Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Hopkins or JHU, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, and China. Johns Hopkins has graduate programs in medicine, public health, music, and international studies. The university is one of fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and constantly ranks in the top 20 of World University Rankings.

www.jhu.edu

The university is named after Johns Hopkins, who left $7 million in his 1873 will for the foundation of the university and Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the time, this was the largest philanthropic bequest in U.S. history, the equivalent of over $131 million in the year 2006. The university opened on February 22, 1876, with the stated goal of "The encouragement of research…and the advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellence will advance the sciences they pursue, and the society where they dwell." Hopkins is one of the schools to have been a part of the 'top ten' club of US News & World Report.

Johns Hopkins is the first U.S. university to apply the German university model developed by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher. Johns Hopkins is the first U.S. university to teach through seminars, instead of solely through lectures, as well as the first university in the United States to offer an undergraduate major (as opposed to a purely liberal arts curriculum). As such, Johns Hopkins was a model for most large research universities in the United States, particularly the University of Chicago. According to the National Science Foundation ranking, Johns Hopkins performed $1.55 billion in science, medical and engineering research in fiscal year 2007. NSF ranked the university first among 20 U.S. academic institutions in total Research & Development spending for the 29th year in a row.

History

The university's first president was Daniel Coit Gilman. Its motto in Latin is Veritas vos liberabit – "The truth shall make you free." While women had previously been admitted to graduate programs, the undergraduate program admitted only men up until 1970. Admission of women to Johns Hopkins undergraduate programs was not considered until the late 1960s. The decision to admit females was announced in October 1969, and in the fall of 1970, women were finally admitted into the undergraduate programs. In the academic year 1970–1971, 4.7% of students in the Arts and Sciences programs were women. In the year 1985–1986 the proportion of female students in the Arts and Sciences programs had increased to around 38%. Currently, the undergraduate population is 47% female and 53% male.

Origin of the name

The peculiar first name of philanthropist Johns Hopkins is the surname of his great-grandmother, Margaret Johns, who married Gerard Hopkins. They named their son Johns Hopkins, and his name was passed on to his grandson, the university's founder (1795–1873).

Milton Eisenhower, a president of JHU, was once invited to speak to a convention in Pittsburgh. Making a common mistake, the Master of Ceremonies introduced him as "President of John Hopkins." Eisenhower retorted that he was "glad to be here in Pittburgh

Faculties and Research

Johns Hopkins has a very high level of research activity. The opportunity to be involved in important research is one of the distinguishing characteristics of an undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins. About 80 percent of the university's undergraduates engage in some form of independent research during their four years, most often alongside top researchers in their fields. Johns Hopkins receives more dollars in federal research grants than any other university in the United States. Thirty-two (32) Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the university as alumni or present or former faculty members. It boasts a wide spectrum in terms of its academic strengths, particularly in art history, biological and natural sciences, biomedical engineering, creative writing, English, history, economics, international studies, medicine, music, neuroscience, nursing, political theory, public health, public policy, and the Romance languages.

Johns Hopkins is one of fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and a member of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE).

The Johns Hopkins University performed $1.55 billion in science, medical and engineering research in fiscal year 2006, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total R&D spending for the 29th year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking. The university also ranked first on the NSF's separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.55 billion in FY2007 on research supported by such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the NSF and the Department of Defense. In FY2002, Johns Hopkins became the first university to cross the $1 billion threshold on either list, recording $1.14 billion in total research and $1.023 billion in federally sponsored research that year.

Academic Reputation

Comprehensively, the The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked JHU 9th nationally and 13th worldwide in 2008. The 2008 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked Johns Hopkins 20th internationally (17th nationally). It was listed 9th among research universities by the Center for Measuring University Performance in 2007. Nationally, it is ranked 11th by State University.com , and ranked 15th in the nation by Toptiered.com .

For medical research U.S. News ranked the School of Medicine second nationally and the School of Public Health first nationally for 2007, and U.S. News and World Report has also consistently ranked the School of Public Health #1 in the nation. The 2008 Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Johns Hopkins University third in the world for biomedicine and life sciences. JHU ranks first nationally in receipt of federal research funds and the School of Medicine is first among medical schools in receipt of extramural awards from the National Institutes of Health.U.S. News and World Report ranked the School of Nursing 4th nationally among peer institutions in 2007. Newsweek named Johns Hopkins as the "Hottest School for Pre-meds" in 2008.

At the undergraduate level, the Johns Hopkins University was ranked 15th among National Universities by U.S. News and World Report, 30th among national universities by the Washington Monthly, and 81st among all colleges by Forbes. U.S. News and World Report ranks Johns Hopkins' undergraduate engineering program 14th among doctoral universities and the undergraduate business program is unranked.

Meanwhile, according to Forbes magazine's first ever rankings for academic institutions, America's Best Colleges, Johns Hopkins was the 81st best school overall, one behind Duke University and one in front of Emory University.

The Johns Hopkins University's graduate programs in English,, History, Art History, Italian, French, Spanish, Classics, Cognitive Science, Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Epidemiology, and Physics and Astronomy have also been ranked in the past several years amongst the top ten of their respective disciplines. The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) was ranked as the top master's program in international relations in a 2005 study.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital, which is affiliated with the university though legally a separate corporation, was ranked as the top hospital in the United States for the eighteenth year in a row by the U.S. News and World Report annual ranking of American hospitals.

Although no formal rankings exist for music conservatories, the Peabody Institute is generally considered one of the most prestigious conservatories in the country, along with Juilliard and the Curtis Institute.

Campuses

3 Main campuses in Baltimore, campuses and satellite facilities in the Baltimore-Washington , D.C. area, Bologna, Italy, and Nanjing, China

Johns Hopkins University was ranked 13th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking