New York University College of Arts and Science
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| NYU College of Arts and Science | |
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| Motto: | Perstare Et Praestare - To Persevere and to Excel |
| Established: | 1832 |
| Type: | Private |
| Location: | New York, New York, USA |
| Dean: | Matthew S. Santirocco, Ph.D. |
| Colors: | Violet and White |
| Website: | www.cas.nyu.edu |
The New York University College of Arts and Science (CAS) is the oldest and largest academic unit of NYU, founded in 1832. This liberal arts college is located at Washington Square in Manhattan and the administrative offices of the college are in the Silver Center for Arts & Science. Over the 175 years following the founding of the college, NYU developed an urban campus around Washington Square. In 2007, there were a total of 21,327 undergraduate students enrolled at NYU. The College of Arts and Science enrolled 7,660 students or 36% of all undergraduates. Admission to the College is highly selective.
CAS offers two types of undergraduate degrees:
- Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and
- Bachelor of Science (B.S.).
To graduate, all CAS students must also complete the requirements of the Morse Academic Plan (commonly referred to as "MAP"). MAP is the undergraduate liberal arts core curriculum of CAS and is designed to foster analytical thinking. MAP includes courses in western civilization, social policy, scientific inquiry, and expressive culture. CAS also requires foreign language proficiency and an expository writing course. CAS courses are traditionally either seminars or weekly and semi-weekly lectures with larger lectures being divided into recitations.
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[edit] Academics
The Faculty of Arts & Science, the intellectual core of the College, has 650 members that are organized into 29 departments, 23 programs and centers and 14 research centers, among them many Guggenheim Fellows, Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize, National Medal of Science and MacArthur Fellowship winners.
The Dean of the College of Arts & Science along with the Faculty of Arts & Science administers the undergraduate liberal arts academic program. Arts & Science is divided into divisions for Humanities, Science and Social Science. CAS has many prominent departments. Some of them include the Philosophy Department which is ranked #1 among 50 Philosophy Departments in the English-speaking world. The Economics Department is considered top 5-10. The Politics Department is ranked in the top 20 annually, and the International Relations program is ranked 10th nationwide.[1] The Mathematics Department which is part of the Courant Institute is also considered to be one of the best in the country, ranking #5 in citation impact [2], and #1 in applied mathematics.[3]
Students in CAS usually have two advisors: one advisor in the department of their major and one faculty mentor. Many CAS students complete a thesis or independent study project. The Dean's Undergraduate Research Fund provides grants for the research of CAS students. The college also offers Freshman Honors Seminars and Collegiate Seminars for incoming students and Honors Lectures for upperclassmen. These seminars are small courses taught by senior faculty in their respective areas of expertise. In addition to senior faculty, NYU's president John Sexton, several university deans, and various leaders from government and businesses around New York City are among those who teach Freshman Honors and Collegiate seminars.
[edit] Phi Beta Kappa
The College of Arts and Science is home to the second oldest chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in New York State. The Beta of New York at New York University was established in 1858. [4] Some notable individuals elected to Phi Beta Kappa at New York University include Arista Records founder Clive Davis and Pulitzer Prize winning composer and MacArthur Fellowship winner Milton Babbitt.
[edit] History
The history of the College of Arts and Science begins with the founding of the University itself in 1831 by a group of prominent New Yorkers. Among them was Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury for President Thomas Jefferson.
From the beginning, the College focused on teaching both the classics and pragmatic subjects, such as languages, sciences, engineering and agriculture. Students were allowed to enroll for course work leading to a diploma or take individual courses without the pressures of a core curriculum. In 1832, the NYU College of Arts and Science held its first classes in rented rooms in four-story Clinton Hall, located near City Hall. In 1833, construction began on the University Building, a grand, gothic structure that would house all of the university's functions at Washington Square. Two years later, the university community took possession of its permanent home on Washington Square East, beginning NYU's enduring and sometimes tumultuous relationship with Greenwich Village. The original University Building was replaced by a larger renovated structure in 1906, which was named Main Building. Main Building was renamed the "Silver Center" in 2002 after Julius Silver, a 1922 graduate of CAS, bequeathed $150 million to the College.
Since NYU was modeled after the University of London, CAS was designed to be non-denominational, unlike other American liberal arts colleges which had the support of various religious denominations. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many American colleges only offered a classical education coupled with a strong theological component. CAS provided an education to all qualified young men at a reasonable cost and abandoned the exclusive use of "classical" curriculum. The College was privately financed through the sale of stock and NYU's establishment through a joint stock company prevented any religious group or denomination from dominating the affairs and management of the institution. It is interesting to note that although the College was designed to be open to all men regardless of background, the college's early classes were composed almost exclusively of the sons of wealthy Protestant New York families.
The early College of Arts and Science offered space to many scientists without university affiliation. Samuel F. B. Morse invented the telegraph while teaching at the College, John W. Draper had a lab at the University Building as well as Samuel Colt, who invented the "Colt" in his remnants at Washington Square. The University Building offered space for ateliers to artists who sought refuge at the bohemian community around Washington Square Park.
In 1895, NYU Chancellor Henry Mitchell MacCracken, decided to reserve the Washington Square campus for NYU's professional schools and to relocate University College, as CAS was then entitled, to a campus in the Bronx. The area of the Bronx where University College relocated was named University Heights. That campus was designed by Stanford White and associates. In 1903, undergraduate liberal arts education was resumed at the Washington Square campus with the development of the "Collegiate Division," which later became Washington Square College in 1913. For the next 60 years, NYU provided an undergraduate liberal arts education in two colleges and in two locations - at University College in the Bronx and Washington Square College in Greenwich Village.
In 1973, feeling the pressures of imminent bankruptcy, NYU President, James McNaughton Hester, negotiated the sale of the University Heights campus to the City University of New York. While University Heights alumni fought to keep the Bronx campus, today some suggest that the sale was a "blessing in disguise" because the University Heights campus was a financial burden and the management of two liberal arts colleges was difficult.
After the sale of the University Heights campus, the university consolidated undergraduate education at Washington Square. University College merged with Washington Square College to form one liberal arts academic unit, the College of Arts & Science.
[edit] Programs of Study
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