FACTS: Washington University in St. Louis
Founded: February 22, 1853, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Chancellor: Mark S. Wrighton, Ph.D.
Reputation: Washington University is a medium-sized, independent university known internationally for excellence in teaching and research and for the quality of its faculty and students. The Washington University Medical Center is one of the nation's premier centers of health care, research, education, and community service. National rankings of America's best universities include the majority of Washington University's undergraduate programs and graduate and professional schools in the top 25. In U.S. News & World Report's undergraduate rankings for 2001, the university ranked 15th for overall undergraduate programs. These rankings place 35 of Washington University's schools and departments in the top 25 in the nation and 16 in the top 10.
Faculty and Students: The University draws 12,088 students and 2,558 faculty from all groups and from all 50 states and more than 90 international locations. Approximately 87 percent of undergraduates come from outside Missouri; 57 percent come from more than 500 miles away. In fall 1999, of the entering class of 2003, 80 percent ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class. About 50 percent of freshmen are men, and 50 percent are women. About 28 percent are multicultural or international students. Of students enrolled, 6,509 are undergraduates, and 5,579 are graduate and professional students. Day students total 10,665; evening students total 1,384.
Faculty Honors: Twenty-one Nobel laureates have been associated with Washington University, nine doing the major part of their pioneering research here. Current faculty are recognized for their memberships in national academies for science, engineering, arts and sciences, and poetry; for their service as editors of professional and scholarly journals; and for their receipt of numerous national and international fellowships. Recent honors accorded faculty include U.S. Poet Laureate, National Medals of Science, National Book Critics Circle Awards, and MacArthur Prize Fellowships.
Research: In addition to their commitment to teaching, virtually all of the full-time faculty members engage in research, including both scholarly and creative efforts. During fiscal year 1999, more than $334 million was received in total research support, including $280 million from the federal government. In the latest survey available (for fiscal 1998), the University ranked No. 9 among private universities in amount received in federal support for research and development. It is one of the nation's largest recipients of private and federal support for biomedical research. Recent highlights include having the nation's largest center for mapping the human genome; helping develop the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to find solutions to global hunger, disease and environmental degradation; being first to sequence the genome of an animal -- the 97-million-base genome of a tiny roundworm in cooperation with the Sanger Centre in Cambridge, England; and having a professor who co-invented newly patented technology that genetically engineers plants to be used as edible vaccines.
Academic Programs: The University offers more than 90 majors and almost 1,500 courses leading to bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary, as well as traditional, fields. Additional opportunities for minor concentrations and individualized programs abound. The schools and colleges are:
Staff: With 10,511 full- and part-time employees, the University is the fifth-largest employer in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
Finances: For 2000-2001, basic undergraduate tuition and fees were $24,745, and undergraduate room (newer housing) and board were $8,156. Approximately 60 percent of undergraduate students receive some form of financial assistance during the academic year.
The Washington University endowment had a market value of $4.3 billion as of June 30, 2000, ranking in the nation's top 10. The annual operating budget was $1 billion in fiscal 2000. The current Campaign for Washington University fund-raising campaign, announced in 1998, has raised more than $910 million toward a goal of $1 billion to be reached by June 30, 2004. The previous campaign, which raised $630.5 million, was the largest fundraising campaign by a university in American history when the campaign ended on December 31, 1987.
Distinguished Alumni: The more than 100,000 alumni of record are found around the world -- often as leaders in their chosen fields and communities. Well-known alumni include *Charles Eames, designer; *John Gardner, fiction writer; A.E. Hotchner, novelist; *Max Lerner, social critic and journalist; *David Merrick, Broadway producer; *Condé Nast, publisher; *Daniel Nathans, Nobel laureate in medicine; Mike Peters, editorial cartoonist and Pulitzer Prize winner; Harold Ramis, screenwriter and actor ("Ghostbusters," "Groundhog Day," etc.); Phyllis Schlafly, conservative leader; Earl Sutherland, Nobel laureate in medicine; *George Herbert Walker, founder of the Walker Cup in golf (grandfather of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and great-grandfather of George W. Bush); William Webster, former director of the FBI and CIA; and *Tennessee Williams, playwright. (* deceased)
Athletics: The first Olympic Games in the Western Hemisphere were held at the university's Francis Field and Gymnasium from Aug. 19 to Sept. 3, 1904. The university also was the site of the 1994 Athletes' Village and a host for the 1994 U.S. Olympic Festival. A founding member of the University Athletic Association, Washington University competes in NCAA Division III and fields teams in nine men's and nine women's varsity sports. For the third straight year, the Washington University women's basketball team captured the NCAA Division III National Basketball Championship and extended its winning streak to 68 games, the longest such streak in NCAA women's basketball history and second only to the 88 game streak of John Wooden's UCLA men's teams of the 1970s. The women's season highlighted an overall excellent year in every one of our intercollegiate sports, including women's softball, which made its debut this year by capturing the AAU championship, and football, which captured its first outright AAU championship.
Campuses: The university has three campuses on the western edge of St. Louis. The 169-acre Hilltop Campus features predominantly collegiate Gothic architecture in its academic buildings, many of which are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The 59-acre Medical Campus includes the School of Medicine and the hospitals and institutes of the Washington University Medical Center. The 13-acre West Campus is located in nearby Clayton. The university, including the Tyson Research Center, southwest of the city, encompasses 2,267 acres and more than 150 major buildings.
