University of Iowa

Founding and early history , Iowa City, 1855 The University of Iowa was founded on February 25, 1847, just 59 days after Iowa was admitted to the Union. The Constitution of the State of Iowa refers to a State University to be established in Iowa City "without branches at any other place." The legal name of the university is the State University of Iowa (frequently abbreviated as SUI), but the Board of Regents approved using "The University of Iowa" for everyday usage in October 1964. The first faculty offered instruction at the university beginning in March 1855 to students in the Old Mechanics Building, located where the student recreational area east of Van Allen Hall is now. In September 1855, there were 124 students, of whom forty-one were women. The 1856–57 catalog listed nine departments offering ancient languages, modern languages, intellectual philosophy, moral philosophy, history, natural history, mathematics, natural philosophy, and chemistry. The first president of the university was Amos Dean. The original campus consisted of the Iowa Old Capitol Building and the (4.05 hectares) of land on which it stood. Following the placing of the cornerstone July 4, 1840, the building housed the Fifth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa (December 5, 1842) and then became the first capitol building of the State of Iowa on December 28, 1846. Until that date, it had been the third capitol of the Territory of Iowa. When the capital of Iowa was moved to Des Moines in 1857, the Old Capitol became the first permanent "home" of the university. In 1855, the university became the first public university in the United States to admit men and women on an equal basis. In addition, Iowa was the world's first university to accept creative work in theater, writing, music, and art on an equal basis with academic research. The university was one of the first institutions in America to grant a law degree to a woman (Mary B. Hickey Wilkinson, 1873), to grant a law degree to an African American (Alexander G. Clark, Jr. in 1879), and to put an African American on a varsity athletic squad (Frank Holbrook in 1895). The university awarded its first doctorate in 1898. west of the Mississippi River. It was the first university to use radio (later television, too) in education, in 1932, and it pioneered in the field of standardized testing. Also, the University of Iowa was the first Big Ten institution to promote an African American to the position of administrative vice president (Phillip Hubbard, promoted in 1966). Under the leadership of Carl Seashore in 1922, Iowa became the first university in the United States to accept creative projects as theses for advanced degrees. Traditionally, graduate study culminates in the writing of a scholarly thesis, but Iowa accepted creative works including a collection of poems, a musical composition, or a series of paintings to be presented to the graduate college in support of a degree. In so doing, Iowa established a creative standard in qualifying for the Master of Fine Arts degree and secured a place for writers and artists in the academy. The university's Program in Creative Writing, known worldwide as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was founded in 1936 with the gathering together of writers of both poetry and fiction. It was the first creative writing program in the country, and it became the prototype for more than 300 writing programs, many of which were founded by Workshop alumni. The workshop remains the most prestigious creative writing program in the country and one of the most selective graduate programs of any kind, typically admitting fewer than five percent of its applicants. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission conducted several experiments examining the effects of iodine-131 administration in pregnant women (scheduled for abortions) and infants in 1953 and 1963, respectively. The university was the first state university to recognize the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Allied Union (in 1970). A shooting took place on campus on November 1, 1991. Six people died in the shooting, including the perpetrator, and one other person was wounded. This was one of the deadliest university campus shootings in United States history. In the summer of 2008, flood waters breached the Coralville Reservoir spillway, damaging more than 20 major campus buildings. Several weeks after the floodwaters receded, university officials placed a preliminary estimate on flood damage at $231.75 million. Later, the university estimated that repairs would cost about $743 million. The reconstruction and renovation work took a decade, but the university has recovered and taken several preventive measures with the hope of avoiding a tragic repeat of the event. In January 2009, UNESCO designated Iowa City the world's third City of Literature, making it part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. In 2015, the Iowa Board of Regents selected Bruce Harreld, a business consultant with limited experience in academic administration, to succeed Sally Mason as president. The regents' choice of Harreld provoked criticism and controversy on the UI campus due to his corporate background, lack of history in leading an institution of higher education, and the circumstances related to the search process. The regents said they had based their decision on the belief that Harreld could limit costs and find new sources of revenue beyond tuition in an age of declining state support for universities. ==Campus==