Syracuse University

Coordinates: 43°02′15″N 76°08′02″W / 43.0376°N 76.1340°W / 43.0376; -76.1340
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Syracuse University
NCAA Division I FBS – ACC
  • CHA
  • EARC
  • IRA
  • MascotOtto the Orange
    Websitesyracuse.edu
    College of Visual and Performing Arts
    and the Setnor School of Music.

    Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU)[10] is a private research university in Syracuse, New York, United States. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920.[11] Located in the city's University Hill neighborhood, east and southeast of Downtown Syracuse, the large campus features an eclectic mix of architecture, ranging from nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival to contemporary buildings. Syracuse University is organized into 13 schools and colleges and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".[12]

    Syracuse University athletic teams, the

    Academy Award winners, Grammy Award winners, two Rhodes Scholars, six Marshall Scholars, governors, and members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives
    .

    History

    Founding

    Genesee Wesleyan Seminary

    The institution's roots can be traced to the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary. The seminary was founded in 1831 by the Genesee annual conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lima, New York, south of Rochester.[17] In 1850, it was resolved to enlarge the institution from a seminary into a college, or to connect a college with the seminary, becoming Genesee College. However, the location was soon thought by many to be insufficiently central. Its difficulties were compounded by a new railroad that competed with the Erie Canal and reconfigured the region's primary economic conduits to bypass Lima. The trustees of the struggling college decided to seek an alternate locale whose economic and transportation advantages could provide a surer base of support.

    Left to right: Hall of Languages and Von Ranke Library[18]
    From left to right: Bowne Hall,[19] Carnegie Library,[20] Archbold Gymnasium[21]

    The college began looking for a new home at the same time that Syracuse, ninety miles to the east, was searching to bring a university to the city after having failed to convince Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White to locate Cornell University in Syracuse rather than in Ithaca.[22][23] Syracuse resident White pressed that the new university should locate on the hill in Syracuse (the current location of Syracuse University) due to the city's attractive transportation hub, which would ease the recruitment of faculty, students, and other persons of note. However, as a young carpenter working in Syracuse, Cornell had been twice robbed of his wages[24][25] and thereafter considered Syracuse a Sodom and Gomorrah, insisting the university be in Ithaca on his large farm on East Hill, overlooking the town and Cayuga Lake.[citation needed]

    Meanwhile, there were several years of dispute between the Methodist ministers, Lima, and contending cities across the state over proposals to move Genesee College to Syracuse.

    Bishop Jesse Truesdell Peck had donated $25,000 to the proposed school[31] and was elected the first president of the Board of Trustees.[23][32]

    Rev. Daniel Steele, a former Genesee College president, served as the first administrative leader of Syracuse until its Chancellor was appointed.[23]: 2  The university opened in September 1871 in rented space downtown.[27][33][34] Judge George F. Comstock, a member of the new university's board of trustees, had offered the school 50 acres (200,000 m2) of farmland on a hillside to the southeast of the city center.[35] Comstock intended Syracuse University and the hill to develop as an integrated whole; a contemporary account described the latter as "a beautiful town ... springing up on the hillside and a community of refined and cultivated membership ... established near the spot which will soon be the center of a great and beneficent educational institution."[36]

    The university was founded as coeducational and racially integrated: "open to men and women, white and black."[33] President Peck stated at the opening ceremonies, "The conditions of admission shall be equal to all persons... there shall be no invidious discrimination here against woman.... brains and heart shall have a fair chance... "[37] Syracuse implemented this policy with a high proportion of women students for its era. In the College of Liberal Arts, the ratio between male and female students during the 19th century was approximately even. The College of Fine Arts was predominantly female, while lower ratios of women enrolled in the College of Medicine and the College of Law.[37] Men and women were taught together in the same courses, and many extra-curricular activities were coeducational as well. Syracuse also developed "women-only" organizations and clubs.[37]

    Expansion

    Coeducation at Syracuse traced its roots to the early days of Genesee College where educators and students like

    sorority" specifically for Gamma Phi Beta.[38]

    In the late 1880s, the university engaged in a rapid building spree. Holden Observatory (1887)[39] was followed by two Romanesque Revival buildings – von Ranke Library (1889), now Tolley Humanities Building,[40] and Crouse College (1889).[41] Together with the Hall of Languages, these first buildings formed the basis for the "Old Row," a grouping which, along with its companion Lawn, established one of Syracuse's most enduring images.[36] The emphatically linear organization of these buildings along the brow of the hill follows a tradition of American campus planning which dates to the construction of the "Yale Row" in the 1790s. At Syracuse, "The Old Row" continued to provide the framework for growth well into the twentieth century.[36]

    From its founding until through the early 1920s, the university grew rapidly. It offered programs in the physical sciences and modern languages, and in 1873, Syracuse added one of the first architecture programs in the U.S.

    S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, was established at Syracuse in 1934.[47]

    The growth of Syracuse University from a small liberal arts college into a major comprehensive university was due to the efforts of two men, Chancellor James Roscoe Day and John Dustin Archbold. James Roscoe Day was serving the Calvary Church in New York City, where he befriended Archbold. Together, the two dynamic figures would oversee the first of two great periods of campus renewal in Syracuse's history.[23]

    John Dustin Archbold was a capitalist, philanthropist, and President of the Board of Trustees at Syracuse University. He was known as John D. Rockefeller's right-hand man and successor at the Standard Oil Company. He was a close friend of Syracuse University Chancellor James R. Day and gave almost $6 million to the University over his lifetime.[23] Said a journalist in 1917:

    Mr. Archbold's ... is the president of the board of trustees of Syracuse University, an institution which has prospered so remarkably since his connection with it that its student roll has increased from hundreds to over 4,000, including 1,500 young women, placing it in the ranks of the foremost institutions of learning in the United States.[48]

    The Old Row, campus of Syracuse University, 1920
    First Annual Class of Syracuse University in July 1876.

    In 1905 Rev. Dr. James D. Phelps secured a donation of $150,000 from Andrew Carnegie for a new university library provided the University raised an equal sum as an endowment for the library. The University raised the required endowment in a little over a month, with the largest share being contributed by Archbold.[49] On September 11, 1907, the transfer of the Von Ranke collection from the old library building marking the opening of the new Carnegie library with a collection of over 71,000 volumes.[20]

    In addition to keeping the University financially solvent during its early years, Archbold also contributed funds for eight buildings, including the full cost of Archbold Stadium (opened 1907, demolished 1978), Sims Hall[50] (men's dormitory, 1907), the Archbold Gymnasium (1909, nearly destroyed by fire in 1947, but still in use), and the oval athletic field.

    Modern

    After World War II, Syracuse University transformed into a major research institution. Enrollment increased in the four years after the war due to the G.I. Bill, which paid tuition, room, board, and a small allowance for veterans returning from World War II.[51] In 1946, the University admitted 9,464 freshmen, nearly four times greater than the previous incoming class.[47] Branch campuses were established in Endicott, New York, and Utica, New York, which became Binghamton University and Utica University respectively.

    By the end of the 1950s, Syracuse ranked twelfth nationally in terms of the amount of its sponsored research, and it had over four hundred professors and graduate students engaging in that investigation.

    S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. In 1966, Syracuse University was admitted to the Association of American Universities.[53]

    1988 crash of Pan Am Flight 103

    SU's Flight 103 Memorial

    On December 21, 1988, 35 Syracuse University students were killed in the terrorist bombing of

    Lockerbie, Scotland. The students were returning from a study-abroad program in Europe. That evening, Syracuse University went on with a basketball game just hours after the attack, for which the university was severely criticized and the university's chancellor subsequently apologized.[54][55] The bombing of Flight 103 was the deadliest terrorist attack against the United States prior to the attacks on September 11, 2001.[56][57]

    In April 1990, Syracuse University dedicated a memorial wall to the students killed on Flight 103, constructed at the entrance to the main campus in front of the Hall of Languages. Every year the university holds "Remembrance Week" during the fall semester to commemorate the students. The university also maintains a link to the tragedy with the "Remembrance Scholars" program, when 35 senior students receive scholarships during their final year at the university. With the "Lockerbie Scholars" program, two graduating students from Lockerbie Academy study at Syracuse for one year.[58]

    Campuses