven, Syracuse University chancellor and former president of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, maintained that women should receive the advantages of higher education. He enrolled his daughter, Frances, at SU, where she was initiated in the newly formed Gamma Phi Beta sorority.

In the late 1880s the University resumed construction on the south side of University Place. Holden Observatory (1887) was followed by two Romanesque Revival buildings – von Ranke Library (1889), now Tolley Administration Building, and Crouse College (1889). Together with the Hall of Languages, these first buildings formed the basis for the "Old Row," a grouping which, along with its companion Lawn, established one of Syracuse's most enduring images.The emphatically linear organization of these buildings along the brow of the hill follows a tradition of American campus planning which dates to the construction of the "Yale Row" in the 1790s. At Syracuse, the Old Row continued to provide the framework for growth well into the twentieth century.

From its founding until through early 1920s, the University grew rapidly. It offered programs in the physical sciences and modern languages, and in 1873, Syracuse added one of the first architecture programs in the U.S.  In 1874, Syracuse created the nation's first bachelor of fine arts degree, SU created its first doctoral program in 1911. and in 1876, the school offered its first post-graduate courses in the College of Arts and Sciences. SU's school of journalism, now the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, was established at Syracuse in 1934.

Modern Research University

After World War II, Syracuse University began to transform into a major research institution. Enrollment increased in the four years after the war due to the G.I. Bill, which paid tuition, room, board, and a small allowance for veterans returning from World War II. In 1946, SU admitted 9,464 freshmen, nearly four times greater than the previous incoming class.Branch campuses were established in Endicott, NY and Utica, NY.

The velocity with which the university sped through its change into a major research institution was astounding. By the end of the 1950s, Syracuse ranked twelfth nationally in terms of the amount of its sponsored research, and it had over four hundred professors and graduate students engaging in that investigation.

 

From the early 1950s through the 1960s, Syracuse University added programs and staff that continued the transformation of the school into a research university. In 1954, Arthur Phillips was recruited from MIT and started the first pathogen-free animal research laboratory. The lab focused on studying medical problems using animal models. In 1956, the School of Social Work was founded which eventually incorporated into the College of Human Ecology.Syracuse's College of Engineering also founded the nation's second oldest computer engineering and bioengineering programs. In 1962, Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr. donated $15 million to begin construction of a school of communications, eventually known as the SI Newhouse School of Public Communications. In 1966, Syracuse University was admitted to the Association of American Universities, an organization of leading research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education^.

National Ranking

Many of SU's programs have been nationally recognized for excellence. A 2008 survey in the Academic Ranking of World Universities places Syracuse University in the top 100 world universities in social sciences.

The School of Architecture's Bachelor of Architecture program was ranked second nationally in 2010 by the journal DesignIntelligence in its annual edition of "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools."

The industrial design program is ranked 13th nationally by the same 2009 issue of DesignIntelligence.

The SI Newhouse School of Public Communications is one of the top ranked in the country and has produced alumni in many fields of broadcasting.

The School of Information Studies offers information management and technology courses at the undergraduate level at Syracuse University. Within the school, U.S. News & World Report has ranked the graduate program as the third best in the United States. It also has the top-ranked undergraduate Information Systems program, the second ranked graduate program in Digital Librarianship, and the fourth ranked graduate program in School Library Media.

The College of Business Administration was renamed the Martin J. Whitman School of Management in 2003, in honor of SU alumnus and benefactor Martin J. Whitman. The school is home to about 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The undergraduate program was ranked No. 39 among business schools nationwide by US News & World Report in 2008. The entrepreneurship program was ranked No. 8 by the US News & World Report in 2008, and No. 13 by both Entrepreneur Magazine and The Princeton Review in 2007. The supply chain management program was ranked No. 10 in the nation by Supply Chain Management Review. Also, the Joseph I. Lubin School of Accounting was named No. 10 in the nation by The Chronicle of Higher Education.The College of Law is ranked #86 nationally, and is ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News and World Report for its trial and appellate advocacy program and is an emerging leader in the relatively novel field of National Security Law.

The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs combines social sciences with public administration and international relations. It is ranked as the top graduate school for public affairs in the US. 

The graduate program of the College of Visual and Performing Art is considered one of the top 50 programs in the US. 

Project Advance (or SUPA) is a nationally recognized concurrent enrollment program honored by the American Association for Higher Education, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the National Commission on Excellence in Education, and the National Institute of Education.

Research

Syracuse University's main library is the Ernest S. Bird Library, which opened in 1972. Its seven levels contain 2.3 million books, 11,500 periodicals, 45,000 feet (14,000 m) of manuscripts and rare books, 3.6 million microforms, and a café. There are also several departmental libraries on campus. Many of the landmarks in the history of recorded communication between people are in the university's Special Collections Research Center, from cuneiform tablets and papyri to several codices dating from the 11th century, to the invention of printing. The collection also includes works by Galileo, Luther, John Calvin, Voltaire, Sir Isaac Newton, Descartes, Sir Francis Bacon, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Hobbes, Goethe, and others. In addition, the collection includes the personal library of Leopold Von Ranke. Making sensational headlines at the time, the university outbid the Prussian government for all 19 tons of Von Ranke's prized personal library. Other collections of note include Rudyard Kipling first editions and an original second leaf of the Gutenberg Bible.

The university also is home to the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive, whose holdings total approximately 540,000 recordings in all formats, primarily cylinders, discs and magnetic tapes. Some of the voices to be found include Thomas Edison, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, and Oscar Wilde. In July, 2008, Syracuse University became the owner of the second largest collection of 78 rpm records in the United States after the Library of Congress after a donation of more than 200,000 records. The donation is valued at $1 million and more than doubles the University's collection of 78 rpm records to about 400,000.

According to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, Syracuse University is a research university with a high level of research activity.Through the university's Office of Research, which promotes research, technology transfer, and scholarship, and its Office of Sponsored Programs, which assists faculty in seeking and obtaining external research support, SU supports research in the fields of management and business, sciences, engineering, education, information studies, energy, environment, communications, computer science, public and international affairs, and other specialized areas.ince 1966, Syracuse has been a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization of leading research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of research and education.

SU has established 29 research centers and institutes that focuses research, often across disciplines, in a variety of areas.The Burton Blatt Institute advances research in economic and social issues for individuals with disabilities, and it has international projects the field.The Martin J Whitman School of Management supports the largest number of research centers, including The Ballentine Investment Institute, the George E. Bennett Center for Accounting and Tax Research, the Robert H. Brethren Operations Management Institute, Michael J. Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship, The H. H. Franklin Center for Supply Chain Management, Olivia and Walter Kiebach Center for International Business Studies, and the Earl V. Snyder Innovation Management Program. Other notable research programs are The Syracuse Biomaterials Institute, the Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute through the Maxwell School, and the Center for the Study of Popular Television through the Newhouse School of Public Communications.