Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It began as the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1900. In 1912, the school became Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University. The University’s 140-acre main campus is three miles from Downtown Pittsburgh and abuts the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in the city's Oakland neighborhood.

The University has seven colleges and schools: the Carnegie Institute of Technology (engineering), the College of Fine Arts, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Mellon College of Science, the Tepper School of Business (formerly the Graduate School of Industrial Administration), the School of Computer Science, and the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management.

Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with programs that are frequently ranked among the best in the world. In the 2008 edition, U.S. News and World Report ranked Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate program 22nd in the nation, and its graduate programs in Computer Science 1st, Engineering 6th, Business 17th, Public Policy Analysis 4th, and Graphic Design 6th. The university attracts students from all 50 U.S. states and 93 countries and was named one of the "New Ivies" by Newsweek in 2006. Peer institutions of Carnegie Mellon include Caltech, Cornell, Duke, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton, Rice, Stanford and University of Pennsylvania.

History

Carnegie Technical Schools was founded in 1900 in Pittsburgh by the Scottish American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who wrote the time-honored words "My heart is in the work" when he donated the funds to create the institution. Carnegie's vision was to open a vocational training school for the sons and daughters of working-class Pittsburghers. The name was changed to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912, and the school began offering four-year degrees. In 1965, it merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to become Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, Carnegie founded Carnegie Mellon's coordinate women's college, Margaret Morrison Carnegie College in 1903 (the college closed in 1973).

There was little change to the campus between World War I and II. A 1938 master plan by Githens and Keally suggested acquisition of new land along Forbes Avenue, but the plan was not fully implemented. The period starting with the construction of GSIA (1952) and ending with Wean Hall (1971) saw the institutional change from Carnegie Institute of Technology to Carnegie Mellon University. New facilities were needed to respond to the University's growing national reputation in artificial intelligence, business, robotics, and the arts. In addition, an expanding student population resulted in a need for improved facilities for student life, athletics, and libraries. The campus finally expanded to Forbes Avenue from its original land along Schenley Park. A ravine long known as "the cut" was gradually filled in to campus level, joining "the Mall" as a major campus open space.

In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Carnegie Mellon solidified its status among elite American universities, consistently ranking in the top 25 in US News and World Report rankings. Carnegie Mellon is distinct in its interdisciplinary approach to research and education and through the establishment of programs and centers that are outside the limitations of departments or colleges has established leadership in fields such as computational finance, information systems management, arts management, product design, behavioral economics, human-computer interaction, entertainment technology, and decision science. Within the past two decades, the university has built a new University Center, theater and drama building (Purnell Center), business school building (Posner Hall), and several dormitories. Baker Hall was renovated in the early 2000s, and new chemistry labs were established in Doherty Hall soon after. Several computer-science buildings, such as Newell Simon Hall, also were established, renovated, or renamed in the early 2000s. The university is in the process of building the Gates Center for Computer Science and renovating historic academic and residence halls.

Academics

Carnegie-Mellon seven distinguished schools and colleges are:

Carnegie Institute of Technology (College of Engineering)
College of Fine Arts
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Tepper School of Business
H. John Heinz III College
Mellon College of Science
School of Computer Science

The Gates Center for Computer Science will sit on a 5.6-acre site on the university's West Campus, surrounded by Cyert Hall, the Purnell Center for the Arts, Doherty Hall, Newell-Simon Hall, Smith and Hamburg halls and the Collaborative Innovation Center. It will contain 318 offices as well as labs, computer clusters, lecture halls, classrooms and a 250-seat auditorium. The Gates Center for Computer Science was made possible by a $20 million lead gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The building is anticipated to be completed within 2 years.

On April 15, 1997, Jared L. Cohon, former dean of Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, was elected president by Carnegie Mellon's Board of Trustees. During Cohon's presidency, Carnegie Mellon has continued its trajectory of innovation and growth. He leads a strategic plan that aims to leverage the University's strengths to benefit society in the areas of biotechnology and life sciences, information and security technology, environmental science and practices, the fine arts and humanities, and business and public policy.

Carnegie Mellon's offerings in computer science, engineering, business, public policy, psychology, and the arts are considered among the best in their fields. Carnegie Mellon is ranked 22nd amongst national research universities in the most recent US News and World Report rankings. In the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) ranking of world universities, Carnegie Mellon ranks 12th overall in the United States (20th in the world) and fifth in the United States (7th in the world) in the "Engineering/IT" category. The university is one of 60 elected members of the Association of American Universities and its academic reputation has led it to be included in Newsweek’s list of “New Ivies”.

Carnegie Mellon has consistently ranked first for graduate studies in computer science in the US, in rankings released by the US News and World Report. Carnegie Mellon is also ranked #13 in the social sciences and #14 in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences among Shanghai Jiao Tong University's world's top 100 universities.Detailed information on the rankings of undergraduate and graduate programs at Carnegie Mellon is available on the University website.

Carnegie Mellon University ranked 20th in the 2007 THES-QS World University ranking

Carnegie Mellon University ranked 21st in the 2008 THES-QS World University ranking
Carnegie Mellon University ranked 27th in the 2009 THES-QS World University ranking
Carnegie Mellon University ranked 34th in the 2010 QS World University ranking

Carnegie Mellon University ranked 43th in the 2011 QS World University ranking

Hong Kong University

The University of Hong Kong (commonly abbreviated as HKU, pronounced as "Hong Kong U") is the oldest and most prestigious tertiary institution in Hong Kong. Its motto is "Sapientia et Virtus" in Latin, meaning "wisdom and virtue", and "明德格物" in Chinese. The official language of instruction is English.

History

The University of Hong Kong traces its origin to the former Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, founded by the London Missionary Society in 1887. The University itself was founded when Sir Frederick Lugard (later Lord Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard), Governor of Hong Kong, proposed to establish a university in Hong Kong. At that time, Lugard felt an urgent need to establish a university in China to compete with other Western powers, most notably Prussia, which had just opened Tongji University in Shanghai. Lugard laid the foundation stone of the Main Building on March 16, 1910 and hoped that the university would educate more Chinese people in British "imperial values", as opposed to those of other Western powers. The founding of the university was possible because of funding and support from the government and the business sector in southern China, which were both equally eager to learn "secrets of the West's success", referring to technological advances made since the Industrial Revolution.

The University of Hong Kong opened with only a Faculty of Medicine which had evolved from the Hong Kong College of Medicine. But within a year of the official opening of the University, the Faculties of Engineering and Arts were established. On December 1916, the University held its first congregation, with just 23 graduates.

The University was founded as an all-male institution. Women students were admitted for the first time only ten years later. In 1937, the Queen Mary Hospital opened and has served as the University's teaching hospital ever since. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, there were four Faculties - Arts, Engineering, Medicine, and Science. During the Second World War, HKU was temporarily closed.

After the war, the University reopened and underwent structural developments as post-war reconstruction efforts began in earnest. The Faculty of Social Sciences was established in 1967 and the Law Department in 1969. In 1982, the Faculty of Dentistry, based at the Prince Philip Dental Hospital, was established. It remains to this day Hong Kong's only faculty training dental professionals. In 1984, both the School of Architecture and School of Education became fully-fledged faculties, and in the same year a separate Faculty of Law was created. The Faculty of Business and Economics was established in 2001 as the University's tenth and youngest faculty.

HKU has nurtured the largest number of research postgraduate students in Hong Kong, making up approximately 10% of the total student population. All ten faculties and departments provide teaching and supervision for research (MPhil and PhD) students with administration undertaken by the Graduate School. About 45% of the University's academic staff are recruited from overseas.

The year 2001 marked the 90th Anniversary of HKU. Growing with Hong Kong: HKU and its Graduates - The First 90 Years was published by the University Press in 2002 as an impact study on HKU's graduates in different fields of Hong Kong.

In January 2006, despite protest from some students and various alumni, the Faculty of Medicine was renamed as the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine "as a recognition of the generosity" of Mr. Li Ka Shing and his Foundation, who pledged HK$1 billion in support of the University "general development as well as research and academic activities in medicine".

According to the latest profile indicators, the student population of the University was 21,508 in 2005-2006, comprising 11,584 undergraduates, 7,928 taught postgraduates, and 1,996 MPhil/PhD students. There were 1,278 non-local students studying at the university.

HKU attracts some of the best students in Hong Kong. For the last five years, the University has admitted around 50% of all the Hong Kong A-level Grade-A students. It accepts most of its undergraduate students from Form 7 graduates of local secondary schools through the Joint University Programmes Admissions System (JUPAS). The University also operates an Early Admission Scheme (EAS) which allows Form 6 students with at least 6 Grade A in the HKCEE (local schools) or at least 6 A* in GCSE or IGCSE (international schools) results to join the University without sitting the Hong Kong A-Level Examination. In 2005-2006, over 50% of all students eligible to apply through the Early Admission Scheme chose HKU as their first choice.

Being the oldest and the only university in Hong Kong for decades, the University of Hong Kong has educated many notable people. One of them was Dr Sun Yat-sen, father of modern China, who was a graduate of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, the predecessor of HKU. Over 40 principal officials, permanent secretaries, and Executive Council/Legislative Council members of the Hong Kong SAR Government are HKU graduates. HKU graduates also form the senior management teams of many large organisations in the private sector, covering many business and professional fields.

In 2003, the HKU management panel put forth a strategic development plan with the goal of placing HKU even higher among the world's best universities in the next decade or so.

The University will build a new campus, the Centennial Campus, west of the Main Campus. The construction of the Centennial Campus will begin in 2008, and will be completed by 2011.

In addition to increased academic research and development, HKU also aims to promote continuing education to the public, through improved links between the University and the School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPACE).

HKU is also trying to better its alumni and external network for financially sustainable development.

Academics

Faculty of Architecture
Faculty of Arts
Faculty of Business and Economics
Faculty of Dentistry
Faculty of Education
Faculty of Engineering
Faculty of Law
Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine
Faculty of Science
Faculty of Social Sciences
Graduate School
School of Professional and Continuing Education (HKU SPACE)


Hong Kong university ranked no 18th in the 2007 THES-QS World University Ranking

Hong Kong university ranked no 26th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking
Hong Kong university ranked no 24th in the 2009 THES-QS World University Ranking
Hong Kong university ranked no 23rd in the 2010 QS World University Ranking

Hong Kong university ranked no 22nd in the 2011 QS World University Ranking

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne, is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. The second oldest university in Australia, and the oldest in Victoria, its main campus is in Parkville, an inner suburb just north of the Melbourne CBD. Other campuses across Melbourne and rural Victoria have been acquired through amalgamation with smaller colleges of advanced education. It is a member of Australia's "Group of Eight" lobby group, and the Sandstone universities.

Melbourne University is ranked amongst the top universities both in Australia and the world. The University is highly regarded in the fields of the arts, humanities, and biomedicine.

The University has almost 40,000 students, who are supported by nearly 6,000 staff members (full or part-time). On November 15, 2005, Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis announced a reform programme entitled 'Growing Esteem'. The University will aim to consolidate its three core activities - Research, Learning and Knowledge transfer - in order to become one of the world's finest institutions. The University's degree structure will be changed to the 'Melbourne Model', a combination of various practices from American and European Universities, which administrators claim will make the university consistent with the Bologna Accord, ensuring its degrees have international relevance.

History

The University was established by Hugh Childers in 1853 by an Act of the Victorian Parliament passed on Saturday 22 January, and classes commenced in 1855 with three professors and sixteen students. The original University buildings were officially opened by the then Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Victoria, Sir Charles Hotham, on 3 October 1855. The first chancellor, Redmond Barry (later Sir Redmond), held the position until his death in 1880.

In the university's early days, an architectural masterplan was developed, establishing the intended prevailing building style as gothic revival. Early influential architects included Melbourne's own Joseph Reed, who was responsible for the design of many of the early campus buildings. Although the masterplan held as late as the 1930s, the 1950s saw the modernist style established as a new "house style" for the university, resulting in the mix of buildings seen today.

The inauguration of the University was made possible by the wealth resulting from Victoria's gold rush, and the University was designed to be a "civilising influence" at a time of rapid settlement and commercial growth (Selleck, 2003). The University was secular, and forbidden from offering degrees in Divinity - the churches could only establish colleges along the northern perimeter. The local population largely rejected the supposed elitism of its professoriate, favouring teaching of 'useful' subjects like law, over those they deemed 'useless' in the city's context, like Classics. The townspeople won this debate, and law was introduced in 1857, and medicine and engineering in the 1860s.

The admission of women in 1881 was a further victory for Victorians over the more conservative ruling council (Selleck 2003, p164–165). Subsequent years saw many tensions over the direction of the emerging University, and in 1902 it was effectively bankrupt following the discovery of a ₤24,000 fraud from the period 1886-1901 (the University's yearly grant was ₤15,000) by the University's Bursar, Frederick Dickson, who was jailed for seven years.

This resulted in a Royal Commission that recommended new funding structures, and an extension of disciplinary areas into agriculture and education.

By the time of World War I, governance was again a pressing concern. The Council, consisting of more businesspeople than professors, obtained real powers in 1923 at the expense of the Senate. Undergraduates could elect two members of the Council. In this period, the University tended to attract students drawn from affluent backgrounds, with a few opportunities for gifted scholarship students. The first Vice-Chancellor to be paid a salary was Raymond Priestley (1936) followed by John Medley in 1939.

After World War II, demand for Commonwealth-funded student places grew in Australia, and the University followed demand by becoming much larger and more inclusive.

The University celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2003. The University is the home of the Grainger Museum, celebrating the life and work of composer Percy Grainger.

With more than 150 years of history behind it, The University of Melbourne is not short of notable graduates. They include: Prime Ministers of Australia, Governors-General, Attorneys-General, Governors of Victoria, Surgeons, High Court Justices, State Premiers, Nobel Laureates, a First Lady of East Timor, ministers of foreign countries, Lord Mayors, academics, architects, historians, poets, philosophers, politicians, scientists, physicists, authors, industry leaders, Defence Force generals, corporate leaders and artists.

Academics

The University has twelve faculties/graduate schools:
Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning
Faculty of Arts
Faculty of Economics and Commerce
Faculty of Education
Melbourne School of Engineering
Melbourne School of Land and Environment (was Faculty of Land and Food Resources)
Faculty of Law
Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences
Faculty of Music
Faculty of Science
Faculty of Veterinary Science.

These faculties offer courses from Bachelor Degree to Doctorate level. Arts is the largest (7,222 students in 2004), followed by Science (6,328). The University has some of the highest admission requirements in the country, with the median ENTER of its undergraduates being 94.5. Furthermore, around 70% of those who finish in the top 1% of school leavers choose to study at Melbourne

Melbourne University ranked 27th in the 2007 THES-QS World University ranking

Melbourne University ranked 38th in the 2008 THES-QS World University ranking
Melbourne University ranked 36th in the 2009 THES-QS World University ranking
Melbourne University ranked 38th in the 2010 QS World University ranking

Melbourne University ranked 31st in the 2010 QS World University ranking