Harvard University.

Harvard University. I INTRODUCTION Harvard University, private, coeducational institution of higher education, the oldest in the United States, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. II HISTORY AND ADMINISTRATION In 1636 a college was founded in Cambridge by the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was opened for instruction two years later and named in 1639 for English clergyman John Harvard, its first benefactor. The college at first lacked substantial endowments and existed on gifts from individuals and the General Court. Harvard gradually acquired considerable autonomy and private financial support, becoming a chartered university in 1780. Today it has the largest private endowment of any university in the world. Harvard has steadily developed under the great American educators who have successively served as its presidents. During the presidency of Charles W. Eliot (18691909), Harvard established an elective system for undergraduates, by which they could choose most of their courses themselves. Under Abbott L. Lowell, who was president from 1909 to 1933, the undergraduate house systems of residence and instruction were introduced. Academic growth and physical expansion continued during the tenures of James B. Conant (1933-1953), Nathan M. Pusey (1953-1971), and Derek C. Bok (1971-1991). Neil L. Rudenstine was appointed president in 1991. In 2007 Harvard, which had been slow to hire and promote women on its faculty, appointed its first woman president, Drew Gilpin Faust. Her predecessor, Lawrence Summers, drew fire in 2005 for suggesting that women were underrepresented in the fields of science and mathematics because of innate differences in ability or preference. Summers resigned the following year. Sponsored by Henry Rosovsky, former dean of the faculty of arts and sciences (1973-1984), the undergraduate elective system, or General Education Program, was replaced in 1979 by a Core Curriculum intended to prepare well-educated men and women for the challenges of modern life. Under the new curriculum, students were required to take courses for the equivalent of an academic year in each of five areas: literature and arts, history, social analysis and moral reasoning, science, and foreign cultures. In addition, students spent roughly the equivalent of two years on courses in a field of concentration and one year on elective courses. Students also had to demonstrate competence in writing, mathematics, and a foreign language. After 25 years the core curriculum came under review. In 2007, after much debate, a faculty committee recommended that the curriculum be broadened to focus more on science, world cultures, and "real world" issues. From its earliest days Harvard established and maintained a tradition of academic excellence and the training of citizens for national public service. Among many notable alumni are the religious leaders Increase Mather and Cotton Mather; the philosopher and psychologist William James; and men of letters such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot. More U.S. presidents have attended Harvard than any other college: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. A sixth, Rutherford B. Hayes, was a graduate of Harvard Law School, which also counts the jurists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Felix Frankfurter among its alumni. Harvard University is governed by a corporation (the oldest corporation in the United States) known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The corporation consults with a 30-member Board of Overseers elected by the alumni. III UNDERGRADUATE ACTIVITIES Harvard College, the university's oldest division, offers undergraduate courses for men and women, leading to a bachelor of arts degree granted by the university. Beginning in 1963, graduates of Radcliffe College, the affiliated undergraduate institution for women, received Harvard degrees with the Radcliffe seal and countersigned by the president of Radcliffe. In the 1970s, Harvard abolished the quota limiting the number of women students, and a joint Harvard and Radcliffe Admissions Office began selecting students on an equal basis. In 1999 Harvard fully absorbed Radcliffe and created the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which focuses on the study of women and gender. With admission criteria ranking among the most selective in the United States, Harvard accepts less than 20 percent of all applicants; three-fourths of those accepted actually enroll. During their freshman year, students live in halls within Harvard Yard, a walled enclosure containing several structures from the early 18th century now used as dormitories, dining facilities, libraries, and classrooms. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors live in the 12 residences known as houses. Named in honor of a distinguished alumnus or administrator, each house accommodates approximately 350 students and a group of faculty members who provide individual instruction as tutors, fostering social and intellectual exchange between students and teachers. Each house also has a library and sponsors cultural activities and intramural athletics. Undergraduate life has the additional attraction of proximity to Boston. IV GRADUATE AND PROFESSIONAL FACILITIES Harvard's graduate and professional facilities, founded over the last 200 years, include schools of arts and sciences, business administration, dental medicine, design, divinity, education, law, medicine, public administration (now the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government), and public health. Special studies programs are also provided at the Harvard-Yenching Institute; the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research; the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian Studies; and at the centers for Middle Eastern Studies, International Affairs, International Legal Studies, Energy and International Policy, and Health Policy Management. V SPECIAL FACILITIES The Harvard campus is also the site of several renowned museums and collections, among them the Fogg Museum, distinguished for its European and American paintings, sculptures, and prints; the Botanical Museum; and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard's library system is the oldest in the United States. The central library collection, used for advanced scholarly research, is housed in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. Augmented by the Houghton Library of rare books and manuscripts, the undergraduate Lamont, Cabot, and Hilles libraries, and the separate house and departmental libraries, as well as by the graduate schools' collections, the Harvard library complex forms the world's largest university library system. It currently contains more than 13 million volumes, manuscripts, and microfilms. Harvard University also maintains the Arnold Arboretum, in Boston; the Harvard College Observatory, based in Cambridge; the research center for Byzantine and Early Christian studies at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C.; and Villa I Tatti in Settignano, Italy, formerly the home and library of art critic Bernard Berenson and now a center for art history research. Home games of the Harvard Crimson football team and other athletic events take place at Harvard Stadium, which has a seating capacity of more than 38,000. Yale University is Harvard's traditional rival in sports. VI PUBLICATIONS Undergraduate publications include the Harvard Crimson, a daily newspaper founded in 1873; the Harvard Advocate, a literary review; and a nationally known humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon. Among journals issued by Harvard's graduate schools and affiliated groups are the Harvard Business Review, Harvard Educational Review, and Harvard Law Review. Harvard University Press, founded in 1913, publishes books of scholarly as well as general interest and medical and scientific works. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.