New York University (NYU)
New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian American research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. Founded in 1831, NYU is one of the largest private nonprofit institutions of American higher education.
NYU was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1950. The university counts 36 Nobel Prize winners, three Abel Prize winners, 10 National Medal of Science recipients, 16 Pulitzer Prize winners, 30 Academy Award winners, four Putnam Competition winners, Russ Prize, Gordon Prize, and Draper Prize winners, Turing Award winners, and Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winners among its faculty and alumni. NYU also has MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowship holders as well as National Academy of Sciences members among its past and present graduates and faculty.
NYU is organized into 18 schools, colleges, and institutes, located in six centers throughout Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn, as well as more than a dozen other sites across the world, with plans for further expansion. According to the Institute of International Education, NYU sends more students to study abroad than any other US college or university, and the College Board reports more online searches by international students for "NYU" than for any other university.
HISTORY
Albert Gallatin, Secretary of Treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, declared his intention to establish "in this immense and fast-growing city ... a system of rational and practical education fitting for all and graciously opened to all". A three-day long "literary and scientific convention" held in City Hall in 1830 and attended by over 100 delegates debated the terms of a plan for a new university. These New Yorkers believed the city needed a university designed for young men who would be admitted based on merit, not birthright, status or social class. On April 18, 1831, an institution was established, with the support of a group of prominent New York City residents from the city's landed class of merchants, bankers, and traders. Albert Gallatin was elected as the institution's first president. On April 21, 1831, the new institution received its charter and was incorporated as the University of the City of New York by the New York State Legislature; older documents often refer to it by that name. The university has been popularly known as New York University since its beginning and was officially renamed New York University in 1896. In 1832, NYU held its first classes in rented rooms of four-story Clinton Hall, situated near City Hall. In 1835, the School of Law, NYU's first professional school, was established. Although the impetus to found a new school was partly a reaction by evangelical Presbyterians to what they perceived as the Episcopalianism of Columbia College, NYU was created non-denominational, unlike many American colleges at the time.
Whereas NYU had its Washington Square campus since its founding, the university purchased a campus at University Heights in the Bronx because of overcrowding on the old campus. NYU also had a desire to follow New York City's development further uptown. NYU's move to the Bronx occurred in 1894, spearheaded by the efforts of Chancellor Henry Mitchell MacCracken. The University Heights campus was far more spacious than its predecessor was. As a result, most of the university's operations along with the undergraduate College of Arts and Science and School of Engineering were housed there. NYU's administrative operations were moved to the new campus, but the graduate schools of the university remained at Washington Square. In 1914, Washington Square College was founded as the downtown undergraduate college of NYU. In 1935, NYU opened the "Nassau College-Hofstra Memorial of New York University at Hempstead, Long Island". This extension would later become a fully independent Hofstra University.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, financial crisis gripped the New York City government and the troubles spread to the city's institutions, including NYU. Feeling the pressures of imminent bankruptcy, NYU President James McNaughton Hester negotiated the sale of the University Heights campus to the City University of New York, which occurred in 1973. After the sale of the Bronx campus, University College merged with Washington Square College. In the 1980s, under the leadership of President John Brademas, NYU launched a billion-dollar campaign that was spent almost entirely on updating facilities. The campaign was set to complete in 15 years, but ended up being completed in 10. In 2003 President John Sexton launched a $2.5 billion campaign for funds to be spent especially on faculty and financial aid resources.
