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Introduction to New York University

An Introduction to New York University
New York University in 1831 by a group of eminent private citizens was a historic event in American education. In the early 19th century, a major emphasis in higher education was on the mastery of Greek and Latin, with little attention given to modern or contemporary subjects. The founders of New York University intended to enlarge the scope of higher education to meet the needs of persons aspiring to careers in business, industry, science, and the arts, as well as in law, medicine, and the ministry. The opening of the University of London in 1828 convinced New Yorkers that New York, too, should have a university.

The first president of New York University’s governing council was Albert Gallatin, former adviser to Thomas Jefferson and secretary of the treasury in Jefferson’s cabinet. Gallatin and his cofounders said that the new university was to be a “national university” that would provide a “rational and practical education for all.”

The result of the founders’ foresight is today a university that is recognized both nationally and internationally as a leader in scholarship. Of the more than 3,000 colleges and universities in America, only 60 institutions are members of the distinguished Association of American Universities. New York University is one of the 60. Students come to the University from all 50 states and from 137 foreign countries.

The University includes 14 schools and colleges at six major centers in Manhattan. In addition, the University operates branch campus programs in Westchester County at Manhattanville College and in Rockland County at St. Thomas Aquinas College. Certain of the University’s research facilities, notably the Nelson Institute of Environmental Medicine, are located in Sterling Forest, near Tuxedo, New York. Although overall the University is large, the divisions are small- to moderate-sized units—each with its own traditions, programs, and faculty.

Enrollment in the undergraduate divisions of the University ranges between 90 and 6,200. While some introductory classes in some programs have large numbers of students, many classes are small. More than 2,500 courses are offered, leading to more than 25 different degrees.

The Schools and Colleges of the University
The College of Arts and Science offers the Bachelor of Arts degree in a wide range of programs in the humanities, science, social sciences, and foreign languages and literatures and, in some departments, the Bachelor of Science degree. Joint programs of study currently involve NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Graduate School of Arts and Science, Steinhardt School of Education, Shirley M. Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, School of Medicine, and College of Dentistry, as well as Stevens Institute of Technology.

The School of Law is one of the oldest law schools in the United States. It offers a comprehensive first professional program leading to the degree of Juris Doctor and a graduate curriculum leading to the degrees of Master of Laws, Master of Comparative Jurispru-dence, and Doctor of Juridical Science.

The School of Medicine and Post-Graduate Medical School offer the Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy degrees and courses for accreditation designed to meet the needs of physicians in practice. Medical students and residents gain clinical experience through the NYU Hospitals Center, which includes the 726-bed Tisch Hospital and the 174-bed Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, both of which are part of the Mount Sinai-NYU Medical Center and Health System. The school also maintains affiliations with select institutions for a variety of joint academic and clinical programs. Most clinical teaching takes place at the 1,232-bed Bellevue Hospital, where the School of Medicine supervises care. Other affiliated hospitals include the Hospital for Joint Diseases, NYU Downtown Hospital, and the New York Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The school’s Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine is one of the world’s leading medical research centers, with research emphasizing the biomolecular roots of disease. Specific areas of focus include developmental genetics, molecular pathogenesis, neurobiology, and structural biology.

The College of Dentistry is the third oldest and the largest dental school in the United States. It offers a predoctoral program leading to the Doctor of Dental Surgery degree, as well as advanced education programs in the dental specialties and allied health programs in dental hygiene. The patient care clinics, laboratories, and other teaching facilities that comprise the College of Dentistry are housed within several buildings, including the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Hall of Dental Sciences and the K. B. Weissman Clinical Science Building. The center is located on First Avenue, from East 24th Street to East 25th Street, in the midst of one of the nation’s most renowned health sciences complexes, which extends from East 14th Street to East 34th Street.

The Graduate School of Arts and Science offers the degrees of Master of Arts, Master of Science, Master of Fine Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy in most areas of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Several certificate programs are also offered. The NYU in Paris and NYU in Madrid M.A. programs are based in centers in Paris and Madrid. Dual degree programs of study currently involve the School of Law, School of Medicine, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Courses are offered in the late afternoon and evening as well as during the day.

The Steinhardt School of Education offers a broad range of innovative undergraduate preprofessional and professional programs and advanced graduate study in education, health, communications, and the arts professions. Undergraduate programs lead to the Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Music degree and combine a solid foundation in the liberal arts with specialized course work and fieldwork, clinical practice, or internships in a wide variety of settings throughout New York City. Graduate students may enroll in master’s, advanced certificate, and doctoral programs in a wide variety of disciplines. Courses are given weekdays, evenings, weekends, and summers to full-time, part-time, and special students. Study abroad is available for undergraduates during the academic year and for graduate students during the summer. Applied research opportunities abound for all students.

The Leonard N. Stern School of Business is located in a three-building complex that comprises Tisch and Shimkin Halls and the state-of-the-art Henry Kaufman Management Center, which houses the graduate programs. The Washington Square complex is adjacent to the University’s renowned Elmer Holmes Bobst Library and Study Center. The Stern School offers B.S., M.B.A., and Ph.D. degrees. Students may specialize in accounting; economics; finance; information systems; international business; management; marketing; operations management; statistics; and actuarial science. Joint graduate-level programs are offered with the School of Law and the Graduate School of Arts and Science. Enrollment in the graduate program may be full or part time.

The Undergraduate College of the Stern School of Business administers the undergraduate business program. This program offers an innovative curriculum that integrates liberal arts studies with business studies. Through this course of study, students are exposed in a distinctive manner to the international dimensions of business; develop strong interpersonal and team-building skills; gain a sense of professional responsibility; and undertake cross-disciplinary course work while retaining a strong individualized component through elective course work. The undergraduate curriculum is a full-time course of study.

The School of Continuing and Professional Studies for more than 60 years has provided courses and credentials designed to meet the cultural and career needs of today’s adult population. The school boasts a wide range of noncredit classes in information technologies and digital media; e-business; real estate and construction; publishing; marketing and management; film and video; creative writing; international affairs; foreign languages; hospitality; finance and law; and more. The Virtual College™, SCPS’s distance learning component, hosts a growing number of on-line courses across a variety of disciplines. SCPS also offers workshops for adults considering a career change or returning to college, as well as opportunities to study for an associate’s, bachelor’s, or a master’s degree.

The Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service offers curricula in public administration, including nonprofit management, financial management, public policy analysis, comparative and development administration, and international administration; urban public policy studies; urban planning; and health policy and management. Master’s and doctoral degree programs are offered. The Advanced Professional Certificate Programs and the Master of Science in Management Program offer career development opportunities for experienced professionals, including the Advanced Management Program for Clinicians (AMPC). Joint degree programs are available with the College of Arts and Science, the School of Law, the Steinhardt School of Education, the School of Medicine, and the Shirley M. Ehrenkranz School of Social Work. Courses for full-time and part-time students are offered in the late afternoon and evening. Special Saturday programs are available in public and nonprofit management and in health services management.

The Shirley M. Ehrenkranz School of Social Work offers Bachelor of Science, Master of Social Work, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. The bachelor’s program prepares students for beginning social work practice immediately on graduation and for admission to graduate programs with advanced standing. The master’s program prepares students for the core mission of social work and provides an advanced concentration in clinical social work. The doctoral program offers a concentration in clinical social work. It prepares graduates to assume leadership positions as researchers, advanced practitioners, and educators. The school also offers an Advanced Certificate in Clinical Social Work and a Post-Master’s Certificate Program in the Treatment of Alcohol- and Drug-Abusing Clients.

The Tisch School of the Arts, founded in 1965, provides undergraduate and graduate training in aspects of the performing and visual arts. Departments and programs offering professional training are acting, dance, design, drama, performance studies, film and television, cinema studies, photography and imaging, dramatic writing, musical theatre, and nteractive telecommunications. Degrees offered are the B.F.A., M.F.A., M.P.S., and, through the Graduate School of Arts and Science, the M.A. and Ph.D.

The Gallatin School of Individualized Study offers Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in individualized programs of study. Gallatin provides an innovative and student-centered liberal arts education in which students create and hone their own plans of study under the mentorship of faculty advisers. The Gallatin model encourages students to integrate their studies in traditional disciplines and professions by combining Gallatin course work with independent studies, internships, and courses at other schools within NYU. Gallatin’s interdisciplinary courses focus on significant texts from around the world and engage students with major historical and philosophical traditions. Programs in the arts, writing, and community learning offer students opportunities to utilize New York City as their extended classroom and to explore the relationship between theory and practice as they develop their capacity for critical thinking, effective communication, and creative work.

The Mount Sinai School of Medicine offers the M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in addition to a combined M.D./Ph.D. program in a rigorous intellectual environment focused on collaboration between faculty and students. The school is committed to training students to be not only outstanding clinicians and scientists but also compassionate individuals who also serve science and society. The school, founded in 1963, became affiliated with New York University on July 1, 1999.

New York University and New York
The Libraries
The striking, 12-story Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, designed by Philip Johnson and Richard Foster, is the flagship of an eight-library, 4.5 million-volume system that provides students and faculty members with access to the world’s scholarship and serves as a center for the University community’s intellectual life. The Bobst Library houses more than 3.3 million volumes, 20 thousand journals, and over 3.5 million microforms and provides access to thousands of electronic resources on-site and to the NYU community around the world via the Internet. The library is visited by more than 6,500 users per day and circulates almost one million books annually.

Bobst Library offers three specialized reference centers, 28 miles of open-stack shelving, and approximately 2,000 seats for student study. The stacks are open until midnight, and a 24-hour study area is located on the A and B levels. The Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media, one of the world’s largest academic media centers, has over 100 audio and video viewing carrels and five media-enhanced classrooms; students and researchers use more than 65,000 audio and video recordings per year. The Studio for Digital Projects and Research offers a constantly evolving, leading-edge resource for faculty and student projects and promotes and supports access to digital resources for teaching, learning, research, and arts events. Bobst Library is also home to significant special collections such as the Fales Collection of English and American Literature, one of the best collections of English and American fiction in the United States. Fales contains the unique Downtown Collection, archives documenting the downtown New York literary and arts scene from the 1970s to the present, focusing on the developments of postmodern writing and dance, performance art, outsider art, and the downtown music scene. Bobst Library also houses the Tamiment Library, one of the finest collections in the world for scholarly research in labor history, socialism, anarchism, communism, and American radicalism. Tamiment includes the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, which holds the Jewish Labor Committee Archives and the historical records of more than 130 New York City labor organizations.

Beyond Bobst, the library of the renowned Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences focuses on research-level material in mathematics, computer science, and related fields, and the Stephen Chan Library of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts houses the rich collections that support the research and curricular needs of the institute’s graduate programs in art history and archaeology. The Jack Brause Real Estate Library at the Real Estate Institute is the most comprehensive facility of its kind, designed to meet the information needs of the entire real estate community.

Complementing the collections of the Division of Libraries are the Frederick L. Ehrman Medical Library of NYU’s School of Medicine and the College of Dentistry’s John and Bertha E. Waldmann Memorial Library. The Law Library serves the programs of the School of Law and is strong in a variety of areas, including legal history, biography, jurisprudence, and copyright, taxation, criminal, labor, business, and international law as well as such legal specialties as urban affairs, poverty law, and consumerism.

The NYU Libraries continue to enhance their services for NYU students and faculty and to strengthen research collections. The extraordinary growth of the University’s academic programs in recent years, along with the rapid expansion of electronic information resources, has provided an impetus for new development in NYU’s libraries.

The Larger Campus
New York University is an integral part of the metropolitan community of New York City—the business, cultural, artistic, and financial center of the nation and the home of the United Nations. The city’s extraordinary resources enrich both the academic programs and the experience of living at New York University.

Professors whose extracurricular activities include service as editors for publishing houses and magazines; as advisers to city government, banks, school systems, and social agencies; and as consultants for museums and industrial corporations bring to teaching an experience of the world and a professional sophistication that are difficult to match.

Students also, either through course work or in outside activities, tend to be involved in the vigorous and varied life of the city. Research for term papers in the humanities and social sciences may take them to such diverse places as the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Modern Art, a garment factory, a deteriorating neighborhood, or a foreign consulate.

Students in science work with their professors on such problems of immediate importance for urban society as the pollution of waterways and the congestion of city streets. Business majors attend seminars in corporation boardrooms and intern as executive assistants in business and financial houses. The schools, courts, hospitals, settlement houses, theatres, playgrounds, and prisons of the greatest city in the world form a regular part of the educational scene for students of medicine, dentistry, education, social work, law, business and public administration, and the creative and performing arts.

The chief center for undergraduate and graduate study is at Washington Square in Greenwich Village, long famous for its contributions to the fine arts, literature, and drama and its personalized, smaller-scale, European style of living. New York University itself makes a significant contribution to the creative activity of the Village through the high concentration of faculty and students who reside within a few blocks of the University.

University apartment buildings provide housing for nearly 2,000 members of the faculty and administration, and University student residence halls accommodate over 11,500 men and women. Many more faculty and students reside in private housing in the area.

A Private University
Since its founding, New York University has been a private university. It operates under a board of trustees and derives its income from tuition, endowment, grants from private foundations and government, and gifts from friends, alumni, corporations, and other private philanthropic sources.

The University is committed to a policy of equal treatment and opportunity in every aspect of its relations with its faculty, students, and staff members, without regard to age, citizenship status, color, disability, marital or parental status, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status.

Inquiries regarding the application of the federal laws and regulations concerning affirmative action and antidiscrimination policies and procedures at New York University may be referred to Dr. Sharon Weinberg, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, New York University, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012-1091; 212-998-2370. Inquiries may also be referred to the director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, U.S. Department of Labor.

New York University is a member of the Association of American Universities and is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 3624 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; 215-662-5606). Individual undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs and schools are accredited by the appropriate specialized accrediting agencies.