[23] Carnegie Mellon's 157.2 acre (63 ha) main campus is five miles (8 km) from downtown Pittsburgh, between Schenley Park and the neighborhoods of Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, and Oakland.

Built in the 1950s, Skibo Hall's design was typical of mid-century modern architecture but was poorly equipped to deal with advances in computer and internet connectivity.

It came late to the Carnegie Mellon campus because of the hiatus in building activity and a general reluctance among American universities to abandon historical styles.

By the 1960s, the International Style was adopted to accomplish needed expansion quickly and affordably with the swelling of student ranks in the aftermath of the GI Bill in 1944.

In 2006, Carnegie Mellon Trustee Jill Gansman Kraus donated the 80-foot (24 m)-tall sculpture Walking to the Sky, which was placed on the lawn facing Forbes Avenue between the Cohon University Center and Warner Hall.

On April 15, 1997, Jared L. Cohon, former dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, was elected president by Carnegie Mellon's board of trustees.

In 2006, following negotiations between President Cohon and South Australian Premier Mike Rann, CMU opened a campus of the Heinz College in the historic Torrens Building in Adelaide, Australia.

This complex will connect to the Tepper Quadrangle, the Heinz College, the Tata Consultancy Services Building, and the Gates-Hillman Center to create an innovation corridor on the university campus.

[42] On February 5, 2013, Carnegie Mellon announced the selection of Subra Suresh, Director of the National Science Foundation and Dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Engineering, as its ninth president effective July 1, 2013.

Departments include English, History, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Psychology, Social and Decision Sciences, and Statistics as well as an Institute for Politics and Strategy.

Devices developed by the institute have been designed to enable communication for locked-in patients,[104] treatments for Parkinson's disease,[105] improved brain imaging technology using artificial intelligence,[106] and electrodes that work with coarse, curly hair.

[110] [111] [112] [113] NI also provides direct administrative and monetary support for the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition, a long-running collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh.

[117] The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon, with offices in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and Arlington, Virginia.

Apple Inc., Intel, Google, Microsoft, Disney, Facebook, IBM, General Motors, Bombardier Inc., Yahoo!, Uber, Tata Consultancy Services, Ansys, Boeing, Robert Bosch GmbH, and the Rand Corporation have established a presence on or near campus.

[124] Additionally, Carnegie Mellon and other U.S. universities in Education City have been criticized for being essentially complicit in Qatar's corruption, connections with Hamas and their questionable human rights record by continuing to operate there.

Student organizations provide social, service, media, academic, spiritual, recreational, sport, religious, political, cultural, and governance opportunities.

Examples include Scotty, the Scottish Terrier mascot, The Tartan student newspaper, Skibo Gymnasium, The Thistle yearbook, and the Céilidh weekend every fall semester for homecoming.

The Traditional is a typical college dormitory setting, a long hallway with a series of 1-3 person rooms and a community bathroom shared with an entire floor or wing.

Options for upperclassmen include Fifth & Clyde, Morewood Gardens, West Wing, Doherty, Fairfax, Margaret Morrison, Fifth Neville, Shady Oak, Shirley, Forbes & Beeler, and Woodlawn Apartments as well as Henderson, Resnik, Roselawn, Spirit, Tech, Webster, and Welch Houses.

The original wooden fence finally collapsed in the 1990s due to the weight from over 1' of surrounding paint, and was immediately replaced with an identical one manufactured from concrete.

[160] Varsity teams are fielded in basketball, track, cross country, football, golf, soccer, swimming and diving, volleyball, tennis, and softball.

In addition, club teams exist in ultimate frisbee,[161] rowing,[162] rugby, lacrosse, hockey,[163] baseball,[164] softball, skiing & snowboarding,[165] soccer, volleyball, water polo,[166] and cycling.

On November 28, 1926, the 6–2 Carnegie Technical Institute football team shut out the undefeated Notre Dame Fighting Irish 19–0 at Forbes Field.

Recent All-Americans from the track team are Bram Miller (2021), Tommy Vandenberg (2014–2015), Brian Harvey (2007–2009), Davey Quinn (2007), Nik Bonaddio (2004, 2005), Mark Davis (2004, 2005), Russel Verbofsky (2004, 2005) and Kiley Williams.

[171] Students can participate in any level of competition across multiple sports including wiffle ball, dodgeball, basketball, flag football, ultimate frisbee and many more.

[174] Alumni in the fine arts include artists Andy Warhol, Cote de Pablo, Philip Pearlstein,[175] John Currin,[176] Shalom Neuman,[177] Jonathan Borofsky[178] and Burton Morris;[179] authors John-Michael Tebelak and Kurt Vonnegut; Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg; television series creator, Steven Bochco,[180] actors René Auberjonois, Katy Mixon, Holly Hunter, Matt Bomer, and Zachary Quinto, children's author E.L. Konigsberg, David Edward Byrd, Broadway actress Amanda Jane Cooper,[181] Rock and Broadway Theater Poster Artist and graphic designer;[182] Indian film actor Sushma Seth, Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, mountaineer and author Aron Ralston, and architect Mao Yisheng.

[184] John Forbes Nash, a 1948 graduate and winner of the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, was the subject of the book and subsequent film A Beautiful Mind.

[186] Other movies filmed at Carnegie Mellon include The Mothman Prophecies, Dogma, Lorenzo's Oil, Hoffa, The Dark Knight Rises, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and Flashdance.

[187] Schwartz also collaborated with drama student John-Michael Tebelak to expand his master's thesis project titled Godspell, created under the direction of Lawrence Carra, into a musical.

Based on a lecture he gave in September 2007 – shortly after he learned his cancer had metastasized – his book quickly rose to the top of bestseller lists around the country.