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Indiana University at Bloomington

Indiana University at Bloomington is the principal campus of the Indiana University system. It is popularly known as "IUB" or simply "Indiana University." It is located in Bloomington, Indiana, in Monroe County.

Student Body

IUB's enrollment in the fall semester of 2002 was 38,903 students, of whom 33,540 (86%) were full time. Undergraduates accounted for 30,752 (79%) students, while graduates made up the balance of 8,151.

The student body is overwhelmingly white and American. Of students enrolled in fall 2002, 1,482 (3.8%) were African-Americans, 1,212 (3.1%) were Asian, 804 (2.1%) were Hispanic, 75 (.2%) were Native American, and 35,330 (90.8%) were "other." More females (52.3%) attended IU than males. Despite IUB's status as the principal campus of the Indiana University system, only 23,817 (61%) of its students in fall 2002 were Hoosiers.

Faculty

IUB reported in fall 2002 that it employed 1,691 full-time faculty, lecturers, and academic administrators. The university employed an additional 257 faculty and 92 librarians. Of the full-time faculty, 69% were tenured.

Like the student body, IUB's faculty is white and American. Of full-time administrators, faculty, and lecturers, 99 (5.9%) were Asian, 64 (3.8%) were African-American, 51 (3.0%) were Hispanic, 2 (.01%) were Native American, and 1,474 (87.0%) were "other." More males (68.1%) than females held academic appointments at the university.

Professors at IUB were better-paid than their counterparts in the IU system. A full-time professor earned an average of $118,100, an associate professor $81,700, and an assistant professor $69,400.

Campus

IUB's 1,931 acres includes copious green space and historic buildings dating to the university's reconstruction in the late nineteenth century. The Works Progress Administration built much of the campus's core during the Great Depression. Many of the campus's buildings were built and most of its land acquired during the 1950s and 1960s, when first soldiers attending under the G. I. Bill and then the Baby Boom swelled the university's enrollment from 5,403 in 1940 to 30,368 in 1970.

The campus rests on a bed of "Indiana limestone," specifically Salem limestone and Harrodsburg limestone, with outcroppings of St. Louis limestone. Many of the campus's buildings are made from Indiana limestone quarried locally.

A stream (and storm sewer) flowing through the center of campus is named for David Starr Jordan, Darwinist, icthyologist, and president of IU and (later) Stanford University.

Notable Alumni

Notable alumni of Indiana University include co-discoverer of DNA James Watson, 1940 Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, musician John Cougar Mellencamp, U.S. Senator Evan Bayh, Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz, broadcaster Jane Pauley, actor Kevin Kline, violinist Joshua Bell, and journalist Ernie Pyle.

Notable Faculty

Notable faculty of Indiana University include the late Salvador Luria and the late Alfred Kinsey (best-known for his Kinsey Reports). Bobby Knight was coach of the IU men's basketball team from 1971 to 2000. Douglas Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher, Bach, is an IU professor of cognitive science.

History of IUB

Early years

Indiana's state government founded Indiana University in 1820 as the "State Seminary." The 1816 Indiana state constitution required that the
General Assembly (Indiana's state legislature) create a "general system of education, ascending in a regular gradation, from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all." It took some time for the legislature to fulfill its promise. While the original legislative charter was granted in 1820, construction began in 1822, the first professor was hired in 1823, and classes were offered in 1824. The first class graduated in 1830.

The school developed rapidly in its first years. The hiring of Andrew Wylie, its first president, in 1828 signified the school's growing professionalism. The General Assembly changed the school's name to "Indiana College" in the same year. In 1838 the legislature changed the school's name for a final time to Indiana University.

Wylie's death in 1851 marks the end of the university's first period of development. IU now had nearly a hundred students and seven professors. Despite the university's more obviously secular purpose, presidents and professors were still expected to set a moral example for their charges. It was only in 1885 that a non-clergyman, biologist David Starr Jordan, became president.

Between Wylie and Jordan's administrations, the University grew slowly. Few changes rocked the university's repose. One development is interesting to modern scholars: The college admitted its first woman student, Sarah Parke Morrison in 1867, making IU the first state university to admit women on an equal basis with men.

In mid-passage

In 1883, IU awarded its first Ph. D. and played its first intercollegiate sport, baseball, prefiguring the school's future status as a major research institution and a power in collegiate athletics. But two other incidents that year were far more important to the university. First, the university's original campus in Seminary Square near the center of Bloomington burned to the ground. Second, instead of rebuilding in Seminary Square, as had been the practice following previous blazes, the college was rebuilt at the far eastern edge of Bloomington. (Today, Bloomington has expanded eastward, and the "new" campus is once again at the center of the city.)

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