New York University

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NYU Seal

Motto Perstare et praestare ("To persevere and to excel")
Established 1831
School type Private
President John Sexton
Location New York, NY, USA
Enrollment 18,000 undergraduate, 15,884 graduate, and 3,312 professional
Faculty 1,907
Campus Urban
Athletics 19 varsity teams
Mascot File:Bobcathead.gif Bobcat
Homepage www.nyu.edu
NYU Logo

New York University (NYU) is a major research university in New York City. Its primary campus is in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. Founded in 1831 by Albert Gallatin and a group of prominent New Yorkers, NYU has become the largest private, not-for-profit university in the United States with a total enrollment of 39,408. The University comprises 14 schools, colleges, and divisions, which occupy six major centers across Manhattan.

History

New York University was founded in 1831 by a group of prominent New Yorkers — the city's landed class of merchants, bankers, and traders — who felt that New York needed a university designed for young men where admission would be based on merit, not birthright or social class. Gallatin described his motivation in a letter to a friend: "It appeared to me impossible to preserve our democratic institutions and the right of universal suffrage unless we could raise the standard of general education and the mind of the laboring classes nearer to a level with those born under more favorable circumstances."

To the school's founders, the classical curriculum offered at American colleges needed to be combined with a more modern and practical education. Institutions in Paris, Vienna, and London were beginning to experiment with this new form of higher learning, where students began to focus not only on the classics and religion, but also modern languages, philosophy, history, political economy, mathematics and physical science, so that students might become merchants, bankers, lawyers, physicians, architects, and engineers. This new school would also be non-denominational, unlike Columbia College, which had the support of the Anglican Church and at the time offered a classical education grounded in theology.

NYU was modeled after the University of London. The school would provide education to all qualified young men at a reasonable cost, would abandon the the exclusive use of "classical" curriculum, and would be financed privately through the sale of stock. The establishment of a joint stock company would prevent any religious group or denomination from dominating the affairs and management of the institution. However, it is interesting to note that although NYU was designed to be open to all men regardless of background, NYU's early classes were composed almost exclusively of the sons of wealthy protestant New York families.

University development

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The University Heights campus, now home to the Bronx Community College
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Shimkin Hall

On April 21, 1831, the new institution was incorporated as the University of the City of New York by the New York State Legislature, though it had been known as New York University since its inception. The school was officially renamed to New York University in 1896. Notable among NYU's founding fathers is Albert Gallatin, after whom one of the University's schools is named. Gallatin proposed an English-based curriculum that did not require learning Latin or Greek. In the beginning, the University focused primarily on teaching modern languages, engineering, agriculture, and other pragmatic subjects. In a move that was considered bold and innovative at the time, students could enroll for regular course work leading to a diploma, or they could take individual courses according to their own means, desire, and convenience, a philosophy that predated modern-day schools of continuing education. In 1832, NYU held its first classes in rented rooms in four-story Clinton Hall, located near City Hall. In 1835, the School of Law, NYU's first professional school, was founded.

Clinton Hall, which sat in the heart of New York's bustling and noisy commercial district, would only be NYU's home for a few years as administrators looked uptown for a more suitable and permanent academic environment. More specifically, they looked towards then-bucolic Greenwich Village. Land was purchased on the east side of Washington Square and, in 1833, construction began on the "Old University Building," a grand, Gothic structure that would house all of the school's functions. Two years later, the university community took possession of its permanent home, thus beginning NYU's enduring (and sometimes tumultuous) relationship with the Village.

While NYU has had its Washington Square campus since its inception, the University purchased a campus at University Heights in the Bronx, as a result of overcrowding on the old campus. NYU's move to the Bronx took place in 1894, spearheaded by the efforts of Chancellor Henry Mitchell MacCracken, who is credited with turning the school into a modern university. The University Heights campus was far more spacious than its predecessor, and housed the bulk of the University's operations, along with the undergraduate College of Arts and Science (University College) and School of Engineering. With most of NYU's operations moved to the new campus, the Washington Square campus declined, with only the Law School remaining until the founding of Washington Square College in 1914. It would become the downtown Arts and Sciences division of the university.

In 1900, NYU founded its undergraduate School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance, which eventually became the Leonard N. Stern School of business, to provide professional training for young people in the business world. It was also in 1900 that women matriculated at NYU for the first time. By 1936, they will make up fifteen percent of the student body. It was not until 1959 however that women were finally admitted to the College of Arts and Science.

During the 1960s and 1970s, feeling the pressures of imminent bankruptcy, then-President of NYU, James McNaughton Hester, negotiated the sale of the University Heights campus to the City University of New York, which took place in 1973. While University Heights alumni fought to keep the campus, some suggest that the sale was a "blessing in disguise" as the Uptown campus was losing money and the management of two campuses was financially impossible for NYU. Chancellor Sidney Borowitz said on the matter, "There was so much pressure from Uptown alumni to preserve the Heights that it was only under the threat of possible financial ruin that the campus could be sold. With two campuses, NYU could never have prospered as it has." After the sale of the University Heights campus, University College merged with Washington Square College. NYU's School of Engineering was shut down, and most of its students transferred to Polytechnic University in Brooklyn.

As at other college campuses nationwide, NYU became a hotbed for activism during much of the 1960s and 1970s. Groups like the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized students to demonstrate throughout New York and to support community voter registration and legal counseling. By 1965, student concerns began to change focus, concentrating on the escalating American involvement in Vietnam. Washington Square Park was the setting for protests on tuition hikes, civil rights, repressive government actions, the Vietnam War, and women's rights.

During the 1990s, NYU became increasingly popular to students from outside of the New York City area. To meet the demand for housing and classroom space, the university began purchasing old office buildings, hotels, and even nightclubs.[1] In the 1980's, NYU launched a billion-dollar campaign which was spent almost entirely to update facilities[2] under the leadership of President John Brademas.[3] In 2003, the university launched a 2.5-billion dollar campaign for funds to be spent especially on faculty and financial aid resources.[4]

Cultural life

Washington Square has been a center of the cultural life in New York since the middle of the 19th century. Artists of the Hudson River School, the country's first prominent school of painters, settled around Washington Square at that time. Early tenants of the Old University Building were Samuel F.B. Morse and Daniel Huntington. Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman contributed to the artistic climate or at least sought refuge in the surrounding bars.

In the 1870s, sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French lived and worked near the Square. By the 1920s, Washington Square Park area was nationally recognized as a center for artistic and moral rebellion. Notable residents of that time include Eugene O'Neill, John Sloan and Maurice Prendergast. In the 1930s, the abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning as well as the realists Edward Hopper and Thomas Hart Benton had studios around Washington Square or the Village. From the 1960s on, Square and the Village became one of the centers of the beat and folk generation, when Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan settled there.

Academics

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Stern School of Business

The university is widely considered to be among the most prestigious major research universities in the United States. NYU counts 20 Nobel Prize laureates, 9 National Medal of Science recipients, 12 Pulitzer Prize winners, 19 Academy Award winners, several Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award winners and many MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowship holders among its past and present graduates and faculty.

Recent rankings rate NYU programs among the best in the country. (Note that rankings are often highly disputed - see College and university rankings). NYU's Stern School of Business undergraduate program is consistently ranked among the top 5, Stern's MBA program among the top 15 programs in the country (# 13 U.S. News,# 9 Financial Times 2005, # 13 Business Week, #8 Economist, # 3 by research contribution), Stern's part-time M.B.A. program is ranked #1 by U.S. News. The School of Law has consistently been ranked among the top five U.S. law schools by U.S. News. NYU's Tisch School of the Arts is considered to be a premier school for studies in the performing arts and its film program is consistently ranked among the top in the U.S.

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NYU Law School

NYU's philosophy department has been ranked # 1 in the U.S.. The economics department is considered top 10-15. The politics department is ranked in the top 20 annually, and its International Relations program is ranked 10th nationwide. NYU's Steinhardt School of Education is ranked among the Top 15 Schools for education and teaching . The Wagner Graduate School of Public Service has the highest-ranked Health Policy and Management program in the country. The Courant Institute is also considered to be one of the best mathematics departments in the country, ranking #5 in citation impact, and #1 in applied mathematics.

NYU's undergraduate admissions has grown highly selective in recent years, due to factors such as the increasing prestige of the university relative to peer schools, the growing popularity of an "urban" college experience and a decrease in crime in New York City. NYU has seen a continuing trend of increasingly greater numbers of applicants, lower acceptance rates, and higher average SAT scores for freshmen. In 2000, applications to NYU increased by more than 300 percent from 1991, while the acceptance rate declined from 65 percent to 29.3 percent[5]. As of 2005, the undergraduate acceptance rate was 29 percent. Its yield, however, is somewhat lower than other similarly-ranked schools. For the last 2 years, NYU was ranked by the Princeton Review as America's #1 "dream school" (first choice when factors such as the price and the school's selectivity are not considered) among high school seniors[6]. NYU has the largest undergraduate applicant pool of all private universities in the U.S. NYU is among the top 20 for all universities in the number of national merit scholars in the undergraduate student body.

NYU also has one of the largest and most diverse international student populations of any university in the United States, with nearly 4,000 students representing over 100 different countries[7]. The university is also a very "national" school, with over 70% of its incoming freshmen coming from outside of the Tri-State Area. In addition, 10% of students come from one of New York City's five boroughs, and 20% come from the surrounding 17 counties. About 65% of NYU's undergraduates attended public high schools. NYU's main feeder schools reflect a heavy Northeast presence, and particularly a strong New York City influence; Stuyvesant High School, Townsend Harris High School, and the Bronx High School of Science are among NYU's top feeder schools. The 2004 top five competitor schools among students who declined NYU's offer of admission were the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Cornell University, Boston University and the University of California at Berkeley.

NYU has distinguished itself as a premier school for graduate studies in creative writing. The program, started by Galway Kinnell, has secured its position as a leading writing program by focusing on the student's craft and creative output and also by providing a faculty that is unrivaled by any other university. The Senior Distinguished Poet is Yusef Komunyakaa; the Distinguished Poet-in-Residence is Philip Levine; the Distinguished Global Professor is Breyten Breytenbach permanent faculty members include E.L. Doctorow, Paule Marshall, Sharon Olds and Chuck Wachtel; and visiting writers have included Agha Shahid Ali, Yehuda Amichai, Margaret Atwood, Robert Bly, Joseph Brodsky, Peter Carey, Marcelle Clements, Edwidge Danticat, Toi Derricotte, Allen Ginsberg, Donald Hall, Marie Howe, Phillis Levin, Brian Morton, Michael Ondaatje, Caryl Phillips, Marie Ponsot, Mona Simpson, Irini Spanidou, Jean Valentine, Derek Walcott and C.K. Williams. Young writers who have graduated from the program are Nick Flynn, Nell Freudenberger, A.M. Homes, Dana Levin, Donna Masini, Ana Menéndez, Jason Schneiderman and Darin Strauss among others. Awards won by the graduates include an Academy of American Poetry Award, the Celia B. Wagner Award from Poetry Society of America, Discovery/The Nation Award, Fulbright Grant, O. Henry Award, Pushcart Prize, Walt Whitman Award, Wallace Stegner Award, NEA Fellowships and a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award (2000).

Schools and colleges

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Judson Hall

New York University is comprised of 14 divisions, colleges and schools:

With the sale of the University heights campus in 1973, the following divisions were closed or merged with other institutions:

  • Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics 1927 - 1973
  • School of Engineering 1894 - 1973
  • Washington Square College (merged with College of Arts and Science)
  • University College (merged with College of Arts and Science)

Faculty and staff

Numerous noted scholars have taught at New York University since its inception in 1831, among them several Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Fellowship winners, many Guggenheim Fellows and several members of the National Academy of Science. See also List of New York University People. The university is frequently criticized for its hiring of adjunct teaching staff over full-time tenure track professors. The university has significantly fewer full-time staff than other universities of the same size. Adjuncts are preferred over full-time teaching staff because of the lower cost, and the fact that the university does not have to provide them benefits. The threat of a strike by the adjunct professors in the spring of 2004 resulted in a tentative agreement offering adjuncts some benefits and wage increases over a multi-year period.

NYU's aggressive recruitment of renowned professors and high-potential graduates has been a large factor in the University's growing prestige. It has often been involved in bidding wars to lure top faculty in an attempt to boost its academic reputation. NYU is remarkable in that it went from being a near-bankrupt commuter school to becoming one of the country's most prestigious research universities, in large part due to the fact that, instead of building its endowment, the University spent its money on building new facilities and hiring more faculty.

On November 9, 2005, graduate student teaching assistants and research assistants, members of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC-UAW Local 2110) went on strike. The strike began three months after President John Sexton and the University Leadership Team refused to negotiate a second contract with the union. The administration was taking advantage of a July 2004 National Labor Relations Board decision which reversed the four year old precedent established at New York University in November of 2000, requiring NYU to recognize and negotiate with its graduate employees. In a November 28, 2005 letter, John Sexton threatened to all strikers who did not return to work at the beginning of the following week with the loss of their teaching positions for the entirety of the following semester. The union's members voted at four membership meetings on November 30th and December 1, 2005, to remain on strike.

Facilities and monuments

Most NYU buildings are scattered across a roughly square area bounded by Houston Street to the south, Broadway to the east, 14th Street to the north, and Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) to the west. The majority of NYU buildings surround Washington Square Park. In the past, there has often been tension between NYU and other neighborhood residents and businesses over real estate issues. In spite of this, NYU is the third largest landowner in the city (the largest being the City itself, the second being the Catholic Church).

Washington Square campus

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La Maison Francaise

Since the late 1970s, the center of NYU is its Washington Square campus in the heart of Greenwich Village. One of the city's most creative and energetic communities, the Village is a historic neighborhood that has attracted generations of writers, musicians, artists, and intellectuals. Today, Greenwich village is one of the toniest areas in New York City, and is home to many young professionals.

Notable facilities on Washington Square are the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, designed by Philip Johnson and Richard Foster, who also designed several other structures, such as Tisch Hall, Meyer Hall and the Hagop Kevorkian Center. Historic landmark buildings include the Silver Center (formerly known as "Main building"), Brown Building (formerly called the "Asch building", site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), Judson Hall, which houses the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center [8], Vanderbilt Hall, the historic townhouse row on Washington Square North, the Kaufman Management Center and the Torch Club, the NYU dining and club facility for alumni and faculty. Just a block south of Washington Square, there is NYU's Washington Square Village which houses graduate students and junior faculty, and senior faculty residences in the Silver Towers, designed by I.M. Pei, where an enlargement of Picasso's sculpture Bust of Sylvette (1934) is displayed.

In the 1990s, NYU became a "two square" university by building up second community around Union Square, which is about a ten minute walk from Washington Square. NYU's Union Sqaure community consists of the upper classmen residence halls of Carlyle Court, University Hall, Palladium Residence Hall, Alumni Hall, Coral Towers, Thirteenth Street Hall, and Third North Residence Hall. The Union Square area has many upscale restuarants, lounges, bars, and markets such as Whole Foods.

NYU theatres and clubs

NYU operates a number of theatres and performance facilites which are frequently used by the university's music conservatory and Tisch School of the Arts but also external productions. All productions are generally open to the public. The largest performance spaces at NYU are the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (1,022 seats) and the Eisner-Lubin Auditorium (560 seats) at the Kimmel Center. Recently, the Skirball Center saw important speeches on foreign policy by John Kerry[9] and Al Gore[10] as well as the recording of the season finale of The Apprentice 3. Of fame is also NYU's Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street, where Eugene O'Neill among many others launched his career and the Frederick Loewe Theatre. Catalyst to many careers in music (Bruce Springsteen started here among many others) was the famous nightclub The Bottom Line located on the corner of West 4th and Mercer Streets. Under the protest of the music scene and many fans, the club was evicted by NYU after being unable to meet the increased rent payments for several months.

Bobst Library

The Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, built between 1967 and 1972, is the largest library at New York University and one of the largest academic libraries in the United States. Designed by Philip Johnson and Richard Foster, the 12 story, 39,000 m² (425,000 square feet) structure sits on the southern edge of Washington Square Park and is the flagship of a nine-library, 4.5 million volume system that provides students and faculty members with access to the world's scholarship and serves as a center for the University community's intellectual life. Bobst Library houses more than 3.3 million volumes, 20 thousand journals, and over 3.5 million microforms; and provides access to thousands of electronic resources both on-site and to the NYU community around the world via the Internet. The Library is visited by more than 6,500 users per day, and circulates almost one million books annually.

In late 2003, Bobst Library was the site of several suicides. Two students jumped from the open air crosswalks inside the library, crashing to the marble floor below. Both later died from their injuries. After the second suicide, NYU installed glass windows on each level to prevent further jumping. These deaths were the first among a rash of jumping deaths at NYU in 2003 and 2004. In 2003, Bobst Library was also in the news for being the home of a homeless student who took permanent residence at the Library since he could not afford student housing.[11]

Washington Square Park

Washington Square Arch

Despite being public property, the Washington Square Arch is the unofficial symbol of NYU, expanding the 5th avenue axis into Washington Square Park. The arch was designed by Stanford White in 1889 to commemorate the centennial of George Washington's inauguration in New York City. Originally of wood and papier mache, it was rebuilt as a massive marble and concrete structure from 1890-1895. Today, thousands of NYU graduates march through the arch into Washington Square park to participate in the annual commencement exercises. The arch was renovated in a $2.7-million restoration project from 2002-2004.[12]

Recent developments

Over the last few years, NYU has developed a number of new facilities on and around its Washington Square Campus:

Kimmel Center for University Life

The Kimmel Center for University Life gives students, faculty, alumni, and staff at NYU the space to come together as a community for major events, ceremonies formal and informal, and artistic performances of all kinds. Named for benefactors Helen and Martin Kimmel, the center also houses the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, the Rosenthal Pavilion, the Eisner & Lubin Auditorium, and the Loeb Student Center.

Furman Hall

Furman Hall was named after NYU Law alumnus Jay Furman (JD '71). It includes classroom space, student meeting areas, the Law School clinical program, faculty and administrative offices, and faculty residences. The new building is located on West Third Street between Sullivan and Thompson streets, south of Washington Square Park. It totals 170,000 gross square feet. The building’s architect is Kohn Pederson Fox Associates PC. NYU worked closely with the Greenwich Village community to integrate the new building into surrounding architecture. Reconstructed elements of two historic buildings were incorporated into the new facade, one of which was occupied by poet Edgar Allan Poe.[13]

Life Science Facility

In 2005, NYU announced the development of a new life science facility on Waverly Place. The facility will house laboratories and related academic space for the life sciences and will be the first NYU science building developed since the opening of Meyer Hall in 1971. The new facility will be created through the renovation of three existing buildings at 12 - 16 Waverly Place whilst preserving the original, existing facades.[14]

E. 12th Street Residence Hall

In November 2005, NYU announced plans to build a 26 floor, 190,000 square foot residence hall on 12th Street. The residence hall is expected to house about 700 undergraduates and contain a host of other student facilities. It is to be the tallest building in the East Village.[15]

Medical and other campuses

The main NYU Medical Campus is located at the East River water front at 1st Ave. between 30th and 34th street. The campus hosts the Medical School, Tisch Hospital and the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. Other NYU Centers across the city include the Hospital for Joint Diseases Orthopaedic Institute, the NYU Downtown Hospital and the Bellevue Hospital Center. NYU's Ehrenkranz School of Social Work operates branch campus programs in Westchester County at Manhattanville College and in Rockland County at St. Thomas Aquinas College. NYU maintains a research facility in Sterling Forest, near Tuxedo, New York, which houses several institutes, notably the Nelson Institute of Environmental Medicine. The Midtown Center at 11 West 42nd Street and the Woolworth Building in the financial district are home to NYU's continuing education programs.

Foreign facilities

NYU has an extensive study abroad program which a good portion of the student body participates in and the school has earned the nickname "Global U". Unlike most other universities, NYU maintains its own international facilities in several countries. Most notable is the 57-acre campus of NYU Florence at Villa LaPietra in Italy, bequeathed by the late Sir Harold Acton to NYU in 1994.[16] NYU also has its own facilities in London, Paris, Prague, Berlin, Ghana, and Madrid.

International houses on campus

NYU has several international houses to foster the study of international culture and languages. The international houses have their own classroom space, libararies, offices and often host campus events. The NYU international houses are:

NYU was also the founding member of the League of World Universities

Residence halls

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Hayden Hall, 33 Washington Square West

Dormitories at New York University are unique in that many are converted apartment complexes or old hotels. Freshman residence halls are in the Washington Square area. While many of the upper classmen dorms are in the Union Square area, some are as far away as the financial district. Due to NYU's lottery system, where a student receives one point for every semester they live in campus housing, and because freshmen are traditionally placed in the halls closest to the main campus area, most of the students who live in dorms located off-campus are sophomores. The university operates its own transit system to transport these students, via bus or trolley, to campus. Some students, however, feel that this independently run transit system is inconvenient and opt to utilize the New York Subway system.

There are currently twenty-one buildings in the New York University undergraduate housing community. Undergraduate students are guaranteed housing for the duration of their tenure at NYU. Virtually all freshman and most upper classmen choose to stay in campus housing. There is, also a contingent of students that lives off campus, mostly in Greenwich Village area apartments. It is difficult for a student to re-enter housing if he or she has left the housing system and off campus housing tends to be very expensive since NYU is in a posh area.

NYU residence halls receive favorable ratings overall, and some are downright luxurious. Many dorm rooms are spacious, and contain amenities considered rare for individual college dorm rooms such as kitchens and living rooms/common areas. All residence halls are staffed by 24 hour security staff, contain multiple residence advisors (RAs), and several halls contain faculty in residence. Unlike many other universities, NYU dorm rooms all have their own bathrooms and thus there are no common bathrooms. Many residence halls have their own dining hall, and the university has meal options to suit various diets. Almost all of the residence halls have a laundry room that is open to resident students twenty-four hours a day. The price of using these facilities varies from dorm to dorm, and the administration has been criticized by the student body for pervasive inflated rates .

All of the dorms are governed by the Inter-Residence Hall Council (IRHC), which is an umbrella student council organization. Each hall elects student representatives to the IRHC, and these representatives meet with one another to form committees and vote on an executive board. The goal of this group is to create programs for university students and to act as a liaison to university administration.

Student life

NYU's location in Greenwich Village — a vibrant and creative neighborhood that has attracted generations of artists, writers, intellectuals, and musicians — provides a unique perspective in which to study. The Village—and the rest of New York City—acts as an extension of NYU's campus. Being that NYU's "campus" is a patchwork of buildings and structures across much of the Village, it is indeed an "urban university" that has embraced the city as an essential element of the academic experience. NYU is largely a reflection of the population of New York City, having a mostly progressive and liberal-minded student body. According to the Princeton Review, NYU ranks second in the nation in its acceptance of gays and lesbians.

That said, NYU is often criticized for its lack of a "campus life" and it has been said that the University lacks a strong sense of community, particularly amongst undergraduates. This fact was put into perspective when a string of six highly publicized suicides took place at (or around) the University during the 2003-2004 academic year.[17] NYU responded by offering free counseling to all enrolled students and installing glass walls to enclose the balconies at Bobst Library, where two of the suicides took place. They have begun installing locks on all windows in buildings with many stories, as well as restricting access to balconies in dorms.

While the university is trying to shed its image as a commuter school, NYU currently has few support systems in place for the large proportion of its student body (approximately 25 percent) that does commute. On the other hand, New York City itself has so many active communities that some students feel there is no need to participate in campus life. Nevertheless, NYU's varied clubs, organizations, and activities are available to those who seek them out. Membership in Greek organizations is low; only nine to eleven percent of the student body is a member of either a fraternity or a sorority. In 2004, NYU unveiled its new Kimmel Center for University Life, on the south side of Washington Square, which includes a 1,022-seat performing arts center (the Skirball Center for Performing Arts), space for student clubs and activity programming, and student lounges.

NYU prides itself on being conducive to any students wishing to create their own sense of environment within the thriving campus activities. NYU's policy of needing only four members to constitute a club makes this a popular trend in today's studentry. Aside from the fraternities, sororities, and clubs that focus on fields of study, some of the most visible on-campus organizations are those of the print media clubs, such as the Washington Square News, comedy magazine The PLAGUE, and literary journal The Minetta Review.

Athletics

NYU's sports teams are called the Violets and its school mascot is the Bobcat. Almost all sporting teams participate in the NCAA's Division III and the University Athletic Association, except for men's volleyball, which competes in the Eastern Collegiate Volleyball Association. The fencing team is Division I, and is considered one of the best in the nation. The National Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association (NIWFA) was founded by NYU freshmen Julia Jones and Dorothy Hafner. The school's official colors are purple and white. NYU has not had a varsity football team since the 1970s.

NYU has won one NCAA Division III national championship. In 1997, the women's basketball team, led by head coach Janice Quinn, won a championship title over the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. NYU had a football team and competed in Division I athletics until the university's Bronx campus and its athletic facilities were sold in the 1970s.

Many NYU students also compete in a number of club and intramural sports, including lacrosse, crew, squash, rugby, badminton, ice hockey, baseball, softball, equestrian, martial arts, and triathlon. The Coles Sports and Recreation Center serves as the home base of several of NYU's intercollegiate athletic teams, including basketball, wrestling and volleyball. Coles is considered the hub of recreational and athletic needs for the university's students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Coles has substantial facilties such as weight rooms, squash courts, tennis courts, olympic sized swimming pool, basketball courts, and a rooftop running track. It also offers around 130 classes, serving approximately 10,000 members of the university community.

Many of the university's varsity teams have to play their home games away from the Coles center due to the lack of space for playing fields in Manhattan. The soccer teams play their home games at Van Cortlandt Park and the track and field teams have their home meets at the New Balance Track and Field Center. The golf team does not have a home course in Manhattan, but they often practice at Chelsea Piers Athletic Facility and at various country clubs in the New York area.

The women and mens track and field teams, under their respective coaches Jef Smith, Lauren Henkel, and Nicholas McDonough practice at both Coles and the 169th St Armory. Christian Majdick of the men's track and field team captured the NCAA Division III championship for the triple jump in 2003. Lauren Henkel one of the most accomplished athletes in NYU track and field history and the current assistant coach of the women's track and field team garned All-American status three times for High Jump under the tutilage of Jef Smith.

The men's and women's soccer teams, under their respective coaches Joe Behan and Amanda Vandervort practice at Riverbank State Park in Harlem. In 2003 the women's soccer team competed in the NCAA Division III Sweet Sixteen.

In 2002, the University opened the Palladium Athletic Facility as the second on-campus recreational facility. Its amenities include a rock climbing wall, a natatorium with an olympic sized swimming pool, basketball courts, weight training, cardio rooms, and a spinning room. The Palladium, erected on the site of the famous New York night club bearing the same name, is home to the university's swimming and divingteams, and water polo teams. NYU men's and women's swimming teams, under their respective head coaches Bob Sorensen and Lauren Smith, have done well in recent years capturing consecutive (2004-2005) Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division III Swimming and Diving Championships.

NYU Jargon

  • Albert - the online system by which students can register for courses, check grades, pay bills, and obtain school records.
  • Bobcat - the mascot of the university and also the search engine of Bobst Library.
  • Brownstone - the arts and entertainment magazine of the university.
  • Campus Cash - a system by which students can deposit money on their NYU cards, and the card can be used to purchase goods and services at both NYU locations and various campus area merchants.
  • Courtyard Cafe - the dining hall of the Third North dorm which is also popular with Alumni Hall residents.
  • Declining Dollars - a fixed sum of money which comes with NYU meal plans. Declining dollars are used in NYU dining halls for things other normal meals such as bringing guests and buying snacks. The caveat with declining dollars is that they must be used by end of the semester or else the student loses them.
  • Fat Black - shortened name for The Fat Black Pussycat, which is a popular bar, especially among underclassmen.
  • Freshman Cluster - the freshman residence halls near Washington Square consisting of Hayden, Goddard, Weinstein, Brittany, and Rubin.
  • Grad alley - the celebration and street fair that takes place in the Washington Square area before graduation. Grad alley is capped with a fireworks display.
  • Josie's - the pub Josie Woods that's located on Waverly Place.
  • MAP - the Morse Academic Plan, which is the liberal arts core curriculum of CAS. Other NYU schools also require their students to fulfill certain portions of MAP.
  • Night court - nickname for the Weinstein Hall food court in the late night hours. This food court stays open later than other NYU dining venues.
  • NYU home - the email system of the university.
  • Starbucks at the square - NYU's own Starbucks that overlooks Washington Square Park.
  • Sternie - nickname for a student in the Stern School of Business
  • The Marketplace - the dining area of the Kimmel student center which also has a selection of intenational foods.
  • The Stern Curve - what students consider a brutal curve in the Stern School of Business that's designed to prevent grade inflation.
  • Tischie - nickname for a student in the Tisch School.
  • Union Square Cluster - the upperclassmen residence halls residence halls near Union Square consisting of Carlyle Court, University Hall, Palladium Hall, and Coral Towers.
  • U hall/The U - University Hall, a residence hall located in the Union Square area.
  • WSN - the Washington Square News, the daily campus newspaper.

NYU in film and literature

NYU has been portrayed or been the scene in several films and novels:

  • Kramer hires Darren, an intern from NYU, to help him run "Kramerica Industries" on season 9 of Seinfeld (episode 158 - "The Voice").
  • Jerry is interviewed by a reporter from the NYU student newspaper (and mistakenly believed to be gay) on season 4 of Seinfeld (episode 57 - "The Outing").
  • Finch in the American Pie films is an NYU student
  • The movie Loser was set at NYU.
  • Denis Fleming in the film Can't Hardly Wait is an NYU student
  • Alvy Singer in Annie Hall is an NYU student
  • A Friend of Dorothy is set at NYU
  • The Freshman, 1990, is set at NYU with Matthew Broderick portraying an NYU Film student
  • The Apprentice 3 season finale was shot at the NYU Kimmel Center
  • Scenes from The Exorcist were filmed at NYU Medical Center
  • The film Greenwich Village Writers: The Bohemian Legacy was filmed at NYU, starring several NYU Professors
  • In the film In Good Company, Alex Foreman (Scarlett Johansson) is an NYU student, just moving into Hayden Residence Hall off Washington Square Park
  • Dr. Guy Luthan played by Hugh Grant in Extreme Measures is an NYU Med Student
  • Henry James' novel Washington Square is set around the NYU area. The novel has been subject to several movie and TV adaptions (1997, 1975, 1956)
  • Rose of Washington Square, 1939 and 13 Washington Square, 1928, directed by Melville W. Brown, are centered around the NYU Campus.
  • Tibby in the novel The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants attends NYU.
  • Nicolas Cage attended NYU in college in the movie The Family Man and ends up as a prominent investment banker.
  • True to life, Al Pacino's character of Frank Serpico attends NYU in the film Serpico.
  • Theo Huxtable (played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner) in The Cosby Show graduated from NYU in the series finale.
  • David Kessler, the title character of 1981's "An American Werewolf in London," is an NYU student; an NYU t-shirt is featured in the film.
  • In Clueless, Cher gives Josh advice: "I hear the girls at NYU aren't at all particular."
  • In Wall Street Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox is an NYU graduate. Without saying Stern, "the NYU business school" is mentioned frequently as his alma mater.

Trivia

  • In 1941, the graduating class included three later Nobel Prize laureates (Julius Axelrod, Gertrude B. Elion and Clifford Shull), Olympic Gold Medalist John Woodruff, sportscaster Howard Cosell and sociologist Morris Janowitz.
  • Until 1973, NYU owned pasta company C.F. Mueller in a trust fund.
  • When designing Bobst Library, Tisch and Meyer Halls, Philip Johnson and Richard Foster also set up a master plan for a complete redesign of the NYU Washington Square Campus. However, it was never implemented.
  • At the age of 16, David Copperfield was teaching a course in magic at NYU.
  • In 1840 John William Draper, professor of chemistry and natural history and president of the Medical faculty, produces one of the earliest daguerreotype portraits of the human face. Draper also produces one of the first photographs of the moon.
  • The contractors of the Old University Building used prisoners from Sing Sing to cut the marble. This hiring was the catalyst for the famous Stonecutter's Riot.
  • NYU's Tisch School of the Arts has produced more Academy Award winners than any other institution in the U.S.
  • The graduating class of 1955 at NYU included: Nobel Prize laureate Eric R. Kandel, Grammy Award winner Fred Ebb, the CEO of MetLife John J. Creedon, Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines, the founders of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, Allan L. Schuman, CEO of Ecolab and three members of Congress, Ambro, Guarini, Meskill.

  • There are two versions of the origin of the university colour, violet. Some believe that it may have been chosen because violets are said to have grown abundantly in Washington Square and around the buttresses of the Old University Building. Others argue that the colour may have been adopted because the violet was the flower associated with Athens, the center of learning in ancient Greece. Today, the NYU violet is registered with the Color Association of the United States as Mayfair Violet, 17575.
  • Although the nickname for the University’s sports teams has always been The Violets, the need was felt for a mascot to appear at athletic competitions. In the 1980s, the Department of Athletics began using a Bobcat as the mascot. The choice was derived from the abbreviation then being used by the Bobst Library computerized catalogue — short: Bobcat. [18]
  • The model for the football player on the Heisman Trophy was Ed Smith of the 1934 NYU football team.
  • The university logo, the upheld torch, is derived from the Statue of Liberty, signifying NYU's service to the city of New York. The torch is depicted on both the NYU seal and the more abstract NYU logo, designed in 1965 by renowned graphic artist Ivan Chermayeff. There is also a real silver torch designed by Tiffany and Company of New York (a gift from Helen Miller Gould in 1911) which is passed at Commencement from a senior faculty member to the youngest graduating student.
  • The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25, 1911, took place in the Brown Building which today is part of the NYU campus. More than a hundred garment workers died or jumped to their deaths after a fire broke out whilst all exit doors were locked. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

  • Washington Square Park was used as a mass grave during the cholera pestilence in New York. Today, the skeletons of more than 20,000 victims still remain buried underneath the square. Until 1819, the square (then known as potter's field) was used for executions. The great English elm in the northwest corner of the park, also known as hangman's elm, was supposedly used for executions as well.

  • The class of 1977 included: Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, INSEAD Dean Gabriel Hawawini, Pulitzer-, Oscar- and Tony Award winner John Patrick Shanley, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, NASDAQ CEO Robert Greifeld and Cathy Minehan, Federal Reserve Chairman Boston

  • At NYU, Samuel F.B. Morse and Samuel Colt invented the devices named after them.

Notable NYU alumni and faculty

As of the end of 2004, New York University counted more than 350,000 alumni around the world. The New York University Office for Alumni Affairs oversees the various activies, such as class reunions, local NYU club gatherings, NYU alumni travel and career services. For a list of notable alumni, see List of New York University People

Further reading

  • Dim, Joan, The Miracle on Washington Square. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000.
  • Frusciano, Tom and Pettit, Marilyn New York University and the City, an Illustrated History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
  • Gitlow, Abrahm L., NYU's Stern School of Business: A Centennial Retrospective, New York, NY: NYU Press, 1995
  • Harris, Luther S., Around Washington Square : An Illustrated History of Greenwich Village,Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003
  • Jones, Theodore F.New York University, 1832 - 1932, London, H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1933
  • Lewis, Naphtali, Greek papyri in the collection of New York University, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1968
  • Tonne, Herbert A. (ed.), Early Leaders in Business Education at New York University, National Business Education Association, Reston, Va., 1981
  • Potash, David M., The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University: A History. New York: NYU Arts and Sciences Publications, 1991.

Notes

  1. ^ William H. Honan. "A Decade and a Billion Dollars Put New York U. in First Rank". New York Times. March 20, 1995. http://www.nyu.edu/financial.aid/nytimes1995-03-20.pdf
  2. ^ Kenneth R. Weiss. "NYU Earns Respect". Los Angeles Times. March 22, 2000. http://www.nyu.edu/financial.aid/latimes2000-03-22.pdf
  3. ^ Laura Turegano. "Fundraising Beyond U.S. Borders - NYU: A Success Story". onPhilantrophy, December 13, 2001. http://www.onphilanthropy.com/prof_inter/pi2001-12-13a.html
  4. ^ http://www.nyu.edu/alumni/newsletter/0105/campaign.html
  5. ^ Albert Amateau. "N.Y.U. opens new building for law school". The Villager. Volume 73, Number 37, January 14 - 2, 2004 http://www.thevillager.com/villager_37/nyuopensnew.html
  6. ^ Lincoln Anderson. "N.Y.U. to use Waverly buildings for its new life sciences center". The Villager. Volume 74, Number 28, November 17 - 22, 2004 http://www.thevillager.com/villager_81/nyutousewaverly.html
  7. ^ http://www.homelessatnyu.com/
  8. ^ http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_newsroom/daily_plants/daily_plant_main.php?id=10606
  9. ^ http://www.nyu.edu/nyutoday/archives/18/11/PageOneStories/applications.html
  10. ^ http://www.nyu.edu/ir/factbook/2004-2005/totalugrad.php
  11. ^ John Kerry's speech at NYU http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2004/09/iraq-040920-kerry01.htm
  12. ^ Al Gore's speech at NYU http://www.moveon.org/gore-speech.html
  13. ^ http://www.nyu.edu/ir/demographics/demographics0405/total_enrollment.php
  14. ^ http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=16715&repository=0001_article
  15. ^ http://www.nyu.edu/nyutoday/archives/16/01/Stories/LaPietra.html
  16. ^ http://www.thevillager.com/villager_46/nyucopeswith.html
  17. ^ http://www.nyu.edu/athletics/clubs/mascots/history.html
  18. ^ http://www.nyunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/11/08/4370457b6de3d

External links

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