University of Utah - Salt Lake City

The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (/ˌdɛzəˈrɛt/ (About this soundlisten)) by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest institution of higher education. It received its current name in 1892, four years before Utah attained statehood, and moved to its current location in 1900.As of Fall 2019, there were 24,485 undergraduate students and 8,333 graduate students, for an enrollment total of 32,818, making it the second largest public university in the state after Utah Valley University. Graduate studies include the S.J. Quinney College of Law and the School of Medicine, Utah's first medical school. It is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation, the university received $552 million in research and development funding in 2018, ranking it 45th in the nation. In addition, the university's Honors College has been reviewed among 100 leading national Honors Colleges in the U.S. The university's health care system includes four hospitals, including the University of Utah Hospital and Huntsman Cancer Institute, along with twelve community clinics and specialty centers such as the Moran Eye Center. The university's athletic teams, the Utes, participate in NCAA Division I athletics (FBS for football) as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. Twenty-two Rhodes Scholars, four Nobel Prize winners, three Turing Award winners, eight MacArthur Fellows, various Pulitzer Prize winners, two astronauts, Gates Cambridge Scholars, and Churchill Scholars have been affiliated with the university as students, researchers, or faculty members in its history.Soon after the Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake valley in 1847, Brigham Young began organizing a Board of Regents to establish a university. The university was established on February 28, 1850, as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, and Orson Spencer was appointed as the first chancellor of the university. Early classes were held in private homes or wherever space could be found. The university closed in 1853 due to lack of funds and lack of feeder schools. Following years of intermittent classes in the Salt Lake City Council House, the university began to be re-established in 1867 under the direction of David O. Calder, who was followed by John R. Park in 1869. The university moved out of the council house into the Union Academy building in 1876 and into Union Square in 1884. In 1892, the school's name was changed to the University of Utah, and John R. Park began arranging to obtain land belonging to the U.S. Army's Fort Douglas on the east bench of the Salt Lake Valley, where the university moved permanently in 1900. Additional Fort Douglas land has been granted to the university over the years, and the fort was officially closed on October 26, 1991. Upon his death in 1900, Dr. John R. Park bequeathed his entire fortune to the university.The university grew rapidly in the early 20th century but was involved in an academic freedom controversy in 1915 when Joseph T. Kingsbury recommended that five faculty members be dismissed after a graduation speaker made a speech critical of Utah governor William Spry. One third of the faculty resigned in protest of these dismissals. Some felt that the dismissals were a result of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' influence on the university, while others felt that they reflected a more general pattern of repressing religious and political expression that might be deemed offensive. The controversy was largely resolved when Kingsbury resigned in 1916, but university operations were again interrupted by World War I, and later The Great Depression and World War II. Student enrollment dropped to a low of 3,418 during the last year of World War II, but A. Ray Olpin made substantial additions to campus following the war, and enrollment reached 12,000 by the time he retired in 1964. Growth continued in the following decades as the university developed into a research center for fields such as computer science and medicine.During the 2002 Winter Olympics, the university hosted the Olympic Village, a housing complex for the Olympic and Paralympic athletes, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. Multiple large improvements were made to the university prior to the events, including extensive renovations to the Rice-Eccles Stadium, a light rail line leading to downtown Salt Lake City, a new student center known as the Heritage Center, an array of new student housing, and what is now a 180-room campus hotel and conference center. The University of Utah Asia Campus opened as an international branch campus in the Incheon Global Campus in Songdo, Incheon, South Korea in 2014. Three other European and American universities are also participating. The Asia Campus was funded by the South Korean government.The University of Utah provides student housing in a 34-building housing complex on campus. The complex consists of nine housing areas: Chapel Glen, Gateway Heights, Sage Point, Officer's Circle, Benchmark Plaza, Shoreline Ridge, the Donna Garff Marriott Honors Residential Scholars Community (MHC for short), the Lassonde Studios, and Kahlert Village. The MHC is a dormitory strictly for honors students and was completed in fall 2012. Built in 2016, the Lassonde Studios is part of the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute and houses 400 students; the studios also feature a "creative garage" with 3D printers and spaces for startups. Kahlert Village, completed August 2020, houses 990 first-year students. A number of campus shuttles, running on biodiesel and used vegetable oil, circle the campus on six different routes. The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) runs several buses through the university area as well as the TRAX Red Line (light rail), which runs to South Jordan. Riders can travel downtown, to FrontRunner (commuter rail), to West Valley, to the Salt Lake City International Airport, or to Draper by transferring to the TRAX Green or Blue lines. Students and staff can use their university IDs to ride UTA buses, TRAX, and FrontRunner.In 2012, the university unveiled a new plan for a more conducive campus for bicyclers called the "Bicycle Master Plan" which aims to transform the campus into a safer and more accessible place for bicyclers and to promote the increase of bicycle ridership. The plan emphasizes both campus pathways and on-street facilities that connect the core campus area with surrounding neighborhoods. The Bicycle Master Plan gives guidelines for facilities and programs that are within the University's jurisdiction. It also provides recommendations for the University to work with external entities such as UDOT, UTA, and Salt Lake City to improve bicycling conditions in locations that are important to the campus environment, but which are not under the University's direct control.