University of Louisville

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{{Infobox_University |name = University of Louisville| 

 image         = Image:Logo-ul.gif|
 motto         = Dare to be great

|established = 1798 |type = Public| 

 president     = Dr. James R. Ramsey|
 city          = Louisville

|state = KY |country = USA |undergrad = 14,707 |postgrad = 5,898| 

 staff=  2,017|
 campus        = Urban

|free_label = Athletics |free = Cardinals |colors = Red █, and Black █| 

 endowment     = $608 million, FY 2005

|website= www.louisville.edu }}

The University of Louisville (also known as U of L, Louisville, or "the 'Ville") is a public, state-supported university located in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. It is mandated by Kentucky's General Assembly to be a "Preeminent Metropolitan Research University." U of L currently enrolls students from 119 of 120 Kentucky counties, all 50 U.S. states, and 129 countries around the world and has the largest endowment of any Kentucky public university.

The University of Louisville offers bachelor's degrees in 70 fields of study, master's degrees in 78 fields of study, and doctorate degrees in 22 fields of study. The university's admission standards are considered "more selective" by US News and World Report.

Contents

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History

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Founding: 1798-1845

The University of Louisville traces its roots back to April 3, 1798 when eight leading men of the newly established town set out to establish the Jefferson Seminary and began fundraising. Their idea came to fruition slowly, Image:UL2004.JPGthe Seminary finally being established in 1813, and left just as quickly, being closed in 1829. In 1837 the Louisville Medical Institute (LMI) opened and the Louisville Collegiate Institute (LCI) was chartered. In 1840 the LCI opened and in 1844 it gained control of the land previously belonging to the Jefferson Seminary, near the present day site of the school's medical campus.

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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. The LCI would fold soon afterwards, leaving just medicine and law as the studies. The university continued to grow in the 20th century, adding new schools in the liberal arts (1907), a graduate school (1915), dentistry (1918), engineering (1925), music (1932) and social work (1936). In 1923 the school purchased land near Eastern Parkway, on what is now the Belknap Campus, to move many of its newly formed programs, as the former campus was becoming too crowded.


In 1931 the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes was established for African American students and had an equal standing with U of L's other colleges. It was dissolved in 1951 when the university was desegregated. In the second half of the 20th century, schools were opened for business (1953), education (1968), and justice and administration (1969).


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History as a major public university: 1970-present

Talk of the University 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 tutition prices to levels unattainable for most students. At the same time, the school's well established medicine and law schools were seen as a potential 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-nit feel of the campus, and from universities already in the state system who feared funding cuts. After several years of debate, in 1970 the university joined the state system, a move largely orchestrated by then Kentucky governor and U of L alumnus Louie Nunn. Image:UofL Business school.jpg

Since becoming a state university, U of L has continued grow, adding schools of nursing (1979) and urban & public affairs (1983). The physical campus of the school has also grown, with over half of the buildings on the Belknap (or main) campus having been built since 1980. The number of residential students has also increased markedly, currently 21% of undergraduate students live on campus, with an additional 2,500 students living in the historic Old Louisville neighborhood. U of L has also attracted more students from outide the Louisville metro area. In 1986 the school enrolled students from only 108 counties, by 2000 students were enrolled from every Kentucky county. See Enrollment Statistics below.

In 1998 the university celebrated its bicentennial.

The current and 17th president of U of L is Dr. James R. Ramsey (2001-present), the former budget director for Kentucky.

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Academics

The university is best known nationally for advances made by its medical school, including transplanting the first self contained artificial heartin the world (2001), the first successful hand transplant in the world and first ever in the USA (1999), success in prosthetic face and limbs, and research in cancer, heart disease, and stem cells. In addition, U of L boasts a school of Business that is ranked among the top 10% in the nation, a law school ranked among the top 85 in the nation, and nationally respected programs in engineering, social work, and music. U of L is also the only US college to offer a minor in African American theatre, among only 21 schools in the US to offer a graduate degree in Pan-African Studies, and among the first five to require public service in its Law school curriculum.

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Schools and Colleges

The university now consists of 12 different schools and colleges (year founded)

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The Campus

Image:ULdorm.JPG The university has three campuses:

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Belknap Campus

Aquired in 1923, the Belknap campus is considered the school's main campus. It is located three miles south of downtown Louisville in the Old Louisville neighborhood, which is the largest Victorian perservation district in the United States. It houses seven of the 12 academic colleges and contains one of Auguste Rodin's only remaining "The Thinker" statues in front of the main administrative building, Grawemeyer Hall. There are only two buildings on the Belknap campus exceeding six stories tall, those being the 10 story University tower and the 11 story Unitas Tower. New construction has dramatically changed the exterior of the Belknap campus since 2000, with the addition of an athletic complex called ‘Cardinal Park’ between Floyd Street and I-65 and four new dormitory buildings off of 4th Street.

Points of interest on the Belknap Campus includes the JB Speed Art Museum, the Rauch Planetarium, and the final resting place for former US Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, whose cremated remains of are housed under the portico in the Law School named after him.

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Health Sciences Center

The U of L Health Sciences Center, also called the med campus, houses the remaining five colleges and is located just east of downtown Louisville, in the Louisville medical park which contains three other major hospitals and several specialty hospitals. This is the school's original campus, being continuously used since 1838, although none of the original buildings remain. Buildings of note on the HSC include the 14 story Medical Research Tower and the 10 story ‘University Hospital’. Currently construction is ongoing for a six story cardiovascular research building, expected to be completed by 2007, 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.

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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 - 1969 [1]. After the college folded, U of L acquired the campus. 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.

There is currently discussion of U of L co-operating a medical research center with the University of Kentucky in Pikeville, KY; and also the possibility of the school running a federal disease labratory in Somerset, KY along with the University of Kentucky and the University of Tennessee, although both plans are still in the talking stages. The school also runs the Moore Observatory in Oldham County, which is used for space viewing. Image:UofL Rauch Planetarium.jpg

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Libraries

The University of Louisville's main library is the William F. Ekstrom Library, which opened in 1981. The four story building just finished an expansion in March 2006, which will increase its total size to 290,000 sq feet, with a shelving capacity to over 2.4 million books. It is one of only five universities in the U.S. to have a robotic retrieval system, which robtically places books in a humidity free bins. There are six other libraries at the university, with a combined total of over 600,000 volumes of work, they are:

The Kersey library is being converted to an academic building that will be part of the J. B. Speed School of Engineering. Plans are to move the entire collection of the Kersey engineering library to the main library on campus, Ekstrom Library, before 2007.

Image:UofL clocktower and SAC.jpg

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Enrollment statistics

Undergraduate Student Body
  • 11,085 Full Time
  • 3,787 Part Time
  • 47% Male
  • 53% Female
Demographics
  • 3% Asian
  • 14% Black
  • 1% Hispanic
  • 81% White
  • 1% International
Top 10 Counties for Enrollment, Fall 2005
  1. Jefferson (Louisville) 10,940
  2. Oldham (La Grange) 791
  3. Hardin (Elizabethtown and Radcliff) 656
  4. Bullitt (Shepherdsville) 501
  5. Fayette (Lexington) 372
  6. Kenton (Covington, Erlanger, and Independence) 323
  7. Nelson (Bardstown) 279
  8. Daviess (Owensboro) 252
  9. Shelby (Shelbyville) 235
  10. Boone (Florence and Burlington) 218

Enrollment by Kentucky Region, Fall 2005

  1. Louisville Area 13,070
  2. Pennyroyal 1,452
  3. Lexington Area 787
  4. Northern Kentucky 769
  5. Western Coal Fields 597
  6. Eastern Coal Fields 534
  7. Purchase 270
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Notable alumni

Image:Bedwards140.jpg Famous people who graduated from U of L include:

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Notable Faculty

  • Ronald M. Atlas, co-director of Center for Deterrence of Biowarfare and Bioterrorism in the School of Public Health and Information, member of NASA’s Planetary Protection Board and the FBI Scientific Working Group on Bioforensics
  • John LaBarbera, Jazz professor, nominated for 2005 Grammy award in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble category for his CD "On the Wild Side"
  • Sena Naslund, English professor & currnet Kentucky Poet Laureate. Wrote the 1999 best-selling novel "Ahab's Wife"
  • Kerri Remmel, assistant professor of neurology and director of U of L Hospital’s Stroke Service, one of only four people to be named a 2005 McCann Scholar
  • James Speed, lecturer, previously U.S. Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln
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Notable athletic alumni

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Football

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Men's Basketball

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Sports

Image:La 2515.gif

The University of Louisville is part of the NCAA's Division I, and became a member of the Big East Conference in July 2005 after spending the previous 10 years as a member of Conference USA. U of L currently has 10 women's sports and eight men's sports, with plans to add women's lacrosse in 2007. Since 1997, the school has spent over $150 million dollars (all from private funding) in upgrading its sports facilities. Since 2004, U of L has won conference titles in Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, Field Hockey, Football, Track and Field, and Volleyball. Most U of L fans are in the Louisville Metro area, although U of L also has a sizable fan base in South Central and Western Kentucky, especially in the Columbia/ Russell Springs area, Paducah, and Owensboro.

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Men's Basketball

The school is most well known for its men's basketball program which gained prominence under Denny Crum who led the team to the NCAA Division I basketball championships in 1980 and 1986 and went to eight Final Four's. The men's basketball team currently ranks 5th in all time NCAA tournament wins and has been in the top 5 in average attendance every year since the 1982-83 season. Perennial rivals include the University of Cincinnati, the University of Memphis, and the University of Kentucky (UK). Adding fuel to the rivalry with UK was the Cardinals' hiring of Rick Pitino, the former UK head coach, as head coach in 2001. In the 2004-2005 season, the Cardinals returned to the Final Four after a 19 year absence, where they were upended by the University of Illinois.

Both men's and women's basketball teams play in historic Freedom Hall.

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Football

The Louisville football program has emerged as a yearly top-25 team under the guidance of head coaches John L. Smith (1998-2002) and Bobby Petrino(2003-present). Since 1998, U of L has been to eight consecutive bowl games.

In the 2004 season, the Cardinals went 11-1 and finished the season ranked 6th in the AP poll, the highest ever in school history. The season was capped with a Conference USA Championship and a victory over previously-undefeated Boise State in the Liberty Bowl.

In 2005, the Cardinals went 9-2 before falling to Virginia Tech in the Gator Bowl without standout quaterback Brian Brohm, who had a season-ending knee injury against Syracuse. Also in 2005, defensive end Elvis Dumervil tied the NCAA single-season sack record with 24 and won the Ted Hendricks Award, given annually to college football's top defensive end.

None of the football program's recent success would have been possible without the vision and efforts of former coach Howard Schnellenberger, who was the head coach from 1985-1994. His greatest achievement at U of L was a 34-7 drubbing of Alabama in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl, which culminated in U of L's first national ranking (11th) and a 10-1-1 record.

The University of Louisviile football program's home is Papa John's Cardinal Stadium.

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Cheerleading

The cheerleading squads are also a national powerhouse, with the co-ed squad winning 11 NCA (National Cheer Association) championships since 1985 and the all girl squad winning 5 consecutive championships since 2001.

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Sports Trivia

  • Since the renewal of the football rivalry between the Kentucky Wildcats and the Louisville Cardinals in 1994, the team that has won the football game has lost the following basketball game every year, except in 2003 when U of L won both.
  • Bob Valvano, the brother of former North Carolina State men's basketball coach and cancer victim Jim Valvano, is the t.v. color analysts for Louisville Cardinal men's basketball.
  • The only number retired by the University of Louisville's football program is #16, which was worn by NFL legend Johnny Unitas. A statue of Johnny Unitas prominently overlooks the North Endzone of Papa John's Cardinal Stadium and is touched by every Cardinal as they enter the field prior to kickoff.
  • The film "The Replacements" was based on former Cardinal quarterback Ed Rubbert (played by Keanu Reeves), who led the Washington Redskins' 1987 strike team to a 3-0 record en route to the franchise's Super Bowl XXI championship.
  • The high five was popularized by the Cardinal basketball team during its run to the 1980 NCAA Championship.
  • U of L is one of two universities in the state of Kentucky to have a women's rowing team, the other being Murray State University.
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University Trivia

  • Despite being just five miles from the Indiana border, U of L is the closest to Kentucky's geographic center (NW of Lebanon, KY) among all eight public universities. It also sits at the lowest elevation of any Kentucky public university.
  • U of L was the first municipally supported college in the United States.
  • A Union fortress was located on the hill overlooking the eastern edge of Cardinal Park (that I-65 is now on) during the Civil War, giving it the name Fort Hill.
  • The U of L marching band has performed "My Old Kentucky Home" at every Kentucky Derby since 1936.
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See also

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References

Kleber, John "The Encyclopedia of Louisville" pp 902-903 History of the University of Louisville

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External links

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