History of the University of Chicago
Most of the original financing came from oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, and the American Baptist Education Society The new university had a dynamic young president William Rainey Harper.
John Boyer notes that the key promoters Frederick Gates and Thomas Goodspeed:[1] in 1888 and 1889, were acutely aware of the misery and public humiliation that had accompanied the collapse of the first institution, having had considerable difficulty raising the $400,000 needed to match John D. Rockefeller’s historic offer of $600,000 to re- create a first- rate Baptist college in Chicago.The University of Chicago's Hyde Park campus began in 1890 through the efforts of the American Baptist Education Society and oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, who later called it "the best investment I ever made.
His choice reflected his strong desire to realize Thomas Jefferson's dream of a natural meritocracy's rise to prominence, determined by talent rather than familial heritage.
He believed that a great university should maintain the study of faith as a central focus, to prepare students for careers in teaching and research and ministers for service to the church and community.
The College of the University of Chicago remained quite small compared to its East Coast peers such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, until around the middle of the 20th century.
President Hutchins' vision for what he hoped would become the preeminent university in the world eventually faltered amidst opposition from several groups, most notably Northwestern's medical faculty.
To make the university a preeminent undergraduate academic institution, administrators decided to implement President Hutchins' philosophy of secular perennialism.
This led to the innovation of the common core, an educational strategy in which students read original source materials rather than textbooks, and discuss them in small groups using the Socratic method rather than a lecture approach.
In addition to pioneering this new undergraduate curriculum, the university took steps to eliminate "distractions" such as varsity sports, fraternities, and religious organizations.
[20] As part of the Manhattan Project, University of Chicago chemists, led by Glenn T. Seaborg, began to study the newly manufactured radioactive element plutonium.
[27] In 1959, alumnus Paul Sills, who many consider the father of improvisational theater, founded The Second City along with Bernard Sahlins, also a graduate of the university.
[28] In 1964, Professor Ralph Shapey founded the University of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players, one of the oldest and most successful professional new music groups in the nation.
In 1983, the museum became a separate unit of the university devoted to serving the entire community, including educational outreach activities in local public schools.
In response, the university became a major sponsor of a controversial urban renewal project for Hyde Park, which profoundly affected both the neighborhood's architecture and street plan.
The university was criticized for publishing fiction deemed obscene by a columnist in the Chicago Daily News and suppressed the Winter 1959 issue, which contained more material from the Naked Lunch manuscript.
[36] In 1999, then-President Hugo Sonnenschein announced plans to relax the university's famed core curriculum, reducing the number of required courses from 21 to 15.
When The New York Times, The Economist, and other major news outlets picked up this story, the university became the focal point of a national debate on education.
In 2006, the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute became the center of controversy when U.S. federal courts ruled to seize and auction its valuable collection of ancient Persian artifacts, the proceeds of which would go to compensate the victims of a 1997 bombing in Jerusalem that the United States believes was funded by Iran.
[citation needed] The ruling threatens the university's invaluable collection of ancient clay tablets held by the Oriental Institute since the 1930s but officially owned by Iran.
The new arts center "will be a venue for the artistic expression and multidisciplinary inquiry, performance and production of our faculty and students", said President Robert Zimmer in his May 3 note.
[40] Also in 2008, the University of Chicago and particularly its surrounding neighborhood of Hyde Park attracted international media attention because of former Law School lecturer Barack Obama's election as President of the United States.
