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Georgetown University, formally the The President and Directors of Georgetown University, is a private university in the United States, located in Georgetown, a historic neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded on January 23, 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll, it is both the oldest Roman Catholic and oldest Jesuit university in the United States, and is a member institution of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. It is ranked by both The Times of London* and in studies cited by The Economist * amongst the leading Catholic institutions of higher learning in the world, with Georgetown’s undergraduate divisions at large, the university’s law school and the School of Foreign Service ranking amongst the nation’s best according to US News and World Report. Georgetown is also widely perceived by the American public as one of the nation’s most prestigious and politically influential universities. The university currently has 6,719 full-time and part-time undergraduate students, 4,193 full-time and part-time graduate students on the Main Campus, 1,992 students at the Law Center and 748 students in the School of Medicine as of 2005-06. The university employs approximately 1,166 full-time and 534 part-time faculty members across its three campuses. History The founding date is the subject of some controversy. For a time, the university claimed 1634 as its founding date, this being the year that Jesuit education began in what is now Georgetown. The year can be seen carved in stone above the entryways of Copley Hall and White-Gravenor Hall, where a stained glass window also reads "Est. 1634." If one takes this as the university's founding date, Georgetown is the oldest university in what is now the United States, predating Harvard by two years. Construction on the surviving buildings of the formal college began in 1788, the first student was admitted in 1791, and classes commenced in early 1792. The date that is now officially recognized–January 23, 1789–is when the Jesuit order acquired the title to the land that became the core of the campus. Interestingly, the Jesuit religious order was under prohibition or suppression during the period of Georgetown's founding, and was restored only in the early 19th century. The main campus's location was briefly in Montgomery County, Maryland before the Georgetown area, including the campus, was absorbed into the District of Columbia in 1790 (See history of Washington, D.C. and Georgetown). The Georgetown Seal is an anachronism in this respect, with the Latin around it reading Collegium Georgiopolitanum ad ripas Potomaci in Marylandia–"Georgetown College on the shores of the Potomac in Maryland." Georgetown College suffered from some financial strain in its early years, but was bolstered when it received a federal charter in 1815. The Medical School was founded in 1850, and the Law Department (now Law Center) in 1870. The school was greatly affected during the U.S. Civil War, as most of the students left to fight for both sides. Civil War soldiers were also housed in many of the buildings on campus. Only seven students graduated in 1869, down from over 300 a decade prior. After the war, Georgetown College Boat Club, the school's rowing team, adopted blue and gray as its colors to signify the peaceful unity between students from the North and those from the South. Subsequently these colors were adopted as the official school colors. The school did not begin to recover from the war until the presidency of Reverend Patrick Healy, S.J. (1874-1881). Healy, the first acknowledged African-American to head an American university, is credited with reforming the undergraduate curriculum and the Medical and Law programs, as well as creating the Alumni Association. In addition to the liberal arts division, now known as the Georgetown College, Georgetown University has eight other divisions. The undergraduate School of Nursing was founded in 1903 and was combined with a graduate nursing program and a Health Studies Track to form the School of Nursing and Health Studies. The Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) was founded in 1919 by Father Walsh in response to the need for institutions to train American youth for leadership in foreign commerce and diplomacy. The School of Languages and Linguistics (now the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics within Georgetown College) was organized in 1949. The School of Business Administration was created out of the SFS in 1955. It was renamed for Robert E. McDonough in 1999 and is now the McDonough School of Business offering both undergraduate and MBA degrees. The graduate programs are the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Law Center, the School of Medicine, the School of Continuing Studies, and the Center for Professional Development. In December 2003, Georgetown completed its Third Century Campaign, joining only a handful of universities worldwide to raise at least $1 billion for financial aid, academic chair endowment, and new capital projects. Faculty For a listing of some of the recent faculty of note, see the category: Georgetown University faculty The Georgetown University faculty includes a number of notable former political and business leaders, most of whom teach on a part-time basis. These include former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, former CIA director George Tenet, former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former US Senator and Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Ambassador-at-Large Robert L. Gallucci, former Prime Minister of Spain José María Aznar, Public Health Advisor of the World Bank Bernard Liese, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and former President of Poland Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Notable faculty of Georgetown's past include Jan Karski, William Boyd-Carpenter and Carroll Quigley. Alumni For a comprehensive list of alumni, see the list of notable Georgetown University alumni. Besides numerous members of the United States Congress and the senior diplomatic corps, many Heads of state (including Bill Clinton, a former President of the United States) are alumni of the university and Georgetown graduates have served at the head of such diverse and important institutions as the AFL-CIO, the United States Marine Corps, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Football League, the University of Illinois, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Texas A&M University, the American Medical Association, the Internal Revenue Service, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Conservative Party of Canada, the United States Navy and the Peace Corps. Major corporations run by graduates include Citigroup, Investor AB and Lucent Technologies. Major regulatory bodies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board have had G.U. alumni at the helm in recent years. In any election cycle, a number of state governors will, generally, hold Georgetown degrees (Indiana and New Hampshire elected graduates in 2004, and graduates stood for election in Alabama, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the immediate prior cycles). In the international military arena, both the current head of the U.S. Multinational Force in Iraq and the Supreme Commander of NATO are alumni from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. In law, both the Solicitor General of the United States and a current Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court received their undergraduate degrees at Georgetown. Two of the fifteen most powerful women in the world as rated by Forbes magazine in 2005, (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the President of the Philippines, and Patricia Russo, the Chair of Lucent Technologies) are alumnae of the university. The only current female owner of a major league baseball team is Jamie McCourt, the President of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Speakers and Visitors Those who have come recently include President Bill Clinton; British Prime Minister Tony Blair; Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales; President Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan; President Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze; opera singer Plácido Domingo; Noam Chomsky; Sam Donaldson; many senators and former senators, including John Kerry, Bob Dole, Joe Lieberman, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; many ambassadors, both US and foreign, including those from China and Syria; and many former presidents, including former presidents of Spain, Italy, Poland, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. Campus
Academics Bachelors, master's, and doctoral programs are offered through Georgetown College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Robert Emmett McDonough School of Business, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, the Law Center, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing and Health Studies, the School of Continuing Studies, and the Center for Professional Development. Majors and Certificates Georgetown University offers undergraduate degrees in 48 different majors in the four undergraduate schools, as well as offering opportunities for students to design their own individualized courses of study. All majors in the College are currently open to students in the College and the School of Business as minors, as are certain other fields, including Catholic Studies, Culture and Politics, Environmental Studies, African-American Studies, Justice and Peace Studies, Medieval Studies, Social and Political Thought and Women's Studies. Students in the College and School of Foreign Service may complete certificate programs in African Studies, Arab Studies, Asian Studies, Australian and New Zealand Studies, European Studies, International Business Diplomacy (SFS only), Justice & Peace Studies (SFS only), Latin American Studies, Medieval Studies (SFS only), Muslim-Christian Understanding, Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies, Science, Technology and International Affairs (College only), Social and Political Thought (SFS only) and Women's Studies (SFS only). A new certificate in International Development will be offered for undergraduates of any school by the end of 2006. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences In 1995 the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences celebrated its 175th anniversary. The Graduate School is now the second largest at Georgetown and offers multiple programs in 34 separate departments. One characteristic of the School's dramatic growth in the last decade has been the development of an increased number of joint-programming opportunities. Students may now pursue courses of study in more than 40 separate joint-program configurations. Georgetown College - Bachelor of Arts Georgetown College - Bachelor of Science Walsh School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University Law Center - Law School Programs (JD, JSD, LLM) The Georgetown University Law School is among the ten most selective law schools in the United States and is considered to be in the "top 14," a legal insider recognition of its reputation. The school is a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Its current dean is T. Alexander Aleinikoff. The law school ranked in the top 10 in 7 categories of U.S. News 2006 edition, including tax, constitutional law, international law, commercial/finance law and others. Georgetown University Medical Center - Biomedical Graduate Programs (PhD, MS, Cert.) The Biomedical Graduate Education division at Georgetown is a subset of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, located on the Medical Center campus. The degrees offered range from traditional PhDs and MS programs to MS specializations in such areas as Nuclear NonProliferation and Complementary/Alernative Medicine, and even Certificate programs in Biotechnology, Biodefence & Public Policy, or Biohazardous Threat Agents. The Biohazardous Threat Agents graduate certificate is currently the only fully recognized graduate program at Georgetown that is available online. Georgetown University Medical Center - School of Medicine (MD, MD/PhD, MD/MBA, MD/MS) The Georgetown University School of Medicine Faculty includes 626 full-time and 2,000 part-time faculty members from 8 basic science and 16 clinical departments, and one center. The School of Medicine also allows students to pursue joint degrees with the MD program, such as: MD/PhD, MD/MBA, MD/MS (only the MS in Biohazardous Threat Agents and the MS in Complementary/Alternative Medicine are allowed for this pairing), as well as MD with a Research Track where MD students spend time in the laboratory and develop a research thesis in their specialty. McDonough School of Business
School of Nursing and Health Studies Undergraduates may pursue study leading to the degrees of Bachelor of Science in Nursing or the Bachelor of Science in Health Studies. The BSN degree prepares students for examination for licensure as a professional nurse. The Bachelor of Science in Health Studies degree program currently offers three tracks: Human Science, International Health, and Health Care Management Policy. The School of Nursing and Health Studies also offers: a Baccalaureate Program for RNs, Second Degree BSN Program, a Certificate in International Health for Nursing Majors, and a Certificate in Population Health. Undergraduates have various opportunities to study abroad to put their various fields into practice. Graduate fields of study include: Acute and Critical Care Clinical Nurse Specialist, Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, Direct Entry to Advanced Practice, Family Nurse Practitioner, Nurse Anesthesia, Nurse Midwifery, Post-Masters Nursing Programs, and a Master of Science in Health Systems Administration. Admissions, etc. Georgetown's overall undergraduate acceptance rate as of 2006 was 21%, among the most selective of any university in the United States. The undergraduate schools maintain an Early Action admissions program. According to admissions fact sheets, applicants applying to Georgetown typically consider Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Boston College, University of Notre Dame, Duke University, and the University of Virginia during their application and subsequent enrollment periods. The School of Medicine's acceptance rate for the entering class of 2006 was 4.3%, for which 8,832 applicants applied and 1,321 were interviewed. University-Funded Organizations Georgetown University has a large number of student organizations that cover a variety of interests: student government, club sports, organizations focused on media and publications, performing arts, religion and volunteerism and service. A current list can be found here on the university's website. Georgetown's societies include the nation's oldest debating club, the Philodemic Society, and the oldest continually running dramatic society in the United States, the Mask & Bauble Society. Georgetown University has several student-run newspapers. The Hoya is the university's oldest newspaper. It has been in print since 1920, and since 1987 has published twice weekly. The Georgetown Voice, founded in a split from the Hoya in 1969, is a weekly newsmagazine and The Georgetown Independent is a journal of news, commentary and the arts published monthly. The Georgetown Academy and The Georgetown Federalist are conservative campus newspapers (neither of which is actually funded by the University). The University also has a campus-wide television station, GUTV, and a radio station, WGTB. Independent Organizations In addition to student organizations and clubs, Georgetown University is also home to the largest student-run company in the nation, Students of Georgetown, Inc. *, also known as "The Corp" which does business in excess of $3 million a year. The Georgetown University Grilling Society (GUGS, pronounced "jugs"), formed in 2002, gained national attention after participating in a grilling competition televised on the Food Network. The Georgetown Heckler is an online comedy newspaper founded in 2003 by Georgetown students. The Georgetown Chimes, the university's oldest (founded in 1946) and only all-male singing group, are renowned for their entertaining performance style, devotion to the group and university, and unique ethos. The Chimes, though not officially affiliated or funded by the university, are famous for going on to become high achievers and for remaining influential and involved with the university. Fraternities Georgetown University does not recognize the existence of fraternities, sororities, and secret societies among the student body. Georgetown's Student Affairs Policy specifically prohibits "2. Fraternities and sororities: single sex groups with ritualized, demeaning or secret membership practices, and specifically those organizations affiliated with the national Intrafraternity Council, Pan Hellenic Association, and Pan Hellenic Council. 3. Secret societies: groups that do not disclose their purpose, membership or activities, or whose purpose, membership or activities are discriminatory" from receiving access to university benefits. Many students are not aware of their existence either, as fraternities and sororities enjoy only limited visibility. Quite a few fraternities and sororities existed before the above policy was implemented in the '60s, most of which became inactive soon after. Therefore, most chapters are of more recent origin. There are also some minority interest fraternities and sororities chartered at other District universities that include Georgetown students among their membership. Fraternities with chapters active on campus are Delta Phi Epsilon (DPE) (Georgetown's Chapter of this professional foreign service fraternity, Alpha Chapter, was established in 1920. Its members include several deans of the Walsh School of Foreign Service, as well as Jesuits), Alpha Epsilon Pi (Georgetown's chapter, Eta Sigma chapter, affiliated with campus Hillel, was established in 2002, making it the school's first social fraternity presently existing), the Georgetown University Sigma Phi Epsilon SEC chapter (Established in early 2005, the chapter is scheduled to receive its charter in Fall 2006). Co-ed fraternities at Georgetown include the business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi (charter revoked 2006), Alpha Kappa Psi Professional Business Fraternity, and Alpha Phi Omega (APO). Alpha Phi Omega is the only fraternity recognized and given funding by the university, as it is seen as a service organization. The Delta Phi Epsilon Foreign Service Sorority is the only sorority chartered at Georgetown University. Athletics
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