Northwestern University Informations

Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university based in Evanston, Illinois, United States, with other campuses located in Chicago and Doha, Qatar, and academic programs and facilities in Miami, Florida; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, California. Along with its selective undergraduate programs, Northwestern is known for its Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Feinberg School of Medicine, Bienen School of Music, Medill School of Journalism, and McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Northwestern is a large research university with a comprehensive doctoral program, attracting nearly $800 million in sponsored research each year. As of 2018, Northwestern has the tenth-largest university endowment in the United States, valued at a record $11.08 billion.

The university's former and present faculty and alumni include 19 Nobel Prize laureates, 38 Pulitzer Prize winners, six MacArthur Genius Fellows, 16 Rhodes Scholars, 65 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and two Supreme Court Justices. Northwestern's School of Communication is a leading producer of Academy Award, Emmy Award and Tony Award–winning actors, actresses, playwrights, writers and directors.

Northwestern was founded in 1851 by John Evans, for whom the city of Evanston is named, and eight other lawyers, businessmen and Methodist leaders. Its founding purpose was to serve the Old Northwest Territory, an area that includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. Instruction began in 1855 and women were admitted in 1869. Today, the main campus is a 240-acre (97 ha) parcel in Evanston, along the shores of Lake Michigan 12 miles north of downtown Chicago. The university's law, medical, and professional schools, along with its nationally ranked affiliated Northwestern Memorial Hospital, are located on a 25-acre (10 ha) campus in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood. In 2008, the university opened a campus in Education City, Doha, Qatar with programs in journalism and communication. In 2016, Northwestern opened its San Francisco space at 44 Montgomery St., which hosts journalism, engineering, and marketing programs.

The university is a founding member of the Big Ten Conference and remains the only private university in the conference. The Northwestern Wildcats compete in 19 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA's Division I Big Ten Conference.

The foundation of Northwestern University can be traced to a meeting on May 31, 1850, of nine prominent Chicago businessmen, Methodist leaders, and attorneys who had formed the idea of establishing a university to serve what had been known from 1787 to 1803 as the Northwest Territory. On January 28, 1851, the Illinois General Assembly granted a charter to the Trustees of the North-Western University, making it the first chartered university in Illinois. The school's nine founders, all of whom were Methodists (three of them ministers), knelt in prayer and worship before launching their first organizational meeting. Although they affiliated the university with the Methodist Episcopal Church, they favored a non-sectarian admissions policy, believing that Northwestern should serve all people in the newly developing territory by bettering the economy in Evanston.

John Evans, for whom Evanston is named, bought 379 acres (153 ha) of land along Lake Michigan in 1853, and Philo Judson developed plans for what would become the city of Evanston, Illinois. The first building, Old College, opened on November 5, 1855. To raise funds for its construction, Northwestern sold $100 "perpetual scholarships" entitling the purchaser and his heirs to free tuition. Another building, University Hall, was built in 1869 of the same Joliet limestone as the Chicago Water Tower, also built in 1869, one of the few buildings in the heart of Chicago to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. In 1873 the Evanston College for Ladies merged with Northwestern, and Frances Willard, who later gained fame as a suffragette and as one of the founders of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), became the school's first dean of women. (Willard Residential College (1938) honors her name.) Northwestern admitted its first female students in 1869, and the first woman was graduated in 1874.

Northwestern fielded its first intercollegiate football team in 1882, later becoming a founding member of the Big Ten Conference. In the 1870s and 1880s, Northwestern affiliated itself with already existing schools of law, medicine, and dentistry in Chicago. Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law is the oldest law school in Chicago. As the university increased in wealth and distinction, and enrollments grew, these professional schools were integrated with the undergraduate college in Evanston; the result was a modern research-university combining professional, graduate, and undergraduate programs, which gave equal weight to teaching and to research. The Association of American Universities invited Northwestern to become a member in 1917.

Under Walter Dill Scott's presidency from 1920 to 1939, Northwestern began construction of an integrated campus in Chicago designed by James Gamble Rogers to house the professional schools; established the Kellogg School of Management; and built several prominent buildings on the Evanston campus, Dyche Stadium (now named Ryan Field) and Deering Library among others. In 1933 a proposal to merge Northwestern with the University of Chicago was considered but rejected. Northwestern became one of the first six universities in the United States to establish a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) in the 1920s. Northwestern played host to the first-ever NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship game in 1939 in the original Patten Gymnasium, which was later demolished and relocated farther north along with the Dearborn Observatory to make room for the Technological Institute.

After the golden years of the 1920s, the Great Depression in the United States (1929–1941) hit Northwestern hard. Its annual income dropped 25 percent from $4.8 million in 1930-31 to $3.6 million in 1933-34. Investment income shrank, fewer people could pay full tuition, and annual giving from alumni and philanthropy fell from $870,000 in 1932 to a low of $331,000 in 1935. The university responded with two salary cuts of 10 percent each for all employees. It imposed a hiring freeze, a building freeze, and slashed appropriations for maintenance, books, and research. Having had a balanced budget in 1930-31, the university now faced deficits of roughly $100,000 for the next four years, which was made up by using the endowment. Enrollments fell in most schools, with law and music suffering the biggest declines. But the movement toward state certification of school teachers prompted Northwestern to start a new graduate program in education, thereby bringing in new students and much needed income. In June 1933, Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, proposed a merger of the two universities, estimating annual savings of $1.7 million. The two presidents were enthusiastic, and the faculty liked the idea; the Northwestern alumni, however, opposed it, fearing the loss of their Alma Mater and its many traditions that distinguished Northwestern from Chicago. The medical school, for example, was oriented toward training practitioners, and feared it would lose its mission if it were merged into the larger, more research-oriented University of Chicago Medical School. The merger plan was dropped. The Deering family gave an unrestricted gift of $6 million in 1935 that rescued the budget, bringing it up to $5.4 million in 1938-39. That allowed many of the spending cuts to be restored, including half the salary reductions.

Like other American research universities, Northwestern was transformed by World War II (1939–1945). The regular enrollment fell dramatically, but the school opened high-intensity, short-term courses that trained over 50,000 military personnel. Franklyn B. Snyder led the university from 1939 to 1949, and after the war, surging enrollments under the G.I. Bill drove dramatic expansion of both campuses. In 1948 prominent anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits founded the Program of African Studies at Northwestern, the first center of its kind at an American academic institution.J. Roscoe Miller's tenure as president from 1949 to 1970 saw the expansion of the Evanston campus, with the construction of the lakefill on Lake Michigan, growth of the faculty and new academic programs, as well as polarizing Vietnam-era student protests. In 1978 the first and second Unabomber attacks occurred at Northwestern University. Relations between Evanston and Northwestern became strained throughout much of the post-war era because of episodes of disruptive student activism, disputes over municipal zoning, building codes, and law enforcement, as well as restrictions on the sale of alcohol near campus until 1972. Northwestern's exemption from state and municipal property-tax obligations under its original charter has historically been a source of town-and-gown tension. In the 2010s, a 5-year capital campaign resulted in a new music center, a new replacement-building for the business school, and a $270 million athletic complex.

Though government support for universities declined in the 1970s and 1980s, President Arnold R. Weber was able to stabilize university finances, leading to a revitalization of the campuses. As admissions to colleges and universities grew increasingly competitive in the 1990s and 2000s, President Henry S. Bienen's tenure saw a notable increase in the number and quality of undergraduate applicants, continued expansion of the facilities and faculty, and renewed athletic competitiveness. In 1999, Northwestern student journalists uncovered information exonerating Illinois death-row inmate Anthony Porter two days before his scheduled execution, and the Innocence Project has since exonerated 10 more men. On January 11, 2003, in a speech at Northwestern School of Law's Lincoln Hall, then Governor of Illinois George Ryan announced that he would commute the sentences of more than 150 death-row inmates.

The Latin phrase on Northwestern's seal, Quaecumque sunt vera ("Whatsoever things are true") is drawn from the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians (Philippians 4:8), while the Greek phrase inscribed on the pages of an open book is taken from the Gospel of John: ο λόγος πλήρης χάριτος και αληθείας ("The Word full of grace and truth", John 1:14).Purple became Northwestern's official color in 1892, replacing black and gold after a university committee concluded that too many other universities had used these colors. Today, Northwestern's official color is purple, although white is something of an official color as well, being mentioned in both the university's earliest song, Alma Mater (1907) ("Hail to purple, hail to white") and in many university guidelines.

Northwestern's Evanston campus, where the undergraduate schools, the Graduate School, and the Kellogg School of Management are located, runs north-south from Lincoln Avenue to Clark Street west of Lake Michigan along Sheridan Road. North and South Campuses have noticeably different atmospheres, owing to the predominance of Science and Athletics in the one and Humanities and Arts in the other. North Campus is home to the fraternity quads, the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion and Norris Aquatics Center and other athletic facilities, the Technological Institute, Dearborn Observatory, and other science-related buildings including Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Hall for Nanofabrication and Molecular Self-Assembly, and the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center. South Campus is home to the university's humanities buildings, Pick-Staiger Concert Hall and other music buildings, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, and the sorority quads. In the 1960s, the university created an additional 84 acres (34.0 ha) by means of a lakefill in Lake Michigan. Among some of the buildings located on these broad new acres are University Library, Norris University Center (the student union), and Pick-Staiger Concert Hall.

The Chicago Transit Authority's elevated train running through Evanston is called the Purple Line, taking its name from Northwestern's school color. The Foster and Davis stations are within walking distance of the southern end of the campus, while the Noyes station is close to the northern end of the campus. The Central station is close to Ryan Field, Northwestern's football stadium. The Evanston Davis Street Metra station serves the Northwestern campus in downtown Evanston and the Evanston Central Street Metra station is near Ryan Field. Pace Suburban Bus Service and the CTA have several bus routes that run through or near the Evanston campus.

Northwestern's Chicago campus is located in the city's Streeterville neighborhood. The Chicago campus is home to the nationally ranked and affiliated Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the medical school, the law school, the part-time MBA program, and the School of Professional Studies. Northwestern's professional schools and affiliated hospitals are about four blocks east of the Chicago station on the CTA Red Line. The Chicago campus is also served by CTA bus routes.

Founded at various times in the university's history, the professional schools originally were scattered throughout Chicago. In connection with a 1917 master plan for a central Chicago campus and President Walter Dill Scott's capital campaign, 8.5 acres (3.44 ha) of land were purchased at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Lake Shore Drive for $1.5 million in 1920. The architect James Gamble Rogers was commissioned to create a master plan for the principal buildings on the new campus which he designed in collegiate gothic style. In 1923, Mrs. Montgomery Ward donated $8 million to the campaign to finance the construction of the Montgomery Ward Memorial Building which would house the medical and dental schools and to create endowments for faculty chairs, research grants, scholarships, and building maintenance. The building would become the first university skyscraper in the United States. In addition to the Ward Building, Rogers designed Wieboldt Hall to house facilities for the School of Commerce and Levy Mayer Hall to house the School of Law. The new campus comprising these three new buildings was dedicated during a two-day ceremony in June 1927. The Chicago campus continued to expand with the addition of Thorne Hall in 1931 and Abbott Hall in 1939. In October 2013, Northwestern began the demolition of the architecturally significant Prentice Women's Hospital. Eric G. Neilson, dean of the medical school, penned an op-ed that equated retaining the building with loss of life.

In Fall 2008, Northwestern opened a campus in Education City, Doha, Qatar, joining five other American universities: Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Georgetown University, Texas AandM University, and Virginia Commonwealth University. Through the Medill School of Journalism and School of Communication, NU-Q offers bachelor's degrees in journalism and communication respectively. However, some have questioned whether NU-Q can truly offer a comparable journalism program to that of its U.S. campus given Qatar’s strict limits on journalistic and academic freedoms and instances of censorship. The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a private charitable institution started by former emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and his wife and mother of the current emir Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, provided funding for construction and administrative costs as well as support to hire 50 to 60 faculty and staff, some of whom rotate between the Evanston and Qatar campuses. Northwestern receives about $45 million per year to operate the campus. In February 2016, Northwestern reached an agreement with the Qatar Foundation to extend the operations of the NU-Q branch for an additional decade, through the 2027–2028 academic year. As with other universities with campuses in Doha, Northwestern has received criticism for accepting money from a country with poor human rights record.

In January 2009, the Green Power Partnership (sponsored by the EPA) listed Northwestern as one of the top 10 universities in the country in purchasing energy from renewable sources. The university matches 74 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of its annual energy use with Green-e Certified Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). This green power commitment represents 30 percent of the university's total annual electricity use and places Northwestern in the EPA's Green Power Leadership Club. The 2010 Report by The Sustainable Endowments Institute awarded Northwestern a "B-" on its College Sustainability Report Card. The Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN), supporting research, teaching and outreach in these themes, was launched in 2008.

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