Boston University

Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian but is historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church The university has more than 3,800 faculty members and 33,000 students, and is one of Boston's largest employers.It offers bachelor's degrees master's degrees, and doctorates, and medical dental, business, and law degrees through eighteen schools and colleges on two urban campuses. The main campus is situated along the Charles River in Boston's Fen way-Kenmore and Alston neighborhoods, while the Boston University Medical Campus is in Boston's South End neighborhood.Boston University is categorized as an RU/VH Research University very high research activity in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. BU is a member of the Boston Consortium for Higher Education and the Association of American Universities.The university counts seven Nobel Laureates, twenty-three Pulitzer Prize winners, nine Academy Award winners, and several Emmy and Tony Award winners among its faculty and alumni. BU also has MacArthur Sloan, and Guggenheim Fellowship holders as well as American Academy of Arts and Sciences and National Academy of Sciences members among its past and present graduates and faculty.The Boston University Terriers compete in the NCAA's Division I. BU athletic teams compete in the Patriot League, and Hockey East conferences and their mascot is Hettie the Boston Terrier. Boston University is well known for men's hockey, in which it has won five national championships, most recently in 2009.Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the New bury Biblical Institute in New bury, Vermont in 1839, and was chartered with the name "Boston University" by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1869. The University organized formal Centennial observances both in 1939 and 1969.On April 24–25, 1839 a group of Methodist ministers and laymen at the Old Bloomfield Street Church in Boston elected to establish a Methodist theological school. Set up in New bury, Vermont, the school was named the New bury Biblical Institute.In 1847, the Congregational Society in Concord, New Hampshire, invited the Institute to relocate to Concord and offered a disused Congregational church building with a capacity of 1200 people. Other citizens of Concord covered the remodeling costs. One stipulation of the invitation was that the Institute remain in Concord for at least 20 years. The charter issued by New Hampshire designated the school the Methodist General Biblical Institute", but it was commonly called the Concord Biblical Institute.With the agreed twenty years coming to a close, the Trustees of the Concord Biblical Institute purchased 30 acres (120,000 m2) on Walloping Hill in Brook line, Massachusetts as a possible relocation site. The Institute moved in 1867 to 23 Pinkeye Street in Boston and received a Massachusetts Charter as the "Boston Theological Institute.In January 1872 Isaac Rich died, leaving the vast bulk of his estate to a trust that would go to Boston University after ten years of growth while the University was organized. Most of this bequest consisted of real estate throughout the core of the city of Boston and was appraised at more than $1.5 million. Gilmore describes this as the largest single donation to an American college or university to that time. By December, however, the Great Boston Fire of 1872 had destroyed all but one of the buildings Rich had left to the University, and the insurance companies with which they had been insured were bankrupt. The value of his estate, when turned over to the University in 1882, was half what it had been in 1872. As a result, the University was unable to build its contemplated campus on Walloping Hill and the land was sold piecemeal as development sites. Street names in the area, including Clinical Road Clinical Path, and University Road, are the only remaining evidence of University ownership in this area.
     
The University's main Charles River Campus follows Commonwealth Avenue and the Green Line, beginning near Kenmore Square and continuing for over a mile and a half to its end near the border of Boston's Alston neighborhood. The Boston University Bridge over the Charles River into Cambridge represents the dividing line between Main Campus, where most schools and classroom buildings are concentrated and West Campus, home to several athletic facilities and playing fields, the large West Campus dorm, and the new John Hancock Student Village complex.As a result of its continual expansion the Charles River campus contains an array of architecturally diverse buildings. The College of Arts and Sciences Marsh Chapel site of the Marsh Chapel Experiment and the School of Theology buildings are the university's most recognizable and were built in the late-1930s and 1940s in collegiate Gothic style. A sizable amount of the campus is traditional Boston brownstone, especially at Bay State Road and South Campus where BU has acquired almost every townhouse those areas offer. The buildings are primarily dormitories but many also serve as various institutes as well as department offices. From the 1960s–1980s many contemporary buildings were constructed including the Sugar Library, BU Law School and Warren Towers, all of which were built in the brutality style of architecture. The Met calf Science Center for Science and Engineering constructed in 1983 might more accurately be described as Structural Expressionism. Morse Auditorium, adjacent, stands in stark architectural contrast, as it was constructed as a Jewish temple. The most recent additions to BU's campus are the Phonics Center, Life Science and Engineering Building, The Student Village which includes the Fit Rec Center and Paganism Arena and the School of Management. All these buildings were built in brick a few with a substantial amount of brownstone.

Brown University

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded in 1764 as The College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the American Revolution.At its foundation, Brown was the first college in the United States to accept students regardless of their religious affiliation.Its engineering program, established in 1847 was the first in the Ivy League. Brown's New Curriculum sometimes referred to in education theory as the Brown Curriculum was adopted by faculty vote in 1969 after a period of student lobbying; the New Curriculum eliminated mandatory general education" distribution requirements, made students "the architects of their own syllabus  and allowed them to take any course for a grade of satisfactory or unrecorded no-credit.In 1971 Brown's coordinate women's institution, Pembroke College, was fully merged into the university.Undergraduate admissions is among the most selective in the country, with an acceptance rate of 9.5 percent for the class of 2019, according to the university. The University comprises The College, the Graduate School, Alpert Medical School, the School of Engineering, the School of Public Health, and the School of Professional Studies which includes the IE Brown Executive MBA program. Brown's international programs are organized through the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and the university is academically affiliated with the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Rhode Island School of Design. The Brown/RIDS Dual Degree Program, offered in conjunction with the Rhode Island School of Design is a five-year course that awards degrees from both institutions.Brown's main campus is located in the College Hill Historic District in the city of Providence, the third largest city in New England. The University's neighborhood is a federally listed architectural district with a dense concentration of Colonial era buildings. On the western edge of the campus, Benefit Street contains one of the finest cohesive collections of restored seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architecture in the United States.Brown has produced 7 Nobel Prize winners, 57 Rhodes Scholars,Manning arrived at Newport in July 1763 and was introduced to Stiles, who agreed to write the Charter for the College. Stile's first draft was read to the General Assembly in August 1763 and rejected by Baptist members who worried that the College Board of Fellows would under represent the Baptists. A revised Charter, written by Stiles and Ellery, was adopted by the Assembly on March 3, 1764.

In September 1764 the inaugural meeting of the College Corporation was held at Newport. Governor Stephen Hopkins was chosen chancellor, former and future governor Samuel Ward was vice chancellor, John Tilling hast treasurer, and Thomas Eyre secretary. The Charter stipulated that the Board of Trustees comprise 22 Baptists, five Quakers, five Episcopalians, and four Congregationalists. Of the 12 Fellows, eight should be Baptists including the College preside and the rest indifferently of any or all Denominations.The Charter was not, as is sometimes supposed, the grant of King George III, but rather an Act of the colonial General Assembly. In two particulars the Charter may be said to be a uniquely progressive document. First, where other colleges had curricular strictures against opposing doctrines, Brown's Charter asserted that Sectarian differences of opinions, shall not make any Part of the Public and Classical Instruction. Second, according to University historian Walter Bronson, "the instrument governing Brown University recognized more broadly and fundamentally than any other the principle of denominational cooperation.The oft-repeated statement that Brown's Charter alone prohibited a religious test for College membership is inaccurate; other college charters were also liberal in that particular.James Manning was sworn in as the College's first president in 1765 and served until 1791. In 1770 the College moved from Warren, Rhode Island, to the crest of College Hill overlooking Providence. Solomon Browne, a freshman in the class of 1773  wrote in his diary on March 26 1770 five National Humanities Medalists,eight billionaire graduates,and 10 National Medal of Science laureates, and has also produced Fulbright, Marshall, and Mitchell scholars.The origins of Brown University may be dated to 1761 when three residents of Newport, Rhode Island, drafted a petition to the General Assembly of the colony.The Brown family Nicholas Brown, his son Nicholas Brown, Jr., class of 1786, John Brown, Joseph Brown, and Moses Brown were instrumental in moving the College to Providence and securing its endowment. Joseph became a professor of natural philosophy at the College, John served as its treasurer from 1775 to 1796 and Nicholas, Junior, succeeded his uncle as treasurer from 1796 to 1825.On September 8,180 the Corporation voted, That the donation of $5000 Dollars, if made to this College within one Year from the late Commencement, shall entitle the donor to name the College. In a letter dated September 6, 1804, that appeal was answered by College treasurer Nicholas Brown, Junior, and the Corporation honored its promise: In gratitude to Mr. Brown, the Corporation at the same meeting voted, 'That this College be called and known in all future time by the Name of Brown University.Over the years, the benefactions of Nicholas Brown, Jr, would total nearly $160,000, an enormous sum for that period, and included the buildings Hope College and Manning Hall, built 1821- 22 and 1834- 35.

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established 1636, whose history, influence and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Established originally by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for John Harvard its first benefactor Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning, and the Harvard Corporation formally, the President and Fellows of Harvard Colleges its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure 1869 1909 transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. The University is organized into eleven separate academic units ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre 85 ha main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3 miles 5 km northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in the Alston neighborhood of Boston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are in the Long wood Medical Area. Harvard's $37.6 billion financial endowment is the largest of any academic institution. Harvard is a large, highly residential research university. The nominal cost of attendance is high, but the University's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages' operates several arts, cultural, and scientific museums, alongside the Harvard Library, which is the world's largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 million volumes. Harvard's alumni include eight U.S. presidents, several foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 335 Rhodes Scholars, and 242 Marshall Scholars. To date, some 150 Nobel laureates and 5 Fields Medalists when awarded have been affiliated as students, faculty, or staff

Throughout the 18th century, Enlightenment ideas of the power of reason and free will became widespread among Congregationalist ministers, putting those ministers and their congregations in tension with more traditionalist, Calvinist parties. When the Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tap pan died in 1803 and the president of Harvard Joseph Willard died a year later, in 1804, a struggle broke out over their replacements. Henry Ware was elected to the chair in 1805, and the liberal Samuel Weber was appointed to the presidency of Harvard two years later, which signaled the changing of the tide from the dominance of traditional ideas at Harvard to the dominance of liberal, Armenian ideas defined by traditionalists as Unitarian ideas. In 1846 the natural history lectures of Louis Agassiz were acclaimed both in New York and on the campus at Harvard College. Agassiz's approach was distinctly idealist and posited Americans 'participation in the Divine Nature and the possibility of understanding intellectual existences. Agassiz's perspective on science combined observation with intuition and the assumption that a person can grasp the divine plan in all phenomena. When it came to explaining life-forms, Agassiz resorted to matters of shape based on a presumed archetype for his evidence. This dual view of knowledge was in concert with the teachings of Common Sense Realism derived from Scottish philosophers Thomas Reid and Donald Stewart, whose works were part of the Harvard curriculum at the time. The popularity of Agassiz's efforts to "soar with Plato" probably also derived from other writings to which Harvard students were exposed, including Platonic treatises by Ralph Cud worth, John Norris and, in a Romantic vein, Samuel Coleridge. The library records at Harvard reveal that the writings of Plato and his early modern and Romantic followers were almost as regularly read during the 19th century as those of the official philosophy of the more empirical and more deistic Scottish school.

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania  is a private, Ivy League, research university located in Philadelphia. Incorporated as The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn is one of 14 founding members of the Association of American Universities and one of the nine original Colonial Colleges. Penn is one of several universities that claims to be the first university in the United States of America.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 although Franklin's curriculum was never adopted. The university coat of arms features a dolphin on the red chief, adopted directly from the Franklin family's own coat of arms.Penn was one of the first academic institutions to follow a multidisciplinary model pioneered by several European universities, concentrating multiple faculties.g., theology, classics, medicine into one institution. It was also home to many other educational innovations. The first school of medicine in North America (Perelman School of Medicine, 1765 the first collegiate business school Wharton School of Business, 1881 and the first student union building and organization Houston Hall 1896were all born at Penn.Penn offers a broad range of academic departments, an extensive research enterprise and a number of community outreach and public service programs. It is particularly well known for its medical school, dental school, design school, business school, law school, engineering school, communications school, nursing school, veterinary school, its social sciences and humanities programs, as well as its biomedical teaching and research capabilities. Its undergraduate program is also among the most selective in the country, with an acceptance rate of 10 percent.One of Penn's most well known academic qualities is its emphasis on interdisciplinary education, which it promotes through numerous double degree programs, research centers and professorships, a unified campus, and the ability for students to take classes from any of Penn's schools the One University PolicyAll of Penn's schools exhibit very high research activity. Penn is consistently ranked among the top research universities in the world, for both quality and quantity of research. In fiscal year 2015, Penn's academic research budget was $851 million, involving more than 4,300 faculty, 1,100 postdoctoral fellows and 5,500 support staff/graduate assistants.As one of the most active and prolific research institutions, Penn is associated with several important innovations and discoveries in many fields of science and the humanities. Among them are the first general purpose electronic computer the rubella and hepatitis B vaccines, Retin-A, cognitive therapy, conjoint analysis and others.Penn's academic and research programs are led by a large and highly productive faculty.Twenty-eight Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Penn. Over its long history the university has also produced many distinguished alumni. These include 12 heads of state including one U.S. president three United States Supreme Court justices plus a number of state Supreme Court justices; founders of technology companies, international law firms, and global financial institutions; and university presidents. According to a 2014 study, the University of Pennsylvania has produced the most billionaires of any university at the undergraduate level.Penn's endowment, at $10.1 billion as of June 30, 2015 is the tenth largest university endowment in the United States and the thirtieth-largest on a per-student basis.

The University considers itself the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States as well as the first university in the United States with both undergraduate and graduate studies.This statue of Benjamin Franklin donated by Justus C. Straw bridge to the City of Philadelphia in 1899 now sits in front of College Hall.In 1740, a group of Philadelphia's joined together to erect a great preaching hall for the traveling evangelist George Whitefield, who toured the American colonies delivering open air sermons. The building was designed and built by Edmund Woolly and was the largest building in the city at the time, drawing thousands of people the first time it was preached in 26 It was initially planned to serve as a charity school as well; however, a lack of funds forced plans for the chapel and school to be suspended. According to Franklin's autobiography, it was in 1743 when he first had the idea to establish an academy, "thinking the Rev. Richard Peters a fit person to superintend such an institution.However, Peters declined a casual inquiry from Franklin and nothing further was done for another six years.:30 In the fall of 1749, now more eager to create a school to educate future generations, Benjamin Franklin circulated a pamphlet titled Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvanian,his vision for what he called a Public Academy of Philadelphia.Unlike the other Colonial colleges that existed in 1749Harvard, William and Mary, Yale and Princeton Franklin's new school would not 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 could have become the nation's first modern liberal arts curriculum, although it was never implemented because William Smith, an Anglican priest who was provost at the time, and other trustees preferred the traditional curriculum.