The University of Rochester is a private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River, in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full-time employees, the university is the largest private employer in Upstate New York and the seventh-largest in all of New York State.
With over 12,000 students, the university offers 160 undergraduate and 30 graduate programs across seven schools spread throughout five campuses. The College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering is the largest school, and it includes the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The Eastman School of Music, founded by and named after George Eastman, is located in Downtown Rochester.
The university is also home to the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, a national laboratory supported by the US Department of Energy. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and is a member of the Association of American Universities, which emphasizes academic research. The university's sports teams, the Rochester Yellowjackets, compete in NCAA Division III. The school is a founding member of the University Athletic Association (UAA).
History
Early history The University of Rochester traces its origins to The First Baptist Church of Hamilton, New York, which was founded in 1796. The church established the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York, later renamed the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, in 1817. This institution gave birth to both Madison University and the University of Rochester. Its function was to train clergy in the Baptist tradition. When it aspired to grant higher degrees, it created a collegiate division separate from the theological division.
The collegiate division was granted a charter by the State of New York in 1846, after which its name was changed to Madison University. John Wilder and the Baptist Education Society urged that the new university be moved to Rochester, New York. However, legal action prevented the move. In response, dissenting faculty, students, and trustees defected and departed for Rochester, where they sought a new charter for a new university. Madison University was eventually renamed Colgate University.
Founding Asahel C. Kendrick, professor of Greek, was among the faculty that departed Madison University for Rochester. Kendrick served as acting president while a national search was conducted. He reprised this role until 1853, when Martin Brewer Anderson of the Andover Newton Theological Seminary in Massachusetts was selected to fill the inaugural posting.
The University of Rochester's new charter was awarded by the Regents of the State of New York on January 31, 1850. The charter stipulated that the university have $100,000 in endowment within five years, upon which the charter would be reaffirmed. An initial gift of $10,000 was pledged by John Wilder, which helped catalyze significant gifts from individuals and institutions.
Classes began that November, with approximately 60 students enrolled, including 28 transfers from Madison. From 1850 to 1862, the university was housed in the old United States Hotel in downtown Rochester on Buffalo Street near Elizabeth Street (now West Main Street near the I-490 overpass).
For the next 10 years, the college expanded its scope and secured its future through an expanding endowment, student body, and faculty. In parallel, a gift of 8 acres of farmland from local businessman and Congressman Azariah Boody secured the first campus of the university, upon which Anderson Hall was constructed and dedicated in 1862. Over the next sixty years, this Prince Street Campus grew by a further 17 acres and was developed to include fraternities houses, dormitories, and academic buildings including Anderson Hall, Sibley Library, Eastman and Carnegie Laboratories, the Memorial Art Gallery, and Cutler Union.
20th century The first female students were admitted in 1900, the result of an effort led by famous suffragist Susan B. Anthony and Helen Barrett Montgomery. During the 1890s, a number of women took classes and labs at the university as "visitors" but were not officially enrolled nor were their records included in the college register. President David Jayne Hill allowed the first woman, Helen E. Wilkinson, to enroll as a normal student, although she was not allowed to matriculate or pursue a degree. Thirty-three women enrolled among the first class in 1900, and Ella S. Wilcoxen was the first to receive a degree, in 1901.May, Arthur J. (1977) A History of the university of Rochester, Princeton: Princeton University The first female member of the faculty was Elizabeth Denio who retired as professor emeritus in 1917. Male students moved to River Campus upon its completion in 1930 while the female students remained on the Prince Street campus until 1955.
Anthony's work left a lasting impression on the university, with multiple awards, buildings and centers being named after her.
Expansion Major growth occurred under the leadership of Benjamin Rush Rhees over his 1900–1935 tenure. During this period, George Eastman, innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company, became a major donor, giving more than $50 million to the university during his life. Under the patronage of Eastman, the Eastman School of Music was created in 1921. In 1925, at the behest of the General Education Board and with significant support from John D. Rockefeller, George Eastman, and Henry A. Strong's family, medical and dental schools were created. The university awarded its first PhD that same year.
During World War II, the institution was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. In 1942, the university was invited to join the Association of American Universities as an affiliate member and it was made a full member by 1944. Between 1946 and 1947, in infamous uranium experiments, researchers at the university injected uranium-234 and uranium-235 into six people to study how much uranium their kidneys could tolerate before becoming damaged.Goliszek, 2003: pp. 136–137 In 1955, the separate colleges for men and women were merged into the college on the River Campus. In 1958, three new schools were created in engineering, business administration, and education.University of Rochester: History and Distinctions With guidance provided by Lewis White Beck at this time, the university also acquired widespread international recognition for the excellence of its Ph.D. program in Philosophy as well as close research collaborations with Kantian scholars throughout Germany and the United States."Lewis White Beck in memoriam". Seebohm, Thomas M. Kant-Studien 88. Jahrg., S. 38 1997 Lewis White Beck Memoriam on Google The Graduate School of Management was named after William E. Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury in 1986. He committed significant funds to the school because of his belief in the school's free market philosophy and grounding in economic analysis. Under the leadership of William Riker, the Department of Political Science went from a six-person faculty with no graduate program to one of the most exciting political science departments in the United States. Riker established a new undergraduate program and trained an extraordinary number of graduate students. What emerged at the university, in the words of University of Georgia's Keith T. Poole and Princeton's Howard Rosenthal, was "the best doctoral program in political science in the world." According to Berkeley professors Nelson Polby and Eric Shickler, Rochester professor Richard Fenno "contributed more to the understanding of the U.S. Congress than any other scholar in the more than 200 years since the founding of the American nation".
Name change controversy Following the princely gifts given throughout his life, George Eastman left the entirety of his estate to the university after his death by suicide. The total of these gifts surpassed $100 million, before inflation, and, as such, the university enjoyed a privileged position amongst the most well-endowed universities. During the expansion years between 1936 and 1976, the University of Rochester's financial position ranked third, near Harvard University's endowment and the University of Texas System's Permanent University Fund. Due to financial mismanagement combined with a decline in the value of large investments and a lack of portfolio diversity, the university's place dropped to the top 25 by the end of the 1980s. At the same time, the preeminence of the city of Rochester's major employers began to decline.
In response, the university commissioned a study to determine if the name of the institution should be changed to "Eastman University" or "Eastman Rochester University". The study concluded a name change could be beneficial because the use of a place name in the title led respondents to incorrectly believe it was a public university, and because the name "Rochester" connoted a "cold and distant outpost." Reports of the latter conclusion led to controversy and criticism in the Rochester community. Ultimately, the name "University of Rochester" was retained. , University of Rochester Urged to Change Name What's in a Name? Plenty, Argue University's Alumni Our Towns--Change of Image in "Cold and Distant Outpost Pieterse, "Our Work Is But Begun: A History of the University of Rochester 1850-2005" (Boydell & Brewer, 2014), pg. 165
In response, university president Thomas H. Jackson announced the launch of a "Renaissance Plan" for the college that reduced enrollment from 4,500 to 3,600, creating a more selective admissions process. The plan also revised the undergraduate curriculum significantly, creating the current system with only one required course and only a few distribution requirements, known as clusters.Rochester.edu , Press Release: Rochester Renaissance Plan for The College Part of this plan called for the end of graduate doctoral studies in chemical engineering, comparative literature, linguistics, and mathematics, the last of which was met by national outcry. The plan was largely scrapped and mathematics exists as a graduate course of study to this day.
21st century Shortly after taking office, university president Joel Seligman commenced the private phase of the Meliora Challenge, a $1.2 billion capital campaign, in 2005. The campaign reached its goal in 2015, a year before the campaign was slated to conclude. In 2016, the university announced the Meliora Challenge had exceeded its goal and surpassed $1.36 billion. These funds were allocated to support over 100 new endowed faculty positions and nearly 400 new scholarships.
After and during the completion of the challenge, the university embarked on a new phase of construction, resulting in the addition of significant campus facilities. This expansion included the construction of two new student dormitories, O'Brien Hall (2013) and Genesee Hall (2017). Furthermore, other additions included Wegmans Hall (2016), a new building for the Computer and Data Science Departments, LeChase Hall (2013), designed to host the Warner School of Education, and Rettner Hall (2013). The university also expanded the Medical Center, constructing a new Children's Hospital, cancer center and research building.