Since 1968, the CUNY Graduate Center has maintained an agreement with the New York Public Library, which gives faculty and students increased borrowing privileges at NYPL's research collections at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

[6] The Graduate Center building also houses the James Gallery, which is an independent exhibition space open to the public, and television studios for NYC Media and CUNY TV.

CUNY began offering doctoral education through its Division of Graduate Studies in 1961,[7] and awarded its first two PhD to Daniel Robinson and Barbara Stern in 1965.

[15] During Kelly's tenure at the Graduate Center, the university saw significant growth in revenue, funding opportunities for students, increased Distinguished Faculty, and a general resurgence.

The Graduate Center is also developing new programs to advance research prior to the dissertation phase, including archival work.

The CUNY Graduate Center's main campus is located in the B. Altman and Company Building at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City.

[28] Before 2000, the Graduate Center was housed in Aeolian Hall on West 42nd Street across from the New York Public Library Main Branch.

Five years after the center opened, over 200 graduate, undergraduate, and high school students had been mentored by CUNY ASRC scientists.

Thus, it consists of five related fields: Each research initiative occupies one floor of the CUNY ASRC building that hosts four faculty laboratories and between two and four core facilities.

The CUNY ASRC's IlluminationSpace is an interactive education center, which accommodates high school field trips and provides free community hours.

[54] The CUNY ASRC is home to one of 15 Centers for Advanced Technology (CATs)[55] designated by Empire State Development NYSTAR.

Funded by a nearly $8.8 million grant,[56] the CUNY ASRC Sensor CAT spurs academic-industry partnerships to develop sensor-based technology.

[56] Supported by a 2020 grant of up to $16 million from the Simons Foundation, a team of scientists led by Professor Andrea Alù, director of the CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative, is studying wave transport in metamaterials.

[57] The team's work could lead to greater sensing capabilities for the Internet of Things, improvements in biomedical applications, and extreme control of sound waves for medical imaging and wireless technology.

[58] Alù's $3 million fellowship, awarded in 2019, allowed him to develop new materials that enable extreme wave manipulation in the context of thermal radiation and heat management.

[59] Ulijn's $3 million fellowship, awarded in 2021, allowed him to research how complex mixtures of molecules acquire functionality and to repurpose this understanding to create new nanotechnology that is inspired by living systems.

Situated on three floors of the CUNY Graduate Center, the library is a hub for discovery, delivery, digitization, and a place for solitary study.

It participates in a CUNY-wide book delivery system and offers an interlibrary loan service to bring materials from outside CUNY to Graduate Center scholars.

In the 2022 edition of the Philosophical Gourmet Report ranked CUNY Graduate Center's philosophy program 14th best in the United States and 16th best in English-speaking countries.

[citation needed] CUNY Graduate Center describes itself as "research-intensive"[82] and is classified by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to be an R1 or have "highest research activity".

[93][94] Founded by Stephen Brier and Herbert Gutman, who sought to teach the history of everyday Americans,[95] early projects included the film 1877: The Grand Army of Starvation, about the 1877 railway strike.

[97][98] Notable curricula and teaching tools have included Freedom's Unfinished Revolution: An Inquiry into the Civil War and Reconstruction,[99] and Who Built America?

[111][112] This focus on professional development opportunities for educators has included other workshops such as the Bridging Historias: Latino/a History and Culture in the Community College Classroom program.

[119] As of 2016, the CUNY Graduate Center counted five MacArthur Foundation Fellows among its alumni, including writer Maggie Nelson as the most recent recipient.

[120][121] Among alumni graduated between 2003 and 2018, more than two-thirds are employed at educational institutions and over half have remained within New York City or its metro area.

[122] Among the CUNY Graduate Center's alumni are leading scholars across numerous disciplines, including art historian and ACT-UP activist Douglas Crimp, political scientist Douglas Hale, anthropologist Faye Ginsburg, sociologist Michael P. Jacobson, historian Maurice Berger, and philosopher Nancy Fraser.

The City University of New York has been acknowledged for its exceptional number of faculty and students who have been awarded nationally recognized prizes in poetry.

[123] Among this group include student Gregory Pardlo, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry[124] The CUNY Graduate Center holds a reputation for attracting established scholars to its faculty.

Those recruited during the drive include André Aciman, Jean Anyon, Mitchell Duneier, Victor Kolyvagin, Robert Reid-Pharr and Saul Kripke.

[131] These chartered organizations host conferences, publish online magazines, and create social events aimed at fostering a community for CUNY Graduate Center students.