Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a private Ivy League research university in New York City, United States. Established in 1754 as King's College by royal charter under George II of Great Britain on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest in the United States.

The university was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location and renamed Columbia University.

Columbia is organized into 17 schools, two affiliated colleges – Barnard College and Teachers College – and two affiliated seminaries – Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and Union Theological Seminary (UTS). The university's research efforts include the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and accelerator laboratories with Big Tech firms such as Amazon and IBM. Columbia is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the MD degree. The university also administers and annually awards the Pulitzer Prize.

As of December 2021, its alumni, faculty, and staff have included 7 of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America; 4 U.S. presidents; 34 foreign heads of state or government; 2 secretaries-general of the United Nations; 10 justices of the United States Supreme Court; 103 Nobel laureates; 125 National Academy of Sciences members; 53 living billionaires; 23 Olympic medalists; 33 Academy Award winners; and 125 Pulitzer Prize recipients. Columbia scientists and scholars have played pivotal roles in scientific breakthroughs including brain–computer interface; the laser and maser; nuclear magnetic resonance; the first nuclear pile; the first nuclear fission reaction in the Americas; the first evidence for plate tectonics and continental drift; and much of the initial research and planning for the Manhattan Project during World War II.

History

18th century

Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province of New York began as early as 1704. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the college's first president, Samuel Johnson. The college was officially founded on October 31, 1754, as King's College by royal charter of 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, 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 Irish anatomist, Samuel Clossy, was appointed professor of natural philosophy in October 1765 and later the college's first professor of anatomy in 1767.

Following the start of the American Revolutionary War and the arrival of Continental Army in 1776, the school suspended instruction for eight years. The suspension continued through the military occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. During this time, the college's library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a barracks and military hospital first by American and then British forces.

The legislature agreed to assist the college. 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 College. 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." In February 1787, the Regents appointed a revision committee, which was headed by John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. In April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college granted the power to a separate board of 24 trustees. For 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 operated under Federalists such as Hamilton and Jay. President George Washington and Vice President John Adams, in addition to both houses of Congress attended the college's commencement on May 6, 1789, as a tribute of honor to the alumni of the school who had been involved in the American Revolution.

Campus

Morningside Heights

The majority of Columbia's graduate and undergraduate studies are conducted in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights on Seth Low's late-19th century vision of a university campus where all disciplines could be taught at one location. The campus was designed along Beaux-Arts planning principles by the architects McKim, Mead & White. Columbia's main campus occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (13 ha), 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 tunnel system, more than a century old, with the oldest portions predating the present campus. Some of these remain accessible to the public, while others have been cordoned off.

Butler Library is the largest in the Columbia University Libraries system and one of the largest buildings on the campus. It was completed in 1934 and renamed to Butler Library in 1946. As of 2020, Columbia's library system includes over 15.0 million volumes, making it the eighth largest library system and fifth largest collegiate library system in the United States.

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 buildings listed include Casa Italiana, the Delta Psi, Alpha Chapter building of St. Anthony Hall, Earl Hall, and the buildings of the affiliated Union Theological Seminary.

A statue by sculptor Daniel Chester French called Alma Mater is centered on the front steps of Low Memorial Library. The statue represents a personification of the traditional image of the university as an alma mater, or "nourishing mother", draped in an academic gown and seated on a throne. She wears a laurel wreath on her head and holds in her right hand a scepter capped by a King's Crown, a traditional symbol of the university. A book, representing learning, rests on her lap. The arms of her throne end in lamps, representing "Sapientia et Doctrina", or "Wisdom and Learning"; on the back of the throne is embossed an image of the seal of the university.

Academics

Organization

Columbia University is an independent, privately supported, nonsectarian and not-for-profit institution of higher education. Its official corporate name is Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.

Joint degree programs are available through Union Theological Seminary, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Juilliard School. Teachers College and Barnard College are official faculties of the university; both colleges' presidents are deans under the university governance structure. The Columbia University Senate includes faculty and student representatives from Teachers College and Barnard College who serve two-year terms; all senators are accorded full voting privileges regarding matters impacting the entire university. Teachers College is an affiliated, financially independent graduate school with their own board of trustees. Pursuant to an affiliation agreement, Columbia is given the authority to confer "degrees and diplomas" to the graduates of Teachers College. The degrees are signed by presidents of Teachers College and Columbia University in a manner analogous to the university's other graduate schools.

Undergraduate admissions and financial aid

Columbia is a racially diverse school, with approximately 52% of all students identifying themselves as persons of color. Additionally, around 50% of all undergraduates received grants from Columbia. The college is need-blind for domestic applicants. In April 2007, Columbia University announced a $400 million 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. However, this did not apply to international students, transfer students, visiting students, or students in the School of General Studies. In the fall of 2010, admission to Columbia's undergraduate colleges Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (also known as SEAS or Columbia Engineering) began accepting the Common Application. The policy change made Columbia one of the last major academic institutions and the last Ivy League university to switch to the Common Application.

International partnerships

Columbia students can study abroad for a semester or a year at partner institutions such as Sciences Po, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), École normale supérieure (ENS), Panthéon-Sorbonne University, King's College London, London School of Economics, University College London and the University of Warwick. Select students can study at either the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge for a year if approved by both Columbia and either Oxford or Cambridge. Columbia also has a dual MA program with the Aga Khan University in London.

Student life

In 2020, Columbia University's student population was 31,455 (8,842 students in undergraduate programs and 22,613 in postgraduate programs), with 45% of the student population identifying themselves as a minority. Twenty-six percent of students at Columbia have family incomes below $60,000. 16% of students at Columbia receive Federal Pell Grants, which mostly go to students whose family incomes are below $40,000. Seventeen percent of students are the first member of their family to attend a four-year college.

Columbia University is home to many fraternities, sororities, and co-educational Greek organizations. Approximately 10–15% of undergraduate students are associated with Greek life. Many Barnard women also join Columbia sororities. There has been a Greek presence on campus since the establishment in 1836 of the Delta chapter of Alpha Delta Phi.

Publications

The Columbia Daily Spectator is the nation's second-oldest continuously operating daily student newspaper. The Blue and White is a monthly literary magazine established in 1890 that discusses campus life and local politics. Bwog, originally an offshoot of The Blue and White but now fully independent, is an online campus news and entertainment source. The Morningside Post is a student-run multimedia news publication.

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.

Columbia Magazine is the alumni magazine of Columbia, serving all 340,000+ of the university's alumni. Arts and literary publications include The Columbia Review, the nation's oldest college literary magazine; Surgam, the literary magazine of the Philolexian Society; Quarto, Columbia University's official undergraduate literary magazine; 4x4, a student-run alternative to Quarto; 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 Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal prints original science research in its two annual publications. The Journal of Politics & Society is a journal of undergraduate research in the social sciences; Publius is an undergraduate journal of politics established in 2008 and published biannually; the Columbia East Asia 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; The Birch is an undergraduate journal of Eastern European and Eurasian culture that is the first national student-run journal of its kind; the Columbia Economics Review is the undergraduate economic journal on research and policy supported by the economics department; and the Columbia Science Review is a science magazine that prints general interest articles and faculty profiles.

Athletics

A member institution of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in Division I FCS, Columbia fields varsity teams in 29 sports and is a member of the Ivy League. The football Lions play home games at the 17,000-seat Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium. The Baker Athletics Complex also includes facilities for baseball, softball, soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, tennis, track, and rowing, as well as the new Campbell Sports Center, which opened in January 2013. The basketball, fencing, swimming & diving, volleyball, and wrestling programs are based at the Dodge Physical Fitness Center on the main campus.

Former students include Baseball Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig and Eddie Collins, football Hall of Famer Sid Luckman, Marcellus Wiley, and world champion women's weightlifter Karyn Marshall. On May 17, 1939, fledgling NBC broadcast a doubleheader between the Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers at Columbia's Baker Field, making it the first televised regular athletic event in history.

Columbia University participated in multiple firsts within collegiate athletics. The football program is best known for its record of futility set during the 1980s: between 1983 and 1988, the team lost 44 games in a row, which is still the record for the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision. The streak was broken on October 8, 1988, with a 16–13 victory over arch-rival Princeton University. That was the Lions' first victory at Wien Stadium, which had been opened during the losing streak and was already four years old. A new tradition has developed with the Liberty Cup. The Liberty Cup is awarded annually to the winner of the football game between Fordham and Columbia Universities, two of the only three NCAA Division I football teams in New York City.

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