University of Pennsylvania Totally Explained

Everything about The University Of Pennsylvania totally explained

The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn) is a private university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Penn is America's first university and is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Penn is also a member of the Ivy League, and is one of the Colonial Colleges. Benjamin Franklin, Penn's founder, advocated an educational program that focused as much on practical education for commerce and public service as on the classics and theology. Penn was one of the first academic institutions to follow a multidisciplinary model pioneered by several European universities, concentrating several "faculties" (for example, theology, classics, medicine) into one institution.
   Penn is a leader in the arts and humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences, architecture, communications and education. Penn is particularly noted for its schools of law, business and medicine -- the latter two being the first of their kind in North America. About 4,500 professors serve nearly 10,000 full-time undergraduate and 10,000 graduate and professional students.
   In FY 2007, Penn's academic research programs undertook more than $787 million in research, involving some 4,200 faculty, 870 postdoctoral fellows, 3,800 graduate students, and 5,400 support staff. Much of the funding is provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for biomedical research.
   Penn tops the Ivy League in annual spending, with a projected 2007 budget of $5.18 billion. In 2007, it ranked fourth among U.S. universities in fundraising, bringing in about $392.4 million in private support.
   Penn is incorporated as "The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania." The university is one of 14 founding members of the Association of American Universities.

History

In 1740, a group of Philadelphians joined together to erect a great preaching hall for the evangelist Rev. George Whitefield. Designed and built by Edmund Woolley, it was the largest building in the city and it was also planned to serve as a charity school. The fundraising, however, fell short and although the building was erected, the plans for both a chapel and the charity school were suspended. In the fall of 1749, eager to create a college to educate future generations, Benjamin Franklin circulated a pamphlet titled "Proposals for the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania," his vision for what he called a "Public Academy of Philadelphia." However, according to Franklin's autobiography, it was in 1743 when he first drew up a proposal for establishing the academy, "thinking the Rev. Richard Peters a fit person to superintend such an institution." Unlike the other three American Colonial colleges that existed at the time — Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale — Franklin's new school wouldn't focus merely on education for the clergy. He advocated an innovative concept of higher education, one which would teach both the ornamental knowledge of the arts and the practical skills necessary for making a living and doing public service. The proposed program of study became the nation's first modern liberal arts curriculum.
   Franklin assembled a board of trustees from among the leading citizens of Philadelphia, the first such non-sectarian board in America. At the first meeting of the 24 members of the Board of Trustees (November 13, 1749) the issue of where to locate the school was a prime concern. Although a lot across Sixth Street from Independence Hall was offered without cost by James Logan, its owner, the Trustees realized that the building erected in 1740, which was still vacant, would be an even better site. On February 1, 1750 the new board took over the building and trusts of the old board. In 1751 the Academy, using the great hall at 4th and Arch Streets, took in its first students. A charity school also was opened in accordance with the intentions of the original "New Building" donors, although it lasted only a few years.
   For its date of founding, the University uses 1740, the date of "the creation of the earliest of the many educational trusts the University has taken upon itself" (the charity school mentioned above) during its existence.
   The institution was known as the College of Philadelphia from 1755 to 1779. In 1779, not trusting then-provost Rev. William Smith's loyalist tendencies, the revolutionary State Legislature created a University of the State of Pennsylvania. The result was a schism, with Rev. William Smith continuing to operate an attenuated version of the College of Philadelphia. In 1791 the legislature issued a new charter, merging the two institutions into the University of Pennsylvania with twelve men from each institution on the new board of trustees. These three schools were part of the same institution and were overseen by the same board of Trustees.
   Penn has three claims to being the first university in the United States, according to university archive director Mark Frazier Lloyd: founding the first medical school in America in 1765, makes it the first university de facto, while, by virtue of the 1779 charter, "no other American institution of higher learning was named University before Penn." the country's second school of veterinary medicine; and the home of ENIAC, the world's first electronic, large-scale, general-purpose digital computer in 1946. Penn is also home to the oldest Psychology department in North America and where the American Medical Association was founded.

Motto

Penn's motto is based on a line from Horace’s III.24 (Book 3, Ode 24), quid leges sine moribus vanae proficiunt? ("of what avail empty laws without [good] mores?") From 1756 to 1898, the motto read Sine Moribus Vanae. When a wag pointed out that the motto could be translated as "Loose women without morals," the university quickly changed the motto to literae sine moribus vanae ("Letters without morals [are] useless"). In 1932, all elements of the seal were revised, and as part of the redesign it was decided that the new motto "mutilated" Horace, and it was changed to its present wording, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae ("Laws without morals [are] useless").

Colors

The official school colors are red with hex value 990000, and blue with hex value 011F5B. In printed materials they're PMS 201 red and PMS 288 blue.

Academics

Undergraduate programs

The University of Pennsylvania has four undergraduate schools:

The School of Arts & Sciences
The School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS)
The School of Nursing
The Wharton School

The College of Arts & Sciences is the undergraduate division of the School of Arts and Sciences, which also contains the Graduate Division and the College of General Studies, Penn's division for non-traditional undergraduate and graduate students.
   Penn has a strong focus on interdisciplinary learning and research. It emphasizes joint degree programs, unique majors and academic flexibility. Penn's One University policy allows undergraduates access to courses at all of Penn's undergraduate and graduate schools, excepting the medical and dental schools.
   Undergraduate students at Penn may also take courses at area colleges participating in the Quaker consortium, including Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr.
   One of the most well known guest professors at Penn is the actor Kal Penn who taught a very demanding class at the University of Pennsylvania.

Graduate and professional schools

The following schools offer graduate programs:

Annenberg School for Communication

Graduate School of Education

Law School

Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

School of Dental Medicine

School of Design (Formerly the Graduate School of Fine Arts)

School of Engineering and Applied Science

School of Medicine

School of Nursing

School of Social Policy & Practice

School of Veterinary Medicine

The Wharton School

Joint-degree and interdisciplinary programs

Penn offers specialized joint-degree programs, which award candidates degrees from multiple schools at the University upon completion of graduation criteria of both schools. Undergraduate programs include:

The Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology

The Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business

Nursing and Health Care Management

The Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management

Civic Scholars Program Dual Degree programs which lead to the same multiple degrees without participation in the specific above programs are also available. Unlike joint-degree programs, "dual degree" students fulfill requirements of both programs independently without involvement of another program. Specialized Dual Degree programs include Liberal Studies and Technology as well as a Computer and Cognitive Science Program. Both programs award a degree from the College of Arts and Science and a degree from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
For graduate programs, there are many formalized joint degree graduate programs such as a joint J.D./MBA. Penn is also the home to interdisciplinary institutions such as the Institute for Medicine and Engineering, the Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management and International Studies, the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, and the Executive Master's in Technology Management Program.

Academic Medical Center and Biomedical Research Complex

Penn's health-related programs - including the Schools of Nursing, Medicine, Dental Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine, and programs in bioengineering (School of Engineering) and health management (the Wharton School) - are among the university's strongest academic components. The combination of intellectual breadth, research funding (each of the health sciences schools ranks in the top 5 in annual NIH funding), clinical resources and overall scale ranks Penn with only a small handful of peer universities in the U.S.
The size of Penn's biomedical research organization, however, adds a very capital intensive component to the university's operations, and introduces revenue instability due to changing government regulations, reduced Federal funding for research, and Medicaid/Medicare program changes. This is a primary reason highlighted in bond rating agencies' views on Penn's overall financial rating, which ranks one notch below its academic peers. Penn has worked to address these issues by pooling its schools (as well as several hospitals and clinical practices) into the University of Pennsylvania Health System, thereby pooling resources for greater efficiencies and research impact.

Admissions selectivity

The university received 22,634 applications for the Class of 2011 entering in the fall of 2007; Penn admitted 15.9 percent of those applicants, representing its most selective admissions year in history. The College of Arts and Sciences itself had an about 11 percent acceptance rate. For comparison, in recent years, Penn has received 18,000–20,000 applications for each freshman class, has admitted 20–25 percent of applications and yielded 60–67 percent of its extended offers.
At the graduate level, Penn's admissions rates—like most universities'—vary considerably based on school and program. Based on admission statistics from U.S. News, Penn's most selective programs include its law school, the health care schools (medicine, dental medicine, nursing), and its business school.

Rankings

U.S. News & World Report ranked Penn fifth for undergraduate education in 2008, fourth in the Ivy League behind Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Penn was previously ranked #4 by U.S. News in both 2005 and 2006. Additionally, according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, an often cited ranking compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Penn is the 15th best University in the world. Newsweek in 2006 ranked Penn the 13th most global university, fourth in the Ivy League school behind Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. The Center for Measuring University Performance ranks Penn in its top cluster of research universities in the nation tied with Columbia, Harvard, MIT and Stanford universities. In 2007, The Washington Monthly published a unique ranking that focused on universities' contributions to national service (Research: total research spending, Ph.D.s granted in science and engineering; Community Service: the number of students in ROTC, Peace Corps, etc.; and Social Mobility: percentage of, and support for, Pell grant recipients); Penn ranked 17th overall, and 4th among private institutions behind Cornell, Stanford and MIT.

Undergraduate programs

In the humanities and arts, the departments of African American Studies, anthropology, art history, biology, communications, demography, English, economics, French, history, political science, psychology, sociology, and Spanish are also extremely well regarded. At the undergraduate level, Penn's business and nursing schools have maintained their #1, 2 or 3 rankings since U.S. News began reviewing such programs. Wharton's undergraduate program has been ranked number one by BusinessWeek also. In the School of Engineering, top departments are bioengineering (typically ranked in the top 5 by U.S. News), chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and nanotechnology. The school is also strong in select areas of computer science and artificial intelligence.

Graduate and professional programs

Penn's graduate schools are among the most distinguished schools in their respective fields. Penn's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is generally regarded as one of the top schools in the nation (see 1995 rankings by the National Research Council). A study updated the NRC rankings and adjusted them for faculty size and also factored out reputational surveys (stating that such surveys were lagging indicators of actual academic quality). That study, titled, "The Rise of American Research Universities: Elites and Challengers in the Postwar Era", ranked Penn's arts, humanities and sciences departments seventh in the US.
Among its professional schools, the schools of business (Wharton School), architecture and urban planning (School of Design), communications (Annenberg School for Communication), medicine (School of Medicine), dentistry, nursing and veterinary medicine rank in the top five nationally (see U.S. News, National Research Council, Planetizen, DesignIntelligence magazines). Penn's law school is ranked sixth and the social work and education schools are ranked in the top twelve (U.S. News).

Campus

Much of Penn's architecture was designed by Cope & Stewardson. The two architects combined the Gothic architecture of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, retaining some of their classical elements, with the local landscape to establish the Collegiate Gothic style. The present core campus covers over 269 acres (~1 km²) in a contiguous area of western Philadelphia's University City district. All of Penn's schools and most of its research institutes are located on this campus. Recent improvements to the surrounding neighborhood includes the opening of several restaurants, a large upscale grocery store, and a movie theater on the western edge of campus.
   Penn recently acquired approximately 35 acres of land located between the campus and the Schuylkill River (the former site of the Philadelphia Civic Center and a nearby 24-acre site owned by the United States Postal Service), which will be redeveloped for expanded educational, research, biomedical, and mixed-use facilities over the next ten years. The postal site extends from Market Street on the north to Penn's Bower Field on the south. It encompasses the main U.S. Postal Building at 30th and Market Streets (the retail post office at the east end of the building will remain open), the Postal Annex between Chestnut Street and Walnut Street, the Vehicle Maintenance Facility Garage along Chestnut Street and the 14 acres of surface parking south of Walnut Street. Acquisition of the Postal Lands, which became official in 2007, will allow Penn to create new connections between the campus and the city, including a pedestrian bridge, and provide additional space for research, teaching, housing, and retail.
   In addition to its properties in West Philadelphia, the University owns the 92-acre Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill in northwestern Philadelphia, the official arboretum of the state of Pennsylvania. Penn also owns the New Bolton Center, the research and large-animal health care center of its Veterinary School. New Bolton Center received nationwide media attention when Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro underwent surgery at its Widener Hospital for injuries suffered while running in the Preakness Stakes. It is located near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
   Penn borders Drexel University and is near the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia (USP). Also nearby is the University City High School.

Libraries

Penn's library began in 1750 with a donation of books from cartographer Louis Evans. Twelve years later, then-provost William Smith sailed to England to raise additional funds to increase the collection size. More than 250 years later, it has grown into a system of 15 libraries (13 are on the contiguous campus) with 400 FTE employees and a total operating budget of more than $48 million. The library system holds 5.7 million book and serial volumes. It subscribes to 44,000 print serials and e-journals.
Penn's Libraries, with associated school or subject area:

Annenberg (School of Communications), located in the Annenberg School

Biddle (Law), located in the Law School

Biomedical, located adjacent to the Robert Wood Johnson Pavilion of the Medical School

Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, located on Walnut Street at Washington Square

Chemistry, located in the 1973 Wing of the Chemistry Building

Dental

Engineering

Fine Arts, located within the Fisher Fine Arts Library, designed by Frank Furness.

Lippincott (Wharton School), located on the second floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center

Math/Physics/Astronomy, located on the third floor of David Rittenhouse Laboratory

Museum (Anthropology)

Rare Books and Manuscripts

Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center (Humanities and Social Sciences)

Lea Library, located within the Van Pelt Library

Veterinary

High Density Storage

The University Museum

The University Museum, as it's commonly called, was founded in 1887. During the early twentieth century UPM conducted some of the first and most important archaeological and anthropological expeditions to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Africa, East Asia and South America, thus the collection includes a very large number of antiquities from ancient Egypt and the Middle East. Its most famous object is the goat rearing into the branches of a rosette-leafed plant, from the royal tombs of Ur. The Museum also has a strong collection of Chinese artifacts. Features of its Beaux-Arts building include a dramatic rotunda and gardens that include Egyptian papyrus. UPM's scientific division, MASCA, focuses on the application of modern scientific techniques to aid the interpretation of archaeological contexts. The Institute of Contemporary Art based on Penn's campus, showcases various exhibitions of art throughout the year.

Residences

Stouffer College House

Fisher Hassenfeld College House

Rodin College House

Harrison College House

Harnwell College House

Hill College House

DuBois College House

Gregory College House

Kings Court English College House

Ware College House

Riepe College House

Sansom Place East / West

Student life

Of those accepted for admission to the Class of 2009, 39.2 percent are Asian, Hispanic, African, or Native American. Women comprise 51.3 percent of all students currently enrolled. A total of 2,440 international students applied for admission to Penn's undergraduate schools for the Class of 2008, and 489 (20%) were accepted. More than 13% of the first year class are international students. Of the international students accepted to the Class of 2008, 15.8% were from Africa and the Middle East, 48.1% from Asia, 0.4% from Australia and the Pacific, 11.7% from Canada and Mexico, 10% from Central/South America and the Caribbean, and 14.1% from Europe. Penn had 4,192 international students enrolled at all levels in Fall 2004. The Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania, founded in 1813, is the oldest continually-existing student group in the United States. The Daily Pennsylvanian has been published since 1885, and is among the top college papers in the country, regularly winning Pacemaker and CSPA Gold Circle awards. The Pennsylvania Punch Bowl is one of the nation's oldest humor magazines. The student-run TV station UTV13 is the oldest college TV station in the country. The University of Pennsylvania Glee Club is one of the oldest continually-operating collegiate choruses in the United States, having been founded in 1862. The Mask and Wig Club is the oldest all-male musical comedy troupe in the country.
The University's Political Science Department is known for publishing a semesterly scholarly journal of undergraduate research called "Sound Politicks." The journal is student-run and is widely noted for the originality and quality of the articles it publishes. It accepts submissions from Penn students year round. There are many such journals across the university. The University of Pennsylvania Band has been a fixture of student life on campus since 1897. The Penn Band performs at football and basketball games as well as University functions throughout the year and has a current membership of approximately 80 students.
Penn's reputation as the 'social ivy' stems from the work hard, party hard ethics of students.

Athletics

The first athletic team at Penn was its cricket team. In the sport of football, "Penn first fielded a team against Princeton at the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia on November 11, 1876.
Penn's sports teams are called the Quakers. They participate in the Ivy League and Division I (Division I FCS for football) in the NCAA. In recent decades they often have been league champions in football (12 times from 1982 to 2003) and basketball (22 times from 1970 to 2006). Penn football made many contributions to the sport in its early days. During the 1890s Penn's famed coach George Woodruff introduced the quarternick kick, a forerunner of the forward pass, as well as the place-kick from scrimmage and the delayed pass. In 1894, 1895, 1897 and 1904 Penn was generally regarded the national champion of collegiate football. The achievements of two of Penn's outstanding players from that era—John Heisman and John Outland—are remembered each year with the presentation of the Heisman Trophy to the most outstanding college football player of the year and the Outland Trophy to the most outstanding college football interior lineman of the year. Each year the Chuck Bednarik Award is given to college football's best defensive player; Chuck (Penn class of 1949) was the NFL's last 60 minute man. Penn basketball is steeped in tradition. Penn made its only (and the Ivy League's second) Final Four appearance in 1979, where the Quakers lost to the Magic Johnson-led Michigan State Spartans in Salt Lake City. (Dartmouth twice finished second in the tournament in the 1940s, but that was before the beginning of formal League play). Penn is also is one of the teams in the Big Five, along with La Salle, Saint Joseph's, Temple and Villanova.
Penn's home court, the Palestra, is an arena used for Big Five contests as well as high-school sporting events. The Palestra has hosted more NCAA Tournament basketball games than any other facility. Franklin Field, where the Quakers play football, hosts the annual collegiate track and field event "the Penn Relays," and once was the home field of the National Football League's Philadelphia Eagles. It was also the site of the early Army-Navy football games. Franklin Field, the oldest stadium still operating for football games, was also the home to the first commercially-televised football game, and was also the first stadium to sport two tiers. In 2004, Penn Men's Rugby won the EPRU championship. In 2007, the Men's Basketball team won their third consecutive Ivy League title, then lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to Texas A&M.

Notable people

William Henry Harrison, real estate mogul Donald Trump, CEO and investor Warren Buffett, Cisco Systems co-founder Len Bosack, linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, singer John Legend, famous athlete John Heisman, Pelican Shakespeare general editor Alfred Harbage, poets Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, American industrialist Jon Huntsman, Sr., Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr., philanthropist Walter Annenberg, E. Digby Baltzell who is credited with the acronym WASP, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Drew Gilpin Faust, first woman president of Harvard University, and numerous other past and present U.S. Ambassadors, members of Congress, governors, Cabinet members, corporate leaders, and signers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Controversy

The university has come under fire several times in recent years for free speech issues. In spite of this, Penn is one of only two Ivy League universities (the other being Dartmouth College) to receive the highest possible free speech rating from the watchdog group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, founded by noted Penn professor and civil libertarian Alan Charles Kors.

Selected Penn publications

Daily Pennsylvanian

- The independent, student-run newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania

First Call Magazine

- Penn's Undergraduate Magazine

CUREJ

- College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal

Knowledge@Wharton

- online business journal of the Wharton School

PennScience

- undergraduate science research journal

Res

- undergraduate journal of research writing

Sound Politicks

- undergraduate political science journal

Penn Triangle

- science and technology magazine, a student-run SEAS publication

Gallery

Image:UPennQuad006.jpg|The Quad Dormitories Image:TheQuadToweratPenn.JPG|The Quad Tower Image:TheCastleatPenn.JPG|The Castle Image:QuadTowerSpruce.JPG|Riepe College House Image:FurnessLibraryInner.JPG|The Furness Library Image:WoodlandQuadUpper.JPG|The Quad Dormitories Image:WareQuadStairMcC.JPG|The Quad Dormitories Image:QuadCourtYardA.jpg|The Quad Courtyard Image:ReipeCollegeHouse.JPG|Riepe College House Image:EngineeringBuildingatPenn.JPG|Hayden Hall Image:CollegeGreenWinter.JPG|College Green in Winter Image:PennLawSchoolA.jpg|Law School Image:Irvine.JPG|Irvine Auditorium Image:Silverman_Hall_(School_of_Law).JPG|Silverman Hall, Penn Law School Image:Penn campus 6.jpg|High-rise dorms, St. Mary's church in the foreground Image:Penn campus 8.jpg|Exterior of the Fisher Fine Arts Library Image:LeaLibrary.jpg|The Henry Charles Lea Library, located in Van Pelt Library Image:CollegeLoganHouston.jpg|Perelman Quadrangle Image:Fisher-Bennett_Hall.JPG|Fisher-Bennett Hall Image:University of Pennsylvania seal 1894.svg|University Seal of 1894 Further Information

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