University of Pennsylvania

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University of Pennsylvania

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The University of Pennsylvania is an American
private Ivy League research university located in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 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 College.

History

• 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.


• The school 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. Penn began operating as an academy or
secondary school in 1751 and obtained its collegiate charter in
1755, it initially designated 1750 as its founding date; this is the
year which appears on the first iteration of the university seal.
Sometime later in its early history, Penn began to consider
1749 as its founding date; this year was referenced for over a
century, including at the centennial celebration in 1849.

Early campuses
• The Academy of Philadelphia, a secondary school for boys,
began operations in 1751 in an unused church building at 4th &
Arch Streets which had sat unfinished and dormant for over a
decade. Upon receiving a collegiate charter in 1755, the first
classes for the College of Philadelphia were taught in the same
building, in many cases to the same boys who had already
graduated from The Academy of Philadelphia. In 1801, the
University moved to the unused Presidential Mansion at 9th &
Market Streets, a building that both George Washington and
John Adams had declined to occupy while Philadelphia was the
temporary national capital. Classes were held in the mansion
until 1829, when it was demolished. Architect William Strickland
designed twin buildings on the same site, College Hall and
Medical Hall (both 1829-30), which formed the core of the Ninth
Street Campus until Penn's move to West Philadelphia in the
1870s.
Educational innovations
• Penn's educational innovations include: the nation's first medical
school in 1765; the first university teaching hospital in 1874; the
Wharton School, the world's first collegiate school of business, in 1881;
the first American student union building, Houston Hall, in 1896; the
country's second school of veterinary medicine; and the home of
ENIAC, the world's first electronic, large-scale, general-purpose digital
computer in 1946. Penn is also home to the oldest continuously
functioning psychology department in North America and is where the
American Medical Association was founded. Penn was also the first
university to award a PhD to an African-American woman, Sadie Tanner
Mossell Alexander, in 1921 (in economics).
Campus
• Much of Penn's architecture was designed by the
Cope & Stewardson firm, whose principal
architects combined the Gothic architecture of
the University of Oxford and the University of
Cambridge with the local landscape to establish
the Collegiate Gothic style. The present core
campus covers over 279 acres (1.13 km
2
) in a
contiguous area of West Philadelphia's University
City district; the older heart of the campus
comprises the University of Pennsylvania Campus
Historic District. All of Penn's schools and most of
its research institutes are located on this campus.
The surrounding neighborhood includes several
restaurants and pubs, a large upscale grocery
store, and a movie theater on the western edge
of campus.


• In September 2011 Penn completed the construction of the $46.5
million 24-acre (97,000 m
2
) Penn Park, which features passive and
active recreation and athletic components framed and subdivided by
canopy trees, lawns, and meadows. It is located east of the Highline
Green and stretches from Walnut Street to South Streets. The
University also owns the 92-acre (370,000 m
2
) Morris Arboretum in
Chestnut Hill in northwestern Philadelphia, the official arboretum of
the state of Pennsylvania. Penn also owns the 687-acre (2.78 km
2
)
New Bolton Center, the research and large-animal health care center
of its Veterinary School. Located near Kennett Square, New Bolton
Center received nationwide media attention when Kentucky Derby
winner Barbaro underwent surgery at its Widener Hospital for injuries
suffered while running in the Preakness Stakes.

• Penn borders Drexel University and is near the University of the
Sciences in Philadelphia. The renowned cancer research center Wistar
Institute is also located on campus. In 2014 a new 7-story glass and
steel building will be completed next to the Institute's historic 117-
year-old brick building further expanding collaboration between the
university and the Wistar Institute.
Libraries
• Penn's library began in 1750 with a donation of books from
cartographer Lewis Evans. Twelve years later, then-provost
William Smith sailed to England to raise additional funds to
increase the collection size. More than 250 years later, it has
grown into a system of 15 libraries (13 are on the contiguous
campus) with 400 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees and a
total operating budget of more than $48 million. The library
system holds 6.01 million book and serial volumes as well as
4.21 million microform items. It subscribes to over 68,000 print
serials and e-journals.
Academics
• The College of Arts and Sciences is the undergraduate division of the
School of Arts and Sciences, which also contains the Graduate Division
and the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, Penn's division for
non-traditional undergraduate and graduate students. Wharton is the
business school of the University of Pennsylvania. Other schools with
undergraduate programs include the School of Nursing and the
School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).

• Penn has a strong focus on interdisciplinary learning and research. It
offers joint-degree programs, unique majors, and academic flexibility.
Penn's "One University" policy allows undergraduates access to
courses at all of Penn's undergraduate and graduate schools, except
the medical, veterinary and dental schools. Undergraduates at Penn
may also take courses at Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore,
under a reciprocal agreement known as the Quaker Consortium.
• Annenberg School for Communication 1958
• Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 1881
• Graduate School of Education 1915
• Law School 1850
• Perelman School of Medicine 1765
• School of Dental Medicine 1878
• School of Design 1868
• School of Engineering and Applied Science 1850
• School of Nursing 1935
• School of Social Policy and Practice 1948
• School of Veterinary Medicine 1884
• The Wharton School 1881
University of Pennsylvania graduate and professional schools
Rankings
• According to U.S. News & World Report Penn is currently ranked 8th in
the United States (tied with Duke), behind Princeton, Harvard, Yale,
Columbia, The University of Chicago, MIT, and Stanford. U.S. News also
includes Penn in its Most Popular National Universities list, and so does
The Princeton Review in its Dream Colleges list.

• In their latest editions Penn was ranked 13th in the world by the QS World
University Rankings,16th by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic
Ranking of World Universities, and 15th by the Times Higher Education
World University Rankings. According to the Shanghai Jiao Tong
University ranking Penn is also the 8th and 11th best university in the
world for economics/business and social sciences studies, respectively.
University of Pennsylvania ranked 12th among 300 Best World
Universities in 2012 compiled by Human Resources & Labor Review
(HRLR) on Measurements of World's Top 300 Universities Graduates'
Performance.
Research rankings
• The Center for Measuring University Performance places Penn in the
first tier of the United States' top research universities (tied with
Columbia, MIT and Stanford), based on research expenditures, faculty
awards, PhD granted and other academic criteria. Penn was also
ranked 9th by the National Science Foundation in terms of R&D
expenditures topping all other Ivy League Schools. The High Impact
Universities research performance index ranks Penn 8th in the world,
whereas the 2010 Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World
Universities (published by the Higher Education Evaluation and
Accreditation Council of Taiwan) ranks Penn 11th in the world for 2010,
2008 and 2007, and 9th for 2009. The Performance Ranking of
Scientific Papers measures universities' research productivity,
research impact, and research excellence based on the scientific
papers published by their academic staff. The SCImago Institutions
Rankings World Report 2012, which ranks world universities, national
institutions and academies in terms of research output, ranks Penn
7th nationally among U.S. universities (and 2nd in the Ivy League
behind Harvard) and 28th in the world overall (the first being France's
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique).
Stundent Life
Demographics

• Of those accepted for admission to the Class of
2014, 40.8 percent are Asian, Hispanic, African-
American, or Native American. In addition, 51.1%
of current students are women.

• More than 11% of the first year class are
international students.[2] The composition of
international students accepted in the Class of
2014 is: 50.2% from Asia; 9.2% from Africa and
the Middle East; 17.7% from Europe; 15.5% from
Canada and Mexico; 4.8% from the Caribbean,
Central America, and South America; 1.1% from
Australia and the Pacific Islands. The
acceptance rate for international students
applying for the class of 2014 was 411 out of
4,390 (9.4%).
Athletics
Penn's sports teams are nicknamed the Quakers. They participate in the
Ivy League and Division I (Division I FCS for football) in the NCAA. In
recent decades they often have been league champions in football (14
times from 1982 to 2010) and basketball (22 times from 1970 to 2006). The
first athletic team at Penn was its cricket team.
Rowing

• Rowing at Penn dates back to at least 1854 with the
founding of the University Barge Club. The university
currently hosts both heavyweight and lightweight men's
teams and an openweight women's team, all of which
compete as part of the Eastern Sprints League. Penn
Rowing has produced a long list of famous coaches and
Olympians, including Susan Francia, John B. Kelly, Jr.,
Joe Burk, Rusty Callow, Harry Parker, and Ted Nash. In
addition, the 1955 men's heavyweight crew is one of
only four American university crews to win the Grand
Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta. The teams
row out of College Boat Club, No. 11 Boathouse Row.
The program is currently under the direction of men's
head coach Greg Myhr.

Basketball

• Penn basketball is steeped in tradition.
Penn made its only (and the Ivy League's
second) Final Four appearance in 1979,
where the Quakers lost to Magic Johnson-
led Michigan State in Salt Lake City.
(Dartmouth twice finished second in the
tournament in the 1940s, but that was
before the beginning of formal League
play.) Penn's team is also a member of the
Philadelphia Big 5, along with La Salle,
Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova. In
2007, the men's team won its third
consecutive Ivy League title and then lost
in the first round of the NCAA Tournament
to Texas A&M.
Notable people
• Penn has produced many alumni that have distinguished themselves in the
sciences, academia, politics, the military, arts and media. The size, quality,
and diversity of Penn's alumni body has established it as one of the most
powerful alumni networks in the United States and internationally.

• Twelve heads of state or government have attended or graduated from Penn,
including former U.S. president William Henry Harrison; former Prime Minister
of the Philippines Cesar Virata; the first president of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe;
the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah; and the current president of
Côte d'Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara. Other notable politicians who hold a degree
from Penn include former ambassador to China and former 2012 presidential
candidate and Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Jr., Mexico's current minister of
finance, Ernesto J. Cordero, long-serving Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter,
and former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell.






William Henry Harrison Cesar Virata Nnamdi Azikiwe Arlen Specter


Members:

• Burcea IonuČ›
• Cernat Florin
• Constantin DragoČ™
• Ignat Vlad
• Mirea Florin
• Neaga Alexandru

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