University of Louisville

The University of Louisville (also known as U of L) is a public, state-supported university located in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is mandated by the Kentucky General Assembly to be a "Preeminent Metropolitan Research University". U of L currently enrolls students from 118 of 120 Kentucky counties, all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and 116 countries around the world.

The University of Louisville Hospital is one of the most prestigious medical research centers in the United States, its innovations repeatedly making international headlines. The most recent discovery occurred in 2006 when U of L researchers Albert Bennett Jenson and Shin-je Ghim were part of the team that discovered a vaccine that is 100 percent effective against cervical cancers caused by the human papillomavirus, marketed by Merck and GlaxoSmithKline as Gardasil. In 2001, U of L implanted the first fully self-contained artificial heart in the world, and in 1999 performed the first successful hand transplant. U of L is also credited with developing the Pap smear test, the first civilian ambulance, the nation's first accident services, now known as an emergency room (ER), and the first blood bank in Louisville.

Since 1999, U of L has made the largest gains of any university in National Institutes of Health research ranking, with its NIH funding increasing 277 percent and its rank increasing 30 places. As of 2006 among public U.S. universities, the melanoma clinic ranks third, the neurology research program fourth, and the spinal cord research program 10th in NIH funding.

The school's main campus, known locally as the Belknap Campus, is located in the historic Old Louisville neighborhood, which is the U.S.'s largest Victorian era National Preservation District. U of L's endowment, which has increased 355 percent since 1995, ranks 91st among all U.S. public universities.

U of L is also known for its successful athletics program. The Louisville Cardinals are the only men's basketball program in the history of the game to win an NCAA championship (1980 and 1986), an NIT championship (1956) and an NAIB championship (1948). Since 2000, U of L has won a BCS bowl game, appeared in the men's basketball Final Four and the college baseball World Series, and won a national championship in Track and Field.

Academics and innovations
University of Louisville faculty and alumni have been a part of several notable firsts and innovations, including:


 * George Papanicolaou developed the Pap smear to prevent cervical cancer at U of L.
 * Alumnus Donald Elbert headed the team of engineers that developed Astroturf.
 * Alumnus Mark Wadsworth developed the "eyes" of the Mars rovers which provided the first close-up views of the planet.
 * Alumnus Stuart L. Scott is the chief information officer for Microsoft.

The University of Louisville offers bachelor's degrees in 70 fields of study, masters' degrees in 78 fields of study, and doctorate degrees in 22 fields of study. The school's admission standards are considered "more selective" by U.S. News & World Report.

Academically, U of L boasts a School of Business that is ranked among the top 7 percent in the nation, a dental school ranked in the top 10 regularly according to board scores, a law school tied with two other colleges for the 97th ranking in the nation, and nationally respected programs in engineering, social work, and music. UofL is also the only U.S. college to offer a minor in African American theatre, among only 21 schools in the U.S. to offer a graduate degree in Pan-African studies, and among the first five to require public service in its law school curriculum.

The Brandeis Medal is awarded by the law school's Louis D. Brandeis Society, and is given in tribute to Brandeis, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice from Louisville and the namesake of the university's law school.

U of L has historically had many such outreach programs in Western Kentucky, but without controversy since the school has traditionally had a strong alumni and fan base there.

In 1998, the university celebrated its bicentennial.

Founding and early years: 1798-1845


The University of Louisville traces its roots back to 1798 when the Kentucky General Assembly chartered a school of higher learning in the newly established town of Louisville and ordered the sale of 6,000 acres (24 km²) of South Central Kentucky land to pay for its implementation. On April 3, 1798, eight community leaders began local fund raising for the school, then known as the Jefferson Seminary. It opened 15 years later in 1813 and offered college and high school level courses in a variety of subjects. It was headed by Edward Mann Butler from 1813 to 1816, who later headed the first public school in Kentucky in 1829 and is considered Kentucky's first historian. Despite its early success, pressure from newly established public schools and media critiques of it as "elitist" would force its closure in 1829. UofL is among the first municipally supported colleges in the U.S.

Eight years later, in 1837, the Louisville City Council established the Louisville Medical Institute at the urging of renowned physician and medical author Charles Caldwell. After his dismissal from Lexington's Transylvania University, Caldwell would lead the LMI into becoming one of the best medical schools west of the Allegheny Mountains. In 1840, the Louisville Collegiate Institute, a rival medical school, was established after a LMI faculty dispute. It opened in 1844 on land near the present day Health Sciences campus.

History as a private municipal university: 1846-1969
In 1846 the Kentucky legislature combined the Louisville Medical Institute, the Louisville Collegiate Institution, and a newly created law school into the University of Louisville, on a campus just east of Downtown Louisville. The LCI folded soon afterwards. The university would experience rapid growth in the 20th century, adding new schools in the liberal arts (1907), graduate studies (1915), dentistry (1918), engineering (1925), music (1932) and social work (1936).

In 1923, the school purchased what is today the Belknap Campus, where it moved its liberal arts programs and law school, with the medical school remaining at the downtown campus. The school had attempted to purchase a campus donated by the Belknap family in The Highlands area in 1917 (where Bellarmine University is currently located), but the plan was rebuffed after a tax increase to pay for it was voted down. However, the school chose to name the new Eastern Parkway campus after the Belknaps for their efforts.

In 1931, U of L purchased the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes (est. 1879 and now Simmons College of Kentucky), as a compromise plan to desegregation. As a part of U of L, the school had an equal standing with the school's other colleges. It was dissolved in 1951 when U of L desegregated.

In the second half of the 20th century, schools were opened for business (1953), education (1968), and justice and administration (1969).

History as a public university: 1970-present
Talk of U of L joining the public university system of Kentucky began in the 1960s. As a municipally funded school (meaning funding only came from the city of Louisville), the movement of people to the suburbs of Louisville created budget shortfalls for the school and forced tuition prices to levels unaffordable for most students. At the same time, the school's well established medicine and law schools were seen as assets for state system. Still, there was opposition to U of L becoming public, both from faculty and alumni who feared losing the small, close-knit feel of the campus, and from universities already in the state system who feared funding cuts. After several years of heated debate, the university joined the state system in 1970, a move largely orchestrated by then Kentucky governor and U of L alumnus Louie Nunn.

The first years in the public system were difficult, as enrollment skyrocketed while funding was often insufficient. Several programs were threatened with losing accreditation due to a lack of funding, although schools of nursing (1979) and urban & public affairs (1983) were added.

Shumaker era 1995-2002
John Shumaker was named U of L's president in 1995. Shumaker was a very successful fund raiser, and quickly increased the school's endowment from $183 to $550 million. He also developed the REACH program to encourage retention. In 1997, he hired athletics director Tom Jurich, who restored an athletics program facing NCAA violations and Title IX lawsuits. Jurich raised over $100 million to raze abandoned factories and old parking lots next to campus and replace them with state-of-the-art on-campus athletic facilities with beautiful landscaping, which vastly improved the aesthetics of the Belknap Campus. Cardinal Park is now admired by thousands who pass daily on nearby Interstate 6

An important development during the Shumaker years was the state mandate change in 1997. Previously, the school was legally bound to have a large percent of non-traditional students. The new mandate was more vague, and simply stated the school should be "a preeminent urban research university." With the new mandate and a much improved campus, U of L began enrolling more traditional students from outside Jefferson County. In 1990, 73 percent of students were from Jefferson County, by 2005 that number had fallen to 50 percent. In 1995, the school's endowment became the largest in the public system, and in 2000 UofL joined the University of Kentucky as the only public universities to enroll students from every Kentucky county.

Ramsey era 2002-present
The school's current and 27th president is James R. Ramsey, the former state budget director. Ramsey has continued the endowment and fund raising growth started by Shumaker, but added more emphasis on improving the aesthetics of the Belknap Campus. To this end, he started a million dollar "campus beautification project" which painted six overpasses on the Belknap Campus with a 'U of L theme' and planted over 500 trees along campus streets, doubled the number of on-campus housing units, brokered a deal with the state to get the outdated I-65 ramps redone, and oversaw the ongoing conversion of several abandoned factories into condominiums. The school's federal research funding has also doubled under Ramsey, and three buildings have been built for nanotechnology and medical research. He is also recognized for being able to keep Tom Jurich as athletic director, with speculation that Jurich would go elsewhere. UofL's retention rates have also increased from 30 percent in 1999 to 40 percent in 2006.

UofL's growth has created strained relations with the other public schools, especially the University of Kentucky. In 2005, UK officials accused U of L of "mission creep" after president Ramsey met with a Pikeville hospital to discuss opening a lung cancer research center there. UK's VP of Institutional Advancement threatened that "UofL should stay out of Eastern Kentucky." Strong criticism came from The Courier-Journal (Louisville's local daily newspaper and the state's largest), which editorialized that the University of Kentucky was the state's primary research university and that the mission of U of L was more urban in focus. However, public opinion and the media in the rest of state supported the idea of a cooperative research center, which caused UK to soften its stance. Today, a center between the two schools in Pikeville is in the talking stages. Several months later, Somerset U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers requested that a federal disease laboratory be located in Somerset with UofL and UK as its caretakers.

UPS tuition reimbursement and Metropolitan College
In addition to their nationwide partial tuition reimbursement programs, UPS (United Parcel Service) offers U of L (along with Jefferson Community College) students who work overnight at Worldport, the company's worldwide air hub at Louisville International Airport, full tuition reimbursement through a program called Metropolitan College. Currently over 75 percent of the workers at the air hub are students.

Schools and colleges
The university now consists of 12 different schools and colleges (year founded):
 * College of Arts and Sciences (1907)
 * College of Business (1953)
 * College of Education and Human Development (1968)
 * Graduate School (1918)
 * J. B. Speed School of Engineering (1925)
 * Kent School of Social Work (1936)
 * Louis D. Brandeis School of Law (1846)
 * School of Dentistry (1887)
 * School of Medicine (1837)
 * School of Music (1932)
 * School of Nursing (1979)
 * School of Public Health and Information Sciences (1968)

The campuses
The university has three campuses:

Belknap Campus
Acquired in 1923, the Belknap Campus (pronounced "Bel-nap" with the K silent) is considered the school's main campus. It is located three miles south of downtown Louisville in the Old Louisville neighborhood. It houses seven of the 12 academic colleges and contains one of Auguste Rodin's few remaining "The Thinker" statues in front of the main administrative building, Grawemeyer Hall. The tallest buildings on the Belknap Campus are University Tower and Unitas Tower, both 11 stories.

The Belknap Campus has expanded greatly in recent years, with land housing abandoned factories in the area being purchased and redeveloped. Projects built since 1998 include Papa John's Cardinal Stadium and adjacent Trager Center fieldhouse, Owsley B. Frazier Cardinal Park (which includes Ulmer Stadium for softball, Trager Stadium for field hockey, Cardinal Track and Soccer Stadium, Bass-Rudd Tennis Center, locker rooms, a playground and a cushioned walking path), Jim Patterson Stadium for baseball, Ralph R. Wright Natatorium, Owsley Brown Frazier Sports Medicine Center, and a lacrosse stadium. With new parking at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium, non-resident parking was moved there and the parking lots near campus were redeveloped with new dormitory buildings, including the Bettie Johnson Apartments, Kurz Hall (commonly called Phase 2), Minardi Hall, and Community Park. U of L has developed the campus almost entirely with private funding and by using private companies to build and run the new residential halls since the state has offered little financial help for the projects.

Other points of interest on the Belknap Campus include the Rauch Planetarium, the Covi Gallery of the Hite Art Institute, and the final resting place for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis under the portico in the Brandeis Law School. Surrounded by, but not part of the campus, are the Speed Art Museum, a private institution not affiliated with the University of Louisville, and the Confederate Civil War Monument, located at the juncture of 2nd and 3rd streets, which honors Confederate Civil War dead; this was built there before the school grew to surround the land it stands on, which is owned by Louisville Metro. The Kentucky State Data Center, the state's official clearing house for census data and estimates, is located next to Bettie Johnson Hall.

Development projects
Several important projects are under construction or planned in the near future, including the reconstruction of the I-65 ramps to the Belknap Campus, converting the four lanes of Eastern Parkway into a two-lane road with bike lanes and a landscaped median to improve pedestrian access to the Speed School, the moving of several university offices to allow the existing facilities at Arthur Street and Brandeis Avenue to be converted to commercial property and restaurants, and the conversion of the old macaroni factory on Floyd Street into a condominium complex which will include five acres of commercial property. Nearly completion is the Yum! Center (a men's basketball and volleyball practice facility). A 12,000 square-foot Olympic sports training/rehab center adjacent to Trager Stadium is also under construction.

Long-term plans include reconstruction of the 3rd Street railway tunnel between Winkler Avenue and Eastern Parkway, purchase of the Standard Oil Building at 450 West Cardinal Boulevard to provide more on-campus parking, improvement of Stansbury Park, and conversion of the former Reynolds Building on 4th Street into a mixed-use commercial and residential project. Planned improvements to athletic facilities include revamping the rowing facilities at Phase II of Waterfront Park and expansion of Papa John's Cardinal Stadium to 63,600 seats.

Health Sciences Center
The U of L Health Sciences Center, also called the med campus, is located just east of Downtown Louisville in the Louisville medical park which contains three other major hospitals and several specialty hospitals, and it houses the remaining five colleges. This is the school's original campus, being continuously used since 1846, although none of the original buildings remain. Buildings of note on the HSC include the fourteen story Medical Research Tower and the ten-story University Hospital. Construction is finished for a recently-opened, downtown Louisville Cardiovascular Research Innovation Institute building to be directed by a researcher, Stuart Williams from the University of Arizona; and an eight story, $70 million biomedical research building. Faculty and students also work with neighboring hospitals including Jewish Hospital and Kosair Children's Hospital, as well as outreach programs throughout Kentucky, including in Paducah, Campbellsville, and Glasgow.

Shelby Campus
The Shelby Campus is located on Shelbyville Road near Hurstbourne Parkway in Eastern Louisville. This campus was originally the home of Kentucky Southern College, a Southern Baptist liberal arts college that operated from 1961 to 1969. After the college folded, it transferred all its assets and liabilities to U of L. It currently only has three buildings which are used for night classes and seminars, although construction of a Bio-terrorism Research facility is in the works. The Shelby Campus is also home for the ITRC Building which houses the IT Resource Center for Homeland Security. The ITRC conducts communications and IT research for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as well as seminars and training in emergency preparedness and response.

Panama campus and other facilities
The University of Louisville also runs a sister campus in Panama City, Panama, which has an MBA program. The full-time program takes around 16 months to complete and enrolls about 200 students. It is currently ranked the 4th best MBA program in Latin America. U of L recently opened another MBA program in Athens, Greece.

The school also operates the Moore Observatory in Oldham County, which is used for space viewing. There are also plans to purchase several hundred acres in Oldham County for the school's equine program.

Libraries
The University of Louisville library system is a member of the Association of Research Libraries, a fraternity of the nation's top college libraries. UofL's main library branch is the William F. Ekstrom Library, which opened in 1981. The four story building finished an expansion in March 2006, which increased its total size to 290,000 sq feet and shelving capacity to over 1.3 million books. It is one of only five universities in the U.S. to have a robotic retrieval system, which robotically places books in humidity-free bins.

There are five other libraries at the university, with a combined total of more than 400,000 volumes of work:
 * The Margaret M. Bridwell Art Library
 * Dwight Anderson Memorial Music Library
 * Kornhauser Health Sciences Library
 * Brandeis Law School Library
 * University Archives and Center

The old Kersey Library Building will be converted to an academic building for the J. B. Speed School of Engineering. The Kersey Library collection was fully integrated into Ekstrom Library on January 15, 2007.

Media
One main criticism of the university is that, despite being in a large city, it has no university-controlled television station and no student-operated radio station. However, U of L does hold a prominent role in the city of Louisville's "Public Radio Partnership" which features three NPR stations under one roof. The school holds one-third of the seats on the Partnership's board of directors.

The school formerly controlled its namesake station, WUOL, but that station is now the classical music part of the Partnership.

There is also an independent student-run weekly newspaper, The Louisville Cardinal. The newspaper was originally founded in 1926, and has maintained financial and editorial independence since 1980. The newspaper, which is overseen by a board of local media professionals and run by a student editor in chief, is one of the few truly independent college/university newspapers in the country.

Greek life


Coming soon a complete list of all organizations on campus.


 * Sororities
 * Sigma Kappa 1922 Chapter Alpha Theta
 * Pi Beta Phi 1925 Chapter Kentucky Alpha
 * Delta Phi Epsilon 1927 (closed since 1951)
 * Zeta Tau Alpha 1927 (closed since 1977)
 * Kappa Delta 1928 Chapter Alpha Xi
 * Delta Zeta 1928 Chapter Beta Gamma
 * Chi Omega 1929 Chapter Beta Gamma
 * Alpha Omicron Pi 1983 Chapter Pi Alpha
 * Alpha Sigma Kappa 2000 Chapter Gamma
 * Alpha Kappa Alpha Chapter Beta Epsilon
 * Sigma Gamma Rho
 * Zeta Phi Beta Chapter Delta Theta


 * Fraternities
 * Beta Theta Pi 1971 Chapter Delta Pi
 * Delta Upsilon 1949 Chapter Sigma Chi Sigma
 * Kappa Alpha Psi
 * Kappa Sigma 1983 Chapter Mu Eta
 * Lambda Chi Alpha 1948 Chapter Zeta Sigma Zeta
 * Pi Kappa Alpha 1993 Chapter Kappa Zeta
 * Phi Delta Theta
 * Phi Kappa Tau 1947 Chapter Beta Beta
 * Sigma Alpha Epsilon 1999 Chapter Kentucky Sigma
 * Sigma Chi 1989 Chapter Iota Lambda
 * Sigma Phi Epsilon 1947 Chapter Kentucky Beta
 * Tau Kappa Epsilon 1942 Chapter Alpha Chi
 * Triangle 1941 Chapter Louisville

Undergraduate student body

 * Total enrollment is 21,841 as of Fall 2006.
 * 79.7% of students are Kentucky residents.
 * 48.8% of students are from Jefferson County (down from 64% in 1995)
 * Average ACT Score: 24.2 (up from 20.7 in 1995)
 * 6 year graduation rate: 40.6% (up from 33% in 2004)
 * 15,804 Full Time
 * 6,037 Part Time
 * 46.8% Male
 * 53.2% Female

Demographics

 * 77.4% White
 * 10.9% African American
 * 5.2% Other Minorities
 * 5.4% Non Resident Aliens
 * 1.1% Unknown

Top 15 counties for enrollment, Fall 2006 (Largest city in county)




Top five non-U.S. countries for enrollment, Fall 2006

 * 1) Panama 196*
 * 2) China 159
 * 3) India 148
 * 4) Egypt 69
 * 5) Canada 41

Top five non-Kentucky states for enrollment, Fall 2006

 * 1) Indiana 1,380**
 * 2) Ohio 197
 * 3) Florida 132
 * 4) Tennessee 121
 * 5) Georgia 114


 * *Panama enrollment due mostly to UofL's Panama City campus, which offers a full time MBA program.
 * **Beginning in 1998, UofL began offering in-state tuition to residents of Clark, Floyd, Harrison, Washington, and Crawford counties in Indiana

Athletics
The Louisville Cardinals (affectionately referred to as "the Cards") joined the Big East Conference on July 1, 2005, after spending the previous 10 years as a member of Conference USA. UofL is traditionally known for its men's basketball and women's volleyball teams. The men's basketball program is also the nation's most profitable NCAA basketball program, with a net annual revenue of $18.5 million, considerably more than the $12.9 million of archrival Kentucky. Furthering the rivalry - U of L has more registered college license plates than the University of Kentucky (18,300 to 17,000); a fourfold increase since 2004.

In recent years, the football program has gained national prominence, with a 32-5 record since 2004 and two of three seasons finishing top five in the final BCS poll. The Cardinals won the 2006 Big East title and the 2007 Orange Bowl, U of L's first-ever BCS bowl game. In addition to U of L's traditionally strong fan base in Louisville, Southern Indiana, and Western Kentucky (particularly in the cities of Bowling Green, Paducah, and Owensboro), UofL's fans are now coming from other parts of the state, especially in the Northern Kentucky and the Lexington/Frankfort areas. U of L currently has radio affiliates throughout the state. Since 2004, all U of L games and coaches' shows on WHAS-TV Louisville have been televised on every cable provider in Kentucky.

The total sales of U of L merchandise has tripled since 2001, now ranking 27th nationally in sales, second highest in the Big East Conference and the third highest among all urban universities (Southern California and Miami). Since 1997, the school has spent more than $150 million (all from private funding) in upgrading its sports facilities. Since 2004, U of L has won conference titles in eight sports. U of L currently fields 13 women's teams and 10 men's teams.