Johns Hopkins University, founded as the nation's first research university in 1876, originally hired "thirty of the profoundest scholars in the varied field of literature". The original academic divisions of the university consisted of the Faculty of Philosophy, School of Hygiene and Public Health (now
Bloomberg School of Public Health),
School of Medicine, and School of Engineering. The
School of Advanced International Studies became part of the university in 1950, and later the
Peabody Conservatory was added in 1976. A decade later, in 1979, engineering departments were once more separated with the founding of the
G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering. In December 1992,
Zanvyl Krieger, a 1928 alumnus, gave a $50 million challenge grant to the School of Arts and Sciences, "the largest monetary gift in the university's history and one of the largest in American higher education". The school was renamed for Krieger, who explained that he chose to give the gift to the arts and sciences school because "People don't realize that everything emanates from the arts and science college. It is the nucleus of the foundation of the university as a whole". Under the plan, graduate student admissions would be reduced by 25% across all departments, but the stipends for those admitted would be increased. Additionally, as senior faculty retire, more junior teaching faculty would be hired to take their place. In January 2017, the school's dean assured them that the center would not close, but would be reorganized around one of three proposals: "...keeping the center’s name while rethinking its role in relation to other humanities departments; renaming the department as something that more 'clearly conveys its identity and focus'; or transforming the humanities center into a comparative literature department..." In November 2017, after consultation with faculty in the department, the school announced the that the Humanities Center would be renamed the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature. In October 2017, the institution canceled its Russian major because it no longer aligned with the partner program in Russian at
Goucher College in
Towson, Maryland. Although students can still take Russian courses, a major in Russian is no longer offered. In 2020, the university established a promotion and tenure committee to serve the entire institution. It was set up as a three-year pilot program and will be evaluated after that period. In September 2025, the university announced that the Department of Neuroscience at the
School of Medicine and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the School of Arts and Sciences would be merged into a new cross-university department for neuroscience. ==Academics==