Yale University Yale University (Hebrew) (Urim V'Tumim) אורים ותמים Motto Lux et veritas (Latin) Motto in English Light and truth Established 1701 Type Private Endowment US $16.3 billion[1] President Richard C. Levin Faculty 3,619[2] Students 12,495 Undergraduates 5,316 Location New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A. Urban, 837 acres (339 ha) including Yale Campus Golf Course Collegiate School (1701-1718) Former names Yale College (1718-1887) Yale Blue since 1894; prior color, Colors green Nickname Bulldogs, Elis, Yalies[3][4][5][6] Mascot Handsome Dan NCAA Division I (FCS Football) Ivy Athletics League Website www.yale.edu Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third- oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five U.S. presidents, nineteen U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and several foreign heads of state. Incorporated as the Collegiate School, the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed Yale College to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. school to award the Ph.D.[7] Yale College was transformed, beginning in the 1930s, through the establishment of residential colleges: 12 now exist and two more are planned. Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.[8][9] The University's assets include a US$16.3 billion endowment,[10] the second largest of any academic institution, as well as the second largest academic library in the world, with some 12.5 million volumes held in more than two dozen libraries.[11] Yale and Harvard have been rivals in academics, athletics, and other activities for most of their history, competing annually in The Game and the Harvard-Yale Regatta. History Original building, 1718–1782 The President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, is the governing board of the University. Origins Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School," passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701 in an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers led by James Pierpont, all of whom were alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's first library.[12] The group is now known as "The Founders." Originally called the Collegiate School, the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson,[13] in Killingworth (now Clinton). The school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1718, the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut. Meanwhile, a rift was forming at Harvard between its sixth president Increase Mather and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not.[14] Old Brick Row in 1807 In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted a successful businessman in Wales named Elihu Yale to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Yale, who had made a fortune through trade while living in India as a representative of the East India Company, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum at the time. Yale also donated 417 books and a portrait of King George I. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College in gratitude to its benefactor, and to increase the chances that he would give the college another large donation or bequest. Elihu Yale was away in India when the news of the school's name change reached his home in Wrexham, North Wales, a trip from which he never returned. While he did ultimately leave his fortunes to the "Collegiate School within His Majesties Colony of Connecticot," the institution was never able to successfully lay claim to it. Curriculum Yale was swept up by the the great intellectual movements of the period—the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment—thanks to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were both instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum at Yale, while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, 'irrelevance' of curricula, desperate need for endowment, and fights with the Connecticut legislature.[15] Serious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original words. The Reverend Ezra Stiles, president of the College from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in the Hebrew language as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language (as was common in other schools), requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study the language) and is responsible for the Hebrew words "Urim" and "Thummim" on the Yale seal. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in July, 1779 when hostile British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the College. Fortunately, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, Secretary to the British General in command of the occupation, interceded and the College was saved. Fanning later was granted an honorary degree LL.D., at 1803,[16] for his efforts. Woolsey Hall in c. 1905 [edit] Students As the only college in Connecticut, Yale educated the sons of the elite.[17] Offenses for which students were punished included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience to college authorities. During the period Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal on its side.[18] The emphasis on classics gave rise to a number of private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose primarily as forums for discussions of modern scholarship, literature and politics. The first such organizations were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753, and Brothers in Unity in 1768.[19] [edit] 19th century The Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, mathematics, and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for colleges and universities in the United States. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized that a significant portion of their students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The Yale report meant the classics would not be abandoned. At the same time, all institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual track. In the decentralized environment of higher education in the United States, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge because no one could afford to be completely modern or completely classical.[20] At the same time a group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought about by the Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a whole man possessed of religious values sufficiently strong to resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting him from without.[21] Perhaps the most well-remembered teacher was William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909. He taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflow classrooms. He bested President Noah Porter, who disliked social science and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education, 1879-81. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might intellectually, morally, and religiously harm students [22]. [edit] Sports and debate The Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the prototype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, equally well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who regretted he had but one life to lose for his country. Western painter Frederick Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied the heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Frank Stover in the novel Stover at Yale (1911) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly the students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, and the alumni, as well as the team itself[23]. Along with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected elite British concepts about 'amateurism' in sports and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American especially football.[24] The Harvard–Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in the first intercollegiate debate, and 1909, the year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these early debates.