[18] Kansas's athletic teams compete in NCAA Division I sports as the Jayhawks, as members of the Big 12 Conference.

They field 16 varsity sports, as well as club-level sports for ice hockey, rugby, men's volleyball, soccer, basketball, rock climbing, triathlon, cross country, track, swim, pickleball, table tennis, and water skiing.

On February 20, 1863, Kansas Governor Thomas Carney signed into law a bill creating the state university in Lawrence.

[19] The law was conditioned upon a gift from Lawrence of a $15,000 endowment fund and a site for the university, in or near the town, of not less than forty acres (16 hectares) of land.

Robinson and his wife Sara bestowed the 40-acre (16 ha) site to the State of Kansas in exchange for land elsewhere.

[15] The school's Board of Regents held its first meeting in March 1865, which is the event that KU dates its founding from.

[15] According to William L. Burdick, the first degree awarded by the university was a Doctor of Divinity, bestowed upon noted abolitionist preacher Richard Cordley.

These include the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, founded in 1927, which contains important collections in mammalogy, ornithology, vertebrate paleontology, and entomology; and the Spencer Museum of Art, founded in 1928, home to a wide variety of cultural materials from all around the world, with a particular emphasis on American Indian materials.

[45] In 2016, The University of Kansas completed construction on a new home for the business school, named Capitol Federal Hall.

Capitol Federal Hall is a 166,500 square-foot building complete with state-of-the-art technology and several research labs.

In addition to its academic programs, the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications sponsors publications including The University Daily Kansan, Jayplay magazine, and KUJH TV.

Established in 1993, its goal is to provide adults with the opportunity to complete undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs.

[51] KU's School of Business launched interdisciplinary management science graduate studies in operations research during Fall Semester 1965.

The program provided the foundation for decision science applications supporting NASA Project Apollo Command Capsule Recovery Operations.

KU's academic computing department was an active participant in setting up the Internet and is the developer of the early Lynx text-based web browser.

Lynx provided hypertext browsing and navigation prior to Tim Berners Lee's invention of HTTP and HTML.

With the formation of the Big 8 conference in 1960, Kansas became a consistent winner again and fielded legendary coaches like Pepper Rodgers, Don Fambrough, Bud Moore, and Glen Mason.

The team plays at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which recently underwent an $85 million renovation to add an indoor practice facility with a 120-yard field, an outdoor practice facility with 2 full fields and three partial fields, new locker rooms, a new weight training facility, new residencies for players, new offices, new turf, new seats, and a state-of-the-art video board.

In addition, legendary University of Kentucky coach and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Adolph Rupp played for KU's 1922 and 1923 Helms National Championship teams, and NCAA Hall of Fame inductee and University of North Carolina Coach Dean Smith played for KU's 1952 NCAA Championship team.

Allen founded the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), which started what is now the NCAA Tournament.

The Review typically features the work of many writers, but periodically spotlights one author, as in the case of 2006 Nelson Poetry Book Award-winner Voyeur Poems by Matthew Porubsky.

[64][65] It is affiliated with the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies at the university, and supports community health and development through a variety of means, including its free online resource, the Community Tool Box.

[70] Affiliated with the university as students, researchers, or faculty members have been: Additionally, two people associated with the school have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Politician Bob Dole, who played football and basketball at the school but did not graduate, was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom award by Bill Clinton in 1997.