Washington University

Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington, a Continental Army general, and the first president of the United States.[8]

The university's 169-acre Danforth Campus is bordered by the Forest Park section of St. Louis and Clayton and University City, Missouri. The university's West Campus is located in Clayton and its North Campus is in the West End section of St. Louis. Its Medical Campus in the Central West End section of St. Louis[9] spans over 17 city blocks and 164 acres and houses the Washington University School of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals, clinics, patient care centers and research facilities.

DOWNLOAD 🔥 https://urloso.com/2y4Jg0 🔥

It has students and faculty from all 50 U.S. states and more than 120 countries.[10] Washington University is composed of seven graduate and undergraduate schools that encompass a range of academic fields.[11] To prevent confusion over its location, the university's board of trustees added the phrase "in St. Louis" in 1976.[12]

The university's first chancellor was Joseph Gibson Hoyt. Crow secured the university charter from the Missouri General Assembly in 1853, and Eliot was named President of the Board of Trustees. Early on, Eliot solicited support from members of the local business community, including John O'Fallon, but Eliot failed to secure a permanent endowment. Washington University is unusual among major American universities in not having had a prior financial endowment. The institution had no backing of a religious organization, single wealthy patron, or earmarked government support. To this day, Washington University is controlled by a Board of Trustees that, by charter, appoints its own members.[23]

During the three years following its inception, the university bore three different names. The board first approved "Eliot Seminary", but William Eliot was uncomfortable with naming a university after himself and objected to the establishment of a seminary which would implicitly be charged with teaching a religious faith. He favored a nonsectarian university.[24]

Under pressure from Eliot, the Board of Trustees created a task force charged with naming the university, headed by Samuel Treat. Several months later Treat's committee proposed naming the university the Washington Institute, after the nation's first president George Washington. In 1854, the board of trustees changed the name to "Washington Institute" in honor of George Washington and because the charter was coincidentally passed on Washington's birthday, February 22.[25] Naming the university after the nation's first president, only seven years before the American Civil War and during a time of bitter national division, was no coincidence. During this time of conflict, Americans universally admired George Washington as the father of the United States and a symbol of national unity. The board believed that the university should be a force of unity in a strongly divided Missouri. In 1856, the university amended its name to "Washington University". The university amended its name once more in 1976, when the board voted to add the suffix "in St. Louis" to distinguish the university from the over two dozen other universities bearing Washington's name.[12]

Although chartered as a university, for many years Washington University functioned primarily as a night school located on 17th Street and Washington Avenue in downtown St. Louis. Owing to limited financial resources, Washington University initially used public buildings. Classes began on October 22, 1854, at the Benton School building. At first the university paid for the evening classes, but as their popularity grew, their funding was transferred to the St. Louis Public Schools.[26] Eventually the board secured funds for the construction of Academic Hall and a half dozen other buildings. Later the university divided into three departments: the Manual Training School, Smith Academy, and the Mary Institute.

In 1867, the university opened the first private nonsectarian law school west of the Mississippi River. By 1882, Washington University had expanded to numerous departments, which were housed in various buildings across St. Louis. Medical classes were first held at Washington University in 1891 after the St. Louis Medical College decided to affiliate with the university, establishing the School of Medicine. However, by the 1890s the university was on the brink of financial collapse until Robert Sommers Brookings, president of the Board of Trustees, undertook the task of rebuilding the university's finances and acquiring land for a new campus. Brookings was instrumental in raising money for the university, since Eliot, the primary fundraiser for the university, had died.

In 1896, Holmes Smith, professor of Drawing and History of Art, designed what would become the basis for the modern-day university seal. The seal is made up of elements from the Washington family coat of arms and the symbol of Louis IX, whom the city is named after.[27]

Washington University spent its first half century in downtown St. Louis bounded by Washington Ave., Lucas Place, and Locust Street. By the 1890s, owing to the dramatic expansion of the medical school and a new benefactor in Robert Brookings, the university began to move west. The university board of directors began a process to find suitable ground and hired the landscape architecture firm Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot of Boston. A committee of Robert S. Brookings, Henry Ware Eliot, and William Huse found a site of 103 acres (41.7 ha) just beyond Forest Park, located west of the city limits in St. Louis County. The elevation of the land was thought to resemble the Acropolis and inspired the nickname of "Hilltop" campus, renamed the Danforth campus in 2006 to honor former chancellor William H. Danforth.[28]

In 1899, the university opened a national design contest for the new campus.[29] The renowned Philadelphia firm Cope & Stewardson (same architects who designed a large part of the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University) won unanimously with its plan for a row of Collegiate Gothic quadrangles inspired by Oxford and Cambridge Universities.[30]

The university delayed occupying these buildings until 1905 to accommodate the 1904 World's Fair and 1904 Summer Olympics, which allowed the university to construct ten buildings instead of the seven originally planned. This original cluster of buildings set a precedent for the development of the Danforth Campus; Cope and Stewardson's original plan and its choice of building materials have, with few exceptions, guided the construction and expansion of the Danforth Campus to the present day.[30]

After working for 22 years at the University of Chicago, Compton returned to St. Louis in 1946 to serve as Washington University's ninth chancellor.[35] Compton reestablished the Washington University football team, making the declaration that athletics were to be henceforth played on a "strictly amateur" basis with no athletic scholarships. Under Compton's leadership, enrollment at the university grew dramatically, fueled primarily by World War II veterans' use of their GI Bill benefits.[36]

The desegregation of Washington University began in 1947 with the School of Medicine and the School of Social Work.[38] The university ended racial segregation in its undergraduate divisions in 1952, making it the last local higher education institution to do so. During the 1940s, the university faced criticism from the local African American media, which included a letter-writing campaign by churches, the local Urban League, and legal briefs by the NAACP, seeking to strip the university of its tax-exempt status.

In 1949, a student group, the Student Committee for the Admission of Negroes (SCAN), was founded and began advocating for full racial integration. In 1951, then-vice chancellor Leslie Buchan argued that full desegregation would isolate the university from the community and potentially lead to incidents on campus.[citation needed] The following year, in May 1952, the Board of Trustees passed a resolution desegregating the university's undergraduate divisions.[39]

During the latter half of the 20th century, Washington University transitioned from a strong regional university to a national research institution. In 1957, planning began for the construction of the "South 40", a complex of modern residential halls which primarily house freshmen and some sophomore students.[40]

With additional on-campus housing, the university, which had been predominantly attended by commuter students, began attracting a greater number of applicants from across the nation.[41] By 1964, over two-thirds of incoming students came from outside the St. Louis area.[42]

In 1971, the board of trustees appointed Chancellor William Henry Danforth, who guided the university through the social and financial crises of the 1970s and strengthened the university's often strained relationship with the St. Louis community. During his 24-year chancellorship, Danforth improved the School of Medicine, established 70 new faculty chairs, secured a $1.72 billion endowment, and tripled the amount of student scholarships.[43]

In 1995, Mark S. Wrighton, former provost at MIT, was elected the university's 14th Chancellor. During Chancellor Wrighton's tenure undergraduate applications to Washington University more than doubled. Since 1995, the university has added more than 190 endowed professorships, revamped its Arts & Sciences curriculum, and completed more than 30 new buildings.[44]

In 2019, Washington University unveiled a $360 million campus transformation project known as the "East End Transformation". The transformation project, built on the original 1895 campus plan by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, encompassed 18 acres of the Danforth Campus, adding five new buildings, expanding the university's Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, relocating hundreds of surface parking spaces underground, and creating an expansive new park.[56] e24fc04721