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Annual enrollment at the University Park campus totals more than 45,000 graduate and undergraduate students, making it one of the largest universities in the United States. It has the world's largest dues-paying alumni association. The university's total enrollment in 2009–10 was approximately 94,300 across its 24 campuses and online through its World Campus.
The university offers more than 160 majors among all its campuses and administers $2.03 billion (as of June 30, 2013) in endowment and similar funds. The university's research expenditures exceeded $753 million for the 2009 fiscal year and was ranked 9th among U.S. universities in research income by the National Science Foundation.
Annually, the university hosts the Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon (THON), which is the world's largest student-run philanthropy. This event is held in the Bryce Jordan Center on the University Park campus. In 2014, THON raised a program record of $13.3 million. The university's athletics teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are collectively known as the Penn State Nittany Lions. They compete in the Big Ten Conference for most sports.
History
The school was founded as a degree-granting institution on February 22, 1855, by act P.L. 46, No. 50 of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania. Centre County, Pennsylvania, became the home of the new school when James Irvin of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, donated 200 acres (0.8 km2) of land – the first of 10,101 acres (41 km2) the school would eventually acquire. In 1862, the school's name was changed to the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, and with the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, Pennsylvania selected the school in 1863 to be the state's sole land-grant college. In the following years, enrollment fell as the school tried to balance purely agricultural studies with a more classic education, falling to 64 undergraduates in 1875, a year after the school's name changed once again to the Pennsylvania State College.
George W. Atherton became president of the school in 1882, and broadened the curriculum. Shortly after he introduced engineering studies, Penn State became one of the ten largest engineering schools in the nation. Atherton also expanded the liberal arts and agriculture programs, for which the school began receiving regular appropriations from the state in 1887. A major road in State College has been named in Atherton's honor. Additionally, Penn State's Atherton Hall, a well-furnished and centrally located residence hall, is named not after George Atherton himself, but after his wife, Frances Washburn Atherton. His grave is in front of Schwab Auditorium near Old Main, marked by an engraved marble block in front of his statue.
In the years that followed, Penn State grew significantly, becoming the state's largest grantor of baccalaureate degrees and reaching an enrollment of 5,000 in 1936. Around that time, a system of commonwealth campuses was started by President Ralph Dorn Hetzel to provide an alternative for Depression-era students who were economically unable to leave home to attend college.
In 1953, President Milton S. Eisenhower, brother of then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, sought and won permission to elevate the school to university status as The Pennsylvania State University. Under his successor Eric A. Walker (1956–1970), the university acquired hundreds of acres of surrounding land, and enrollment nearly tripled. In addition, in 1967, the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, a college of medicine and hospital, was established in Hershey with a $50 million gift from the Hershey Trust Company.
In the 1970s, the university became a state-related institution. As such, it now belongs to the Commonwealth System of Higher Education, and is now part of the fully public Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. In 1975, the lyrics in Penn State's alma mater song were revised to be gender-neutral in honor of International Women's Year; the revised lyrics were taken from the posthumously-published autobiography of the writer of the original lyrics, Fred Lewis Pattee, and Professor Patricia Farrell acted as a spokesperson for those who wanted the change.
In recent years, the university's role as a leader in education in Pennsylvania has become very well-defined. In 1989, the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport joined ranks with the university, and in 2000, so did the Dickinson School of Law. The university is now the largest in Pennsylvania, and in 2003, it was credited with having the second-largest impact on the state economy of any organization, generating an economic effect of over $17 billion on a budget of $2.5 billion. To offset the lack of funding due to the limited growth in state appropriations to Penn State, the university has concentrated its efforts on philanthropy (2003 marked the end of the Grand Destiny campaign—a seven-year effort that raised over $1.3 billion)
In 2011, the university and its football team garnered major international media attention and criticism due to a sex abuse scandal in which university officials were alleged to have covered up incidents of child sexual abuse by former football team defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. Two university administrators, athletic director Timothy Curley and Gary Schultz, Senior Vice President for Finance and Business, were indicted for perjury. Sandusky was indicted and in June 2012 convicted on 45 counts for the abuse. Coach Joe Paterno was fired, and school president Graham B. Spanier was forced to resign by the Board of Trustees late in the evening of November 9, 2011. In response to Paterno's ouster, thousands gathered outside in State College on the night of the Trustees meeting and some caused damage to property.
Former FBI director Louis Freeh headed an independent investigation on the university's handling of the incidents and in July 2012 released his findings, which concluded that Paterno, along with Spanier, Curley and Schultz "conceal[ed] Sandusky's activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities" and "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade." On July 23, 2012 the NCAA penalized Penn State football with a $60 million fine, a ban from bowl games and post-season play for 4 years, a reduction in scholarships from 25 to 15 per year for four years, the vacating of all wins from 1998 to 2011, and a 5-year probationary period. Following Freeh's report, former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh headed a Paterno family funded investigation that disagreed with Freeh's findings. Thornburgh's report included the help of former FBI profiler Jim Clemente, and senior lawyer Wick Sollers, but Freeh called the Thornburg report "self-serving" and stood by his report's conclusions. Sandusky maintained his innocence.
Campuses
The largest of the university's 24 campuses, University Park is almost entirely within the boundaries of State College borough, a site chosen to be near the geographic center of the state. With an undergraduate acceptance rate of 51 percent, it is the most selective campus in the Penn State system, due primarily to the fact that students select University Park as their first-choice campus at a far greater rate than the university's other undergraduate campuses. During the fall 2010 semester, 38,594 undergraduate students and 6,223 graduate students were enrolled at University Park. Of those, 45.3 percent were female and 30.6 percent were not Pennsylvania residents.
Transportation Access
The main University Park campus is centrally located at the junction of Interstate 99 and U.S. Route 322, and is due south of Interstate 80. Before the arrival of the Interstates the University was a short distance from a Lock Haven - Altoona branch line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The last run of long distance trains from Buffalo or Harrisburg through Lock Haven was in 1971. Today, the nearest passenger rail access is in Lewistown 31 miles to the southeast. The University Park Airport, serving four regional airlines, is near University Park.
Commonwealth Campuses
In addition to the University Park campus, 19 campus locations throughout the state offer enrollment for undergraduate students. Over 60 percent of Penn State first-year students begin their education at a location other than University Park. Each of these commonwealth campuses offer a unique set of degree programs based on the student demographics. Any student in good academic standing is guaranteed a spot at University Park to finish his or her degree if required or desired, known as "change of campus" or more accurately "the 2+2 program"; where a Penn State student may start at any Penn State campus, including University Park, for 2 years and finish at any Penn State the final 2 years.
Special-mission Campuses
The Dickinson School of Law was founded in 1834 and is the oldest law school in Pennsylvania. It merged with Penn State in 2000. Students now have the choice of studying in either Carlisle or University Park, with classes teleconferenced between the two locations using high-tech audiovisual equipment. The school is ranked among the top 100 law schools nationally. It has produced a number of governors, members of congress, and judges. A number of attorneys comprise the faculty and lead several centers and institutes devoted to specific practice areas. The school's alternative dispute resolution program is ranked among the top 10 nationally. The law school also houses the School of International Affairs.
The Penn State Great Valley School of Graduate Professional Studies is a special mission campus offering master's degrees, master's certification, and continuing professional education. Located in Malvern, Pennsylvania, it also offers classes at the old Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.
Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, is the university's medical school and teaching hospital. Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center has become only the ninth hospital in the United States and 16th worldwide to implant the CardioWest temporary Total Artificial Heart when a 60-year-old man suffering from end-stage heart failure received the device in May 2008.
Pennsylvania College of Technology, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, offers certificates as well as degrees in over 10 technical fields.
In 1998, the university launched Penn State World Campus, or Penn State Online, which offers more than 60 online education programs, degrees, and certificates. Distance education has a long history at Penn State, one of the first universities in the country to offer a correspondence course for remote farmers in 1892. Examples of online programs include an MBA, master of professional studies in homeland security, a bachelor of science in nursing, and postbaccalaureate certificates in geographic information systems and applied behavior analysis. Penn State's World Campus offers 18 graduate degrees, 21 graduate certificates, 17 undergraduate degrees, and 11 undergraduate certificates. World Campus students come from all 50 U.S. states, more than 40 countries, and six continents.
Organization and Administration
Penn State is a "state-related" university, part of Pennsylvania's Commonwealth System of Higher Education. As such, although it receives funding from the Commonwealth and is connected to the state through its board of trustees, it is otherwise independent and not subject to the state's direct control. For the 2006–2007 fiscal year, the university received 9.7 percent of its budget from state appropriations, the lowest of the four state-related institutions in Pennsylvania. Initial reports concerning the 2007–2008 fiscal year indicated that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is recommending a 1.6 percent increase in state appropriations. Penn State's appropriation request, submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of Education in September, requested a 6.8 percent increase in funding.
Colleges
The University Park campus is organized into fourteen distinct colleges:
College of Agricultural Sciences
College of Arts and Architecture
Smeal College of Business
College of Communications
College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
College of Education
College of Engineering
College of Health and Human Development
College of Information Sciences and Technology
College of the Liberal Arts
Eberly College of Science
Graduate School
Schreyer Honors College
College of Nursing
In addition, the university's Board of Trustees voted in January 2007 to create a School of International Affairs, with the first classes admitted in the fall 2008 semester. The school is part of the Dickinson School of Law at its University Park campus location.
Formerly the School of Nursing, on September 25, 2013, the Board of Trustees granted the nursing program college status.
Board of Trustees
The university is governed by the 32-member board of trustees. Its members include the university's president, the Governor of the Commonwealth, and the state Secretaries of Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources, and Education. The other members include six trustees appointed by the Governor, nine elected by alumni, and six elected by Pennsylvania agricultural societies. Six additional trustees are elected by a board representing business and industry enterprises. Undergraduate students do not elect any trustees; the court case Benner v. Oswald ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not require the undergraduate students be allowed to participate in the selection of trustees.
As of 2013, the chair of the board of trustees is Keith E. Masser, a graduate of Penn State and the Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Sterman Masser, Inc.
The main responsibilities of the board are to select the president of Penn State, to determine the goals and strategic direction of the University, and to approve the annual budget. Regular meetings of the board are held bi-monthly and take place primarily on the University Park campus, although on occasion meetings are held at other locations within the Commonwealth.
Administration
The President of the University is selected by the board and is given the authority for actual control of the university, including day-to-day management. In practice, part of this responsibility is delegated by the president to other departments of the administration, to the faculty, and to the student body. Provost Rodney Erickson became President on November 9, 2011, after President Graham Spanier was fired in the aftermath of the Penn State sex abuse scandal.
The executive vice president and provost is the chief academic officer of the University. As of November 2012, the provost is Rob Pangborn and the Associate Vice President and Senior Associate Dean For Undergraduate Education is Jeremy Cohen.
Student Government
Penn State has a long history of student governance. Elected student leaders remain directly involved in the decision-making of the University administration, as provided for in the Board of Trustee's Standing Orders. Currently, there are three Student Government Associations (SGA) recognized by the University administration: the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA), the Graduate Student Association (GSA), and the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG).
The University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) is the representative student government of the 39,102 undergraduate students at Penn State's University Park campus, which was established in 2006 after the former student government, Undergraduate Student Government (USG), lost its recognition by way of a student referendum. The UPUA is composed of an Assembly of Student Representatives, an Executive Board, and a Board of Arbitration. The Executive Board is the bureaucratic branch of the UPUA and is led by Student Body President Katelyn Mullen. The Assembly, which is led by Chair Anthony Panichelli, is the legislative body of UPUA and is composed of elected representatives whose constituencies range from all of the academic units of Penn State to the areas of residency. The UPUA meets every Wednesday at 8:00 pm in 302 HUB. These meetings are open to the public. Additionally, students are able to reach out to the UPUA regarding issues at the University through its "What to Fix PSU (WTFPSU)" social media campaign.
The graduate students of the University are governed by the Graduate Student Association (GSA), which is the oldest continuously existing student governance organization at Penn State. GSA "work[s] on the behalf of the students to make sure that the graduate voice is heard by all levels of the administration and faculty at Penn State and to put on events geared towards graduate students."
The 19 commonwealth campuses of the university are governed by the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG), formerly known as the Council of Branch Campus Student Governments (CBCSG).
Academics
Penn State is regionally accredited by The Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
As of September 2009, only 24 Pennsylvania colleges and universities held Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business accreditation in business and only four in accounting. The Smeal College of Business, The Sam and Irene Black School of Business, Penn State Harrisburg, and Penn State Great Valley were among the institutions accredited.
The university offers an accelerated Premedical-Medical Program in cooperation with Jefferson Medical College. Students in the program spend two or three years at the university before attending medical school at Jefferson.
Recently, a joint venture between the Eberly College of Science and the Smeal College of Business created an integrated undergraduate/graduate program to give highly motivated students the opportunity to receive a Bachelor's Degree in Science and an MBA two to five years sooner than those pursuing a traditional path. The BS/MBA Program prepares individuals to be future leaders of the world's scientific organizations and is led by Mr. Peter Tombros and Dr. James Gardner.
Demographics
As of fall 2010, the racial makeup of the Penn State system including all campuses and special-mission colleges, was 75.4 percent white, 5.5 percent black, 4.3 percent Asian, 4.4 percent Hispanic, 0.2 percent Native American, 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian/Pac Island, 1.7 percent two or more races, 5.8 percent international students and 3.1 percent of an unknown race. Over the period 2000–2010, minority enrollment as a percentage of total enrollments has risen 5.3 percentage points,[68] while minorities as a percentage of total teaching positions rose 2.0 percentage points from 1997 to 2002.
Penn State has been the subject of controversy for several issues of discrimination. Following some violent attacks on African-Americans in downtown State College in 1988 and complaints that Penn State was not adequately recruiting African-American faculty and students to representative population levels, student activists occupied Old Main and demanded that Penn State do more to recruit minority students and address intolerance toward minority students on campus, as well as in the local community. After President Bryce Jordan canceled a promised meeting with students and organizations in the Paul Robeson Cultural Center on April 8, 1988, 250 students and activists nonviolently occupied Penn State's Telecommunications building on campus. The following morning, 50 state troopers and 45 local and campus police, equipped with helmets, batons, and rubber gloves, entered the building as the crowd outside sang “We Shall Overcome”, arresting 89 individuals for trespassing. All charges were later dismissed.
In 1990 a vice provost for educational equity was appointed to lead a five-year strategic plan to "create an environment characterized by equal access and respected participation for all groups and individuals irrespective of cultural differences." Since then, discrimination issues include the handling of death threats in 1992 and 2001, controversy around LGBT issues, and the investigation of a 2006 sexual discrimination lawsuit filed by former Lady Lions basketball player Jennifer Harris, alleging that head coach Rene Portland dismissed her from the team in part due to her perceived sexual orientation.
Six-year graduation rates for the 2004 cohort at University Park was 85.3 percent. Graduation rates for by race among this group are 86.6 percent white, 75.0 percent black, 81.9 percent Asian, 77.4 percent Hispanic, 57.1 percent Native American and 76.1 percent international students According to a 2006 survey by USA Today, the university's flagship campus, University Park, has the highest in-state tuition rates among comparable institutions nationwide. While a task force formed in 2001 to study options for tuition projections determined that the university's operating efficiency is among the highest in postsecondary education, it found that tuition increases at Penn State still consistently outpaced increases at other Big Ten Conference institutions. Student leaders of The Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG) have led annual rallies to support lower rate hikes at each of the nineteen commonwealth campuses and at the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg. In 2005, the board of trustees proposed a tuition freeze at the commonwealth campus locations as part of its state appropriation request.
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