University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the flagship institution of the University of Minnesota System and is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units.

Founded by the Minnesota Territorial Legislature as a territorial university in 1851, seven years before Minnesota achieved statehood, the Twin Cities campus is the oldest and largest in the University of Minnesota System. Its enrollment of 56,666 students as of fall 2024 places it among the ten largest U.S. campuses by enrollment. The campus comprises locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul, approximately 3 mi (4.8 km) apart.

The University of Minnesota is classified as an "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" by the Carnegie Classification. It is a member of the Association of American Universities. The National Science Foundation ranked the University of Minnesota 22nd among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2022 with $1.202 billion.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers compete in 21 intercollegiate sports in NCAA Division I as a member of the Big Ten Conference and have won 29 national championships. As of March 2024, Minnesota's current and former students have won a total of 90 Olympic medals. There are 25 Nobel laureates associated with the university.

History

The University of Minnesota was established in Minneapolis in 1851, seven years prior to Minnesota achieving statehood, following a charter granted by the Minnesota Territorial Legislature and Governor Alexander Ramsey and the subsequent election of a board of regents. In its initial years, the university encountered significant challenges and depended on contributions from various donors to remain operational, notably including support from South Carolina Governor William Aiken Jr..

In 1867, the university received land grant status through the Morrill Act of 1862. With lands taken from Dakota people, the university was able to revive itself after closing in 1858. The Dakota people have not been credited for the expropriation of their lands.

An 1876 donation from flour miller John S. Pillsbury is generally credited with saving the school. Since then, Pillsbury has become known as "The Father of the University." Pillsbury Hall is named in his honor.

Academic milestones began with Warren Clark Eustis and Henry Martyn Williamson graduating in 1873 as the university's first graduates. Helen Marr Ely was the first female graduate in 1875. The university progressed by awarding its first master's degree in 1880 and conferring its first Ph.D. in 1888.

As the 20th century began, the university expanded its academic offerings. In 1908, the university inaugurated the Program of Mortuary Science, becoming the first state university in the United States to do so. The School of Nursing was established in 1909, the first continuous nursing school on a university campus in the United States. The nursing school later opened its doors to male students in 1949.

The university first integrated its faculty in 1948 when it hired its first African American, Ruby Pernell.

20th-century breakthroughs at the University of Minnesota positioned it as a leader in medical innovation. In 1954, C. Walton Lillehei and F. John Lewis performed the world's first successful open-heart surgery using cross-circulation. 1955 saw Richard DeWall and Lillehei develop the bubble oxygenator, setting the stage for modern heart-lung machines. This was followed by Lillehei's performance of the first artificial heart valve implant in a human in 1958, and in the same year, Earl Bakken, co-founder of Medtronic, Inc., developed the first portable pacemaker, introduced into practice by Lillehei.

The latter part of the 20th century saw the university's continued innovation in medical transplantation, including the world's first successful kidney/pancreas transplant in 1967, a bone marrow transplant in 1968, and a living donor pancreas transplant in 1998. Another notable contribution to agriculture came in 1991, with the development of the honeycrisp apple.

Campuses

Note: The flagship University of Minnesota campus is the Twin Cities campus, which comprises grounds in St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latter divided into areas on both the east and west banks of the Mississippi River. Administratively, these are all one campus, but for purposes of simplicity, this article will apply "campus" to its component parts where necessary to avoid confusion with the names of cities.

As the largest of five campuses across the University of Minnesota system, the Twin Cities campus has more than 50,000 students. This makes it the ninth-largest campus student body in the United States. It has over 300 research, education, and outreach centers and institutes.

Minneapolis

The original Minneapolis campus overlooked the Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River, but it was later moved about a mile (1.6 km) downstream to its current location. The original site is now marked by a small park known as Chute Square at the intersection of University and Central avenues.

The school shut down following a financial crisis during the American Civil War, but reopened in 1867 with considerable financial help from John S. Pillsbury. It was upgraded from a preparatory school to a college in 1869. Today, the university's Minneapolis campus is divided by the Mississippi River into an East Bank and a West Bank.

The Minneapolis campus has several residence halls: 17th Avenue Hall, Centennial Hall, Frontier Hall, Territorial Hall, Pioneer Hall, Sanford Hall, Wilkins Hall, Middlebrook Hall, Yudof Hall, and Comstock Hall.

East Bank

The East Bank, the main portion of the campus, covers 307 acres (124 ha) and is divided into several areas: the Knoll area, the Mall area, the Health area, the Athletic area, and the Gateway area.

The Knoll area, the oldest extant part of the university, is in the northwestern corner of the campus. Many buildings in this area are well over 100 years old, such as some of the 13 in the Old Campus Historic District. Today, most disciplines in this area relate to the humanities. Burton Hall is home to the College of Education and Human Development. Folwell Hall and Jones Hall are primarily used by the language departments. A residence hall, Sanford Hall, and a student-apartment complex, Roy Wilkins Hall, are in this area. This area is just south of the Dinkytown neighborhood and business area.

Northrop Mall is arguably the center of the Minneapolis campus. The plan for the Mall was based on a design by Cass Gilbert, although his scheme was too extravagant to be fully implemented. Several of the campus's primary buildings surround the Mall area. Northrop Auditorium provides a northern anchor, with Coffman Memorial Union (CMU) to the south. Four of the larger buildings to the sides of the Mall are the primary mathematics, physics, and chemistry buildings (Vincent Hall, Tate Laboratory and Smith Hall, respectively) and Walter Library. Smith Hall and Walter Library were built during the Lotus Coffman administration.

Academics

The university is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units:

Six university-wide interdisciplinary centers and institutes work across collegiate lines:

• Center for Cognitive Sciences
• Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences
• Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota
• Institute for Engineering in Medicine
• Institute for Translational Neuroscience
• Institute on the Environment
• Minnesota Population Center

The university (system-wide) offers 154 undergraduate degree programs, 24 undergraduate certificates, 307 graduate degree programs, and 79 graduate certificates. The university offers the majority of these programs and certificates at its Twin Cities campus. The university has all three branches of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). The Twin Cities campus, as well as the campuses at Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester, are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). The university has been included on the list of Public Ivies.

Admissions

For fall 2025 admissions, Minnesota received over 43,000 applications for a freshman class of roughly 7,100 students. Although its acceptance rate has risen in recent years, Minnesota still characterizes admission to the university as "highly competitive."

Of the 50% of enrolled freshmen in 2024 who submitted ACT scores; the middle 50 percent Composite score was between 27 and 33. Of the 50% of the incoming freshman class who submitted SAT scores; the middle 50 percent Composite scores were 1350–1500.

The University of Minnesota is a college sponsor of the National Merit Scholarship Program and sponsored 97 Merit Scholarship awards in 2020. In the 2020–2021 academic year, 112 freshman students were National Merit Scholars.

Rankings

In 2024, Minnesota was ranked as the 26th best university in the United States by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, and 25th in the United States in Washington Monthly's 2021 National University Rankings. Minnesota's undergraduate program was ranked 53rd among national universities by U.S. News & World Report for 2023, and 23rd in the nation among public colleges and universities. The same publication ranked Minnesota's graduate Carlson School of Management as 28th in the nation among business schools, and 6th in the nation for its information systems graduate program. Other graduate schools ranked highly by U.S. News & World Report for 2022 include the University of Minnesota Law School at 22nd, the University of Minnesota Medical School, which was 4th for family medicine and 5th for primary care, the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy, which ranked 3rd, the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, which ranked 9th, the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development, which ranked 10th for education psychology and special education, and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, which ranked 10th.

Research

Inventions by University of Minnesota students and faculty have ranged from food science to health technologies. Most of the public research funding in Minnesota is funneled to the University of Minnesota as a result of long-standing advocacy by the university itself.

The university developed Gopher, a precursor to the World Wide Web which used hyperlinks to connect documents across computers on the internet. However, the version produced by CERN was favored by the public since it was freely distributed and could more easily handle multimedia webpages. The university also houses the Charles Babbage Institute, a research and archive center specializing in computer history. The department has strong roots in the early days of supercomputing with Seymour Cray of Cray supercomputers.

The university also became a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2007 and has led data analysis projects searching for gravitational waves — their existence was confirmed by scientists in February 2016.

Discoveries and innovation by faculty or alumni include:

Puffed rice – Alexander P. Anderson performed work leading to the discovery of "puffed rice", a starting point for a new breakfast cereal later advertised as "Food Shot From Guns".

Transistorized cardiac pacemaker – Earl Bakken founded Medtronic, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957.

Green Revolution – Norman Borlaug was an agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution. Borlaug, often called "the father of the Green Revolution", is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal.

ATP synthase – Paul D. Boyer elucidated the enzymatic mechanism for synthesis of the cellular "energy currency", adenosine triphosphate (ATP), leading to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1997.

Point-contact transistor – Walter Houser Brattain and John Bardeen, later joined by William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. For their invention, the trio was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.

Infusion pump – Henry Buchwald invented the world's first infusion port, peritoneovenous shunts, and specialty vascular catheters. He also invented the first implantable infusion pump, a precursor to implantable infusion pumps in use throughout the world today.

Student life

Among matriculants to the university, 66.8% are considered Minnesota residents and 33.2% are considered out-of-state residents. According to the University Office of Institutional Data and Research, as of fall 2023, there were 30,469 undergraduates at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. Of that number, 6,736 were first-time, degree-seeking freshmen. There were 11,233 graduate students.

Greek life, professional and honor societies

The University of Minnesota has numerous fraternities and sororities. Including defunct branches, the Greek system numbers more than 200 organizations, approximately half of which operate today. The university's Greek societies include the residential academic and social chapters, including non-residential multicultural groups. The Greek system includes professional fraternities, Hhonor Ssocieties, Rreligious and service Ffraternities. Fraternities and sororities have built several historically significant "Fraternity Row" homes along University Ave. SE, 10th Ave. SE, 4th Street SE, and 5th Street SE, all in Minneapolis, or along Cleveland Ave. near the St. Paul campus.

As of June 2018, approximately 3,900 system members made up about 11% of the campus population. Minnesota hosts 38 academic fraternities, 20 academic sororities, 56 honors societies, 31 professional societies, and two service-focused chapters.

Print

The Minnesota Daily has been published twice a week during the normal school season since the fall semester 2016. It is printed weekly during the summer. The Daily is operated by an autonomous organization run entirely by students. It was first published on May 1, 1900. Besides everyday news coverage, the paper has also published special issues, such as the Grapevine Awards, Ski-U-Mah, the Bar & Beer Guide, Sex-U-Mah, and others.

A long-defunct humor magazine, Ski-U-Mah, was published from about 1930 to 1950. It launched the career of novelist and scriptwriter Max Shulman.

A relative newcomer to the university's print media community is The Wake Student Magazine, a weekly that covers UMN-related stories and provides a forum for student expression. It was founded in November 2001 in an effort to diversify campus media and achieved student group status in February 2002. Students from many disciplines do all of the reporting, writing, editing, illustration, photography, layout, and business management for the publication. The magazine was founded by James DeLong and Chris Ruen. The Wake was named the nation's best campus publication (2006) by the Independent Press Association.

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