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University of Vermont (UVM), USA
The University of Vermont (UVM), officially The University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, is a public land-grant research university in Burlington, Vermont. It was founded in 1791 and is among the oldest universities in the United States as it was the fifth institution of higher education established in the New England region of the U.S. northeast. It is also listed as one of the original eight "Public Ivy" institutions in the United States. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
The university's Dudley H. Davis Center was the first student center in the United States to receive a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. The largest hospital complex in Vermont, the University of Vermont Medical Center, has its primary facility on the UVM campus and is affiliated with the Robert Larner College of Medicine.
The University of Vermont was founded as a private university in 1791, the same year Vermont became the 14th U.S. state. The university enrolled its first students 10 years later. Its first president, The Rev. Daniel C. Sanders, was hired in 1800, and served as the sole faculty member for seven years. Instruction began in 1801, and the first class graduated in 1804. In 1865, the university merged with Vermont Agricultural College (chartered November 22, 1864, after the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act), emerging as the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College. The university was granted 150,000 acres, which it sold for $122,626. The University of Vermont draws 6.8 percent of its annual budget of about $600 million from the State of Vermont and Vermont residents make up 35 percent of enrollment, while 65 percent of students come from elsewhere.
Much of the initial funding and planning for the university was undertaken by Ira Allen, who is honored as UVM's founder. Allen donated a 50-acre (20 ha) parcel of land for establishment of the university. Most of this land has been maintained as the university's main green, where stands a statue of Allen.
The citizens of Burlington helped fund the university's first edifice, and, when it was destroyed by fire in 1824, also paid for its replacement. This building came to be known as "Old Mill" for its resemblance to New England mills of the time. The Marquis de Lafayette, a French general who became a commander in the American Revolution, toured all 24 U.S. states in 1824-1825 and while in Vermont laid the cornerstone of Old Mill, which stands on University Row, along with Ira Allen Chapel, Billings Library, Williams Hall, Royall Tyler Theatre and Morrill Hall. A statue of Lafayette stands at the north end of the main green.
The University of Vermont was the first American college or university with a charter declaring that the "rules, regulations, and by-laws shall not tend to give preference to any religious sect or denomination whatsoever."
In 1871, UVM defied custom and admitted two women as students. Four years later, it was the first American university to admit women to full membership into the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the country's oldest collegiate academic honor society. Likewise, in 1877, it initiated the first African American into the society.
Named for U.S. Senator Justin Smith Morrill, Morrill Hall was constructed in 1906–07 to serve as the home of the UVM Agriculture Department and the Agricultural Experiment Station.
Justin Smith Morrill, a U.S. Representative (1855-1867) and Senator (1867-1898) from Vermont, author of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act that created federal funding for establishing the U.S. Land-Grant colleges and universities, served as a trustee of the university from 1865 to 1898.
In 1924, the first radio broadcast in Vermont occurred from the college station, WCAX, run by students then, now the call sign of a commercial television station.
For 73 years, until 1969, UVM held an annual "Kake Walk” where students wore blackface. |