Johns Hopkins University

From New World Encyclopedia


The Johns Hopkins University
Gilmanhall.jpg
Motto Veritas vos liberabit
(The truth shall make you free)
Established 1876
Type Private
Location Flag of United States Baltimore, MD USA
Website http://www.jhu.edu/ www.jhu.edu

The Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is a private institution of higher learning located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.

Johns Hopkins offers its main undergraduate and graduate programs at the Homewood campus in Baltimore and maintains full-time campuses in greater Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, and China. Johns Hopkins was the first university in the United States to emphasize research, applying the German university model developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Johns Hopkins not only pioneered the research university in the United States, it was and continues to be a leader in several areas. Of particular note is its world-renowned medical facilities and medical training program, which also happened to pioneer the acceptance of women into the field. Johns Hopkins continues its tradition of cutting edge research and high academic standards, producing several Nobel laureates as well as numerous alumni successful in a wide variety of fields.

The university was founded with the vision of advancing not only the knowledge of its students but human knowledge in general. Johns Hopkins strives for the pursuit of external knowledge and training students to be able to find it and to distribute it to the world, and in many ways it attains this goal. However, human beings are not only external and physical, but also internal and spiritual in nature. When the internal character of a person is not well developed, the knowledge they gain can be abused, causing suffering to others. Advances in human knowledge that will truly benefit society, as Johns Hopkins strives to attain, need more than training in the external aspects of life, they also depend on development of internal knowledge.

Mission and reputation

Stained Glass in historic Gilman Hall

The university opened on February 22, 1876, with the inauguration of its first president, Daniel Coit Gilman. He stated the goal of the institution as

The encouragement of research… and the advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellence will advance the sciences they pursue, and the society where they dwell.[1]

Its motto in Latin is Veritas vos liberabit – "The truth shall make you free."

Johns Hopkins is known as a research university, having adopted the Germany university model which emphasized specialized training and research.[2] Today it is world-renowned for its medical facilities, and also is of note for its Peabody Institute, a professional school of music, as well as the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. It also maintains the Johns Hopkins Press, founded in 1878, which is the oldest continuously operating university press in the United States.

Hopkins is no stranger to significant monetary gifts; in 2001, Sidney Kimmel, founder and chairman of Jones Apparel Group, donated $150 million for cancer research. Though Kimmel’s gift is the largest single gift in the university’s history, alumnus Michael Bloomberg's confirmed personal donations total over $200 million. Bloomberg, whose first donation of $5 was given in 1964, the year he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, is the largest individual benefactor in the university's history to date.[3]

According to the National Science Foundation ranking, Johns Hopkins performed $1.49 billion in science, medical, and engineering research in fiscal year 2006, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total Research & Development spending for the 28th year in a row.[4] The university also ranked first on the NSF's separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.277 billion in FY2005 on research supported by such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the NSF and the Department of Defense.[5] In FY2002, Johns Hopkins became the first university to cross the $1 billion threshold on either list, recording $1.14 billion in total research and $1.023 billion in federally sponsored research that year.

History

The university is named for Johns Hopkins, who left $7 million in his 1873 will for the foundation of the university and Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the time, this was the largest philanthropic bequest in U.S. history, the equivalent of over $131 million in the year 2006. The peculiar first name of philanthropist Johns Hopkins is the surname of his great-grandmother, Margaret Johns, who married Gerard Hopkins. They named their son Johns Hopkins, and his name was passed on to his grandson, the university's founder (1795-1873). In a commencement address to the undergraduate Class of 2001, university president William R. Brody had the following to say about the name:

In 1888, just 12 years after the university was founded, Mark Twain wrote about this university in a letter to a friend. He said:

A few months ago I was told that the Johns Hopkins University had given me a degree. I naturally supposed this constituted me a Member of the Faculty, and so I started in to help as I could there. I told them I believed they were perfectly competent to run a college as far as the higher branches of education are concerned, but what they needed was a little help here and there from a practical commercial man. I said the public is sensitive to little things, and they wouldn't have full confidence in a college that didn't know how to spell the name 'John'.

More than a century later, we continue to bestow our diplomas only upon individuals of outstanding capabilities and great talent. And we continue to spell Johns with an 's'.[6]

The university opened on February 22, 1876, with Daniel Coit Gilman as president. His vision was that of a research university that advanced not only the knowledge of its students but human knowledge in general. He believed that teaching and research were not separate but rather that success in one depended on success in the other:

The best teachers are usually those who are free, competent and willing to make original researches in the library and the laboratory …. The best investigators are usually those who have also the responsibilities of instruction, gaining thus the incitement of colleagues, the encouragement of pupils, the observation of the public.[1]

Johns Hopkins was the first university in the United States to emphasize research, applying the German university model developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher.[2] Johns Hopkins is the first American university to teach through seminars, instead of solely through lectures, as well as the first university in America to offer an undergraduate major (as opposed to a purely liberal arts curriculum) and the first American university to grant doctoral degrees.[7] As such Johns Hopkins was a model for most large research universities in the United States, particularly the University of Chicago.

"Following the lead of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, fifteen American institutions came to define the American research university…."
Arizona State University president Michael Crow, November 2002 Inaugural Address: "A New American University" [8]

The Johns Hopkins Press was begun in 1878, inspired by Gilman's view that: "It is one of the noblest duties of a university to advance knowledge, and to diffuse it not merely among those who can attend the daily lectures—but far and wide."[9] Today the Press continues to fulfill that duty, publishing books, journals, and online across the Internet.

With the opening of The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1889, followed four years later by The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins pioneered a new era of medical education. At the time, American medical schools had low entrance requirements and poor educational standards. Johns Hopkins established a new curriculum marked by an emphasis on the scientific method with the incorporation of practical experience at the hospital as well as laboratory research.[10]

The undergraduate student population at Hopkins was all male until 1970 although many graduate programs were integrated earlier. In particular, the medical school accepted women from its inception as a condition of the endowment given in 1893 by a group of wealthy women devoted to the feminist movement.[11]

Facilities

The original main university campus was in downtown Baltimore City. However, this location did not permit room for growth and the trustees began to look for a place to move. Eventually, they would relocate to the estate of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Homewood House, a wedding gift from Charles to his son Charles Jr.

The park-like main campus of Johns Hopkins, Homewood, is set on 140 acres (0.57 km²) in the northern part of Baltimore. The architecture was modeled after the Georgian-inspired Federalist style of Homewood House. Most newer buildings resemble this style, being built of red brick with white marble trim, but lack the details. Homewood House was later used for administrative offices but now is preserved as a museum.

As a part of the donation, Hopkins was required to donate part of the land for art. As a result, the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is not part of the university, is situated next to the University's campus, just southeast of Shriver Hall.

The Decker Gardens, bordered by the Greenhouse, Nichols House and the Johns Hopkins Club, were originally known as the Botanical Gardens and were used by members of the Department of Biology to grow plants for research. By the early 1950s, the gardens no longer served an educational purpose, and in 1958, when Nichols House was built as the president's residence, they were completely re-landscaped with aesthetic criteria in mind. In 1976, the gardens were done over again, and named for trustee Alonzo G. Decker, Jr. and members of his family in appreciation for their generosity to Hopkins.

The statue in the middle of the pool, the Sea Urchin, was sculpted by Edward Berge. It stood in Mount Vernon Place, near the Washington Monument, for 34 years before being replaced by a 7'10" copy, which fit in better with its monumental surroundings. Frank R. Huber, the man who left the city the money to make the copy, asked that the original be given to Paul M. Higinbotham, who donated it to the university. North of the campus, also on Charles Street, we find the Evergreen House, one of Hopkins' museums.

Medical institutions campus

This urban campus is in the East Baltimore neighborhood and is home to the School of Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the School of Nursing. It comprises several city blocks spreading from the original Johns Hopkins Hospital building and its trademark dome. The School of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University is associated with clinical practice at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Library system

The Johns Hopkins University Library system houses more than 3.6 million volumes.[12] It includes ten main divisions: the Sheridan Libraries at Homewood, the Medical Institutions Libraries, the School of Nursing Library, Abraham M. Lilienfeld Library at the Bloomberg School, the Peabody Institute Library, the Carey Business School and School of Education libraries, the School of Advanced International Studies Libraries (Sydney R. and Elsa W. Mason Library and Bologna Center Library), the R.E. Gibson Library at the Applied Physics Laboratory Library and other minor satellite locations, as well as the archives.

The Milton S. Eisenhower Library (called "MSE" by students), located on the Homewood campus, is the main library. It houses over 2.6 million volumes and over 20,000 journal subscriptions. The Eisenhower Library is a member of the university's Sheridan Libraries encompassing collections at the Albert D. Hutzler Reading Room (called "The Hut" by students) in Gilman Hall, the John Work Garrett Library at Evergreen House, and the George Peabody Library at Mount Vernon Place. Together these collections provide the major research library resources for the university, serving Johns Hopkins academic programs worldwide. The library was named for Milton S. Eisenhower, former president of the university and brother of former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Only two of the MSE library's six stories are above ground; the rest are beneath, though architects designed the building so that every level has windows and natural light. The design accords with a bit of traditional campus lore which says no structure on campus can be taller than Gilman Hall, the oldest academic building. There is no written rule regarding building height, however, and the library's design was chosen for architectural and aesthetic reasons when it was finally built in the 1960s.

The Peabody Institute Library was begun with the June 16, 1852 donation from George Peabody. George Peabody was born in South Danvers (now Peabody) in 1795 and by the year of 1851 had risen in the business world to become an investment banker in London. Danvers Mechanic Institute's decision to name George Peabody as an honorary member. Proud of their native son, the Danvers Mechanic Institute named George Peabody an honorary member on January 5, 1852. This subscription based institute, located in South Danvers , was both library and lyceum. Though the committee selected to inform Peabody of this honor waited until after Danvers was informed of the donation, it is possible his awareness of this institution influenced Peabody in deciding the type of institution he wished to create.

Programs

Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences

Located at the university’s Homewood campus at the Charles Village neighborhood in northern Baltimore, the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences is one of nine divisions of the Johns Hopkins University. Directly descended from the original Johns Hopkins University, which was founded as the nation’s first research university in 1876, the Krieger School is the core institution of the university and offers undergraduate and graduate programs.[13] With over 60 undergraduate majors and minors and over 40 full-time and part-time graduate programs, the Krieger School’s educational offerings also summer programs available to high school students, undergraduate students from any college or university, and a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program.[14] Among these academic programs, the Krieger School’s Astronomy, Biology, Creative Writing, English, German, History, and History of Art departments are among the top-ranked in the nation.[15] In addition, not only are faculty members expected to spend as much time researching as teaching, but also, there are numerous research opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students, ranging from the university-sponsored Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Program to the nationwide Fulbright Hays Program for graduate students.[16]

G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering

Engineering at Johns Hopkins was originally created in 1913 as an educational program that included exposure to liberal arts and scientific inquiry.[17] In 1919, the engineering department became a separate school, known as the School of Engineering. By 1937, over 1,000 students had graduated with engineering degrees. By 1946 the school had six departments.

In 1961, the School of Engineering changed its name to the School of Engineering Sciences and, in 1979, was renamed the G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering. The school's named benefactor is George William Carlyle Whiting, co-founder of the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.

The Whiting School of Engineering today provides academic instruction in a wide range of disciplines in nine undergraduate departments, ten graduate departments, Engineering Programs for Professionals (part-time), and the Center for Leadership Education.

Professional schools

In addition to the graduate programs at the Homewood campus, Johns Hopkins has several internationally respected graduate professional schools:

  • The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is headquartered at the university's Medical Institutions campus in East Baltimore with Johns Hopkins Hospital.
  • The Bloomberg School of Public Health, founded in 1916, is the first and largest public health school in the world.
  • The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, based in Washington, DC, near Dupont Circle, is devoted to international studies, particularly international relations, diplomacy, and economics. (It is familiarly known as "SAIS," pronounced like the second syllable of precise). SAIS has full-time international campuses in Bologna, Italy and Nanjing, China. Founded in 1943, the School became a part of the university in 1950.
  • The Peabody Institute, founded in 1857, is the oldest continuously active music conservatory in the United States. Located in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood, it became a division of Johns Hopkins in 1977. The Conservatory retains its own student body and grants its own degrees in musicology, though both Hopkins and Peabody students may take courses at both institutions.
  • The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, founded in 1889, is home to the nation's first Peace Corps Fellows Program in nursing.
  • Founded in 1909, the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education ("SPSBE") served the educational needs of working adults through flexible programming that allows serious students to complete degrees while maintaining careers. The school evolved from a teacher’s college within the Johns Hopkins University to one of eight major schools in the university. On January 1, 2007, the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education (SPSBE) separated into two new schools—the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School and the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.[18]

The university also offers education abroad through centers in Germany, Singapore, and Italy. The university operates the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, which specializes in research for the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA and other Government agencies. The Space Telescope Science Institute is located on the Homewood campus and controls, analyzes, and collects data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The recently opened Information Security Institute is the newest addition to the graduate programs affiliated with Johns Hopkins. The Institute is the "university's focal point for research and education in information security, assurance and privacy." JHUISI is the only Institute in the Whiting School with an academic degree program, offering the Master of Science in Security Informatics (MSSI).

Student life

The blueprints for a new programming board called The Hopkins Organization for Programming ("The HOP") were drawn on up during the summer and fall of 2006.

Johns Hopkins supports 12 fraternities and four sororities sponsored by the Inter-Fraternity Council and Panhellenic society, including the fraternities Sigma Chi, Sigma Phi Epsilon ("SigEp"), Sigma Alpha Epsilon ("S.A.E."), Delta Sigma Pi, Lambda Phi Epsilon, Beta Theta Pi, Alpha Delta Phi ("Wawa"), Alpha Epsilon Pi, Phi Kappa Psi ("Phi Psi"), Phi Gamma Delta ("Fiji"), and Pi Kappa Alpha ("Pike"), and the sororities Alpha Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and Phi Mu. Approximately 1/5 of male undergraduates and 1/5 of female undergraduates belong to the Greek system. Most of the fraternities maintain houses off campus; the sororities tend not to do so.

Hopkins has also invested heavily in improving campus life for its students with creation in 2001 of an arts complex, the Mattin Center, and a three-story sports facility, the O'Connor Recreation Center. The large on-campus dining facilities at Homewood were renovated in the summer of 2006.

Hopkins has also advertised the "Collegetown" atmosphere it shares with neighboring institutions, including Loyola College, UMBC, Goucher College, and Towson University, as well as the proximity of downtown Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Athletics

Athletic teams at Johns Hopkins are called the Blue Jays. The university's athletic colors are Columbia blue and black. (Sable and gold are used for academic robes.) Hopkins celebrates Homecoming in the spring to coincide with the height of the lacrosse season. Outside of the Men's and Women's Division I lacrosse teams, Hopkins participates in the NCAA's Division III and the Centennial Conference.

The school's most prominent sports team is its Division I men's lacrosse team, which has won 44 national titles - nine NCAA Division I (2007, 2005, 1987, 1985, 1984, 1980, 1979, 1978, 1974), 29 USILA, and six ILA titles. Hopkins' primary national lacrosse rivals are Princeton University, Syracuse University, and the University of Virginia; its primary intrastate rivals are Loyola College, Towson University, the United States Naval Academy, and the University of Maryland. Maryland is considered their most prominent rival in college lacrosse, the schools having met 103 times, with two of those meetings being in playoffs.

Notable alumni, professors, and staff

Johns Hopkins alumni have gone on to great success in many fields. Johns Hopkins counts 16 Nobel laureates amongst its alumni, including president Woodrow Wilson. Other notable alumni include former vice-president Spiro Agnew, secretary of state Madeline Albright, educational reformer John Dewey, sociologist Thorstein Veblen, singer Tori Amos, news anchor Wolf Blitzer, and billionaire mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg.

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 A Brief History of JHU.. The Johns Hopkins University. accessdate 2006-08-28
  2. 2.0 2.1 On Campus: Johns Hopkins University. The Baltimore Sun accessdate 2006-11-14
  3. Chris Noon. NYC Mayor Bloomberg's Anonymous Gift to University. Forbes.com, February 3, 2006.
  4. Johns Hopkins First in R&D Expenditures for 28th Year.[1]. Johns Hopkins University. accessdate 2008-04-15
  5. Johns Hopkins Gazette - JHU[2]. National Science Foundation 2007. accessdate 2007-02-02
  6. Commencement 2001. Headlines@Hopkins. accessdate 2007-02-14 [3].
  7. Johns Hopkins Magazine [4]. Johns Hopkins University 2007. accessdate 2007-01-01
  8. Michael Crow, November 2002 Inaugural Address, [5]. Arizona State University. accessdate 2006-08-28
  9. About the Press The Johns Hopkins Press. Retrieved May 17, 2008.
  10. Our History Johns Hopkins Medicine.org. Retrieved May 17, 2008.
  11. Women (Or The Female Factor) Johns Hopkins Medicine.org. Retrieved May 17, 2008.
  12. American Library Association Fact Sheet. [6]. ALA 2007 accessdate 2007-04-26
  13. Krieger School of Arts & Sciences.. Johns Hopkins University 2006. accessdate 2006-12-06
  14. Krieger School of Arts & Sciences Summer Programs.. Johns Hopkins University 2006]. accessdate 2006-12-06
  15. Krieger School of Arts & Sciences Division.. Johns Hopkins University. 2006 accessdate 2006-12-06
  16. Krieger School of Arts & Sciences - Funding.. Johns Hopkins University 2006. accessdate 2006-12-06
  17. Johns Hopkins University Catalog . Johns Hopkins University 2006. accessdate 2006-12-06}
  18. Johns Hopkins Launches New Schools of Business, Education.. Johns Hopkins University Office of News and Information 2006. accessdate 2006-12-06

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Chesney, Alan. The Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: A Chronicle: 1893-1905. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958. ISBN 0801801133
  • Hawkins, Hugh. Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN 0801869331
  • Johns, Michael. The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Curriculum for the Twenty-first Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ISBN 0801863503
  • Klingaman, William. Fifty Years of Service to the Nation: History of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. ISBN 0912025042

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External links

All links retrieved August 3, 2022.



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