Introduction - University of Chicago

“If the first faculty had met in a tent, this still would have been a great university,” said President Robert Maynard Hutchins, the University’s fifth president, in his 1929 inaugural address. The first faculty assembled on Opening Day, 1892, were indeed an impressive bunch: lured from colleges all over the country, they had been drawn to Chicago by the idea of a community of great scholars. William Rainey Harper, the University’s first president, envisioned a university that was “‘bran splinter new,’ yet as solid as the ancient hills”—a modern research university, combining an English-style undergraduate college and a German-style graduate research institute. The University of Chicago fulfilled Harper’s dream, quickly becoming a national leader in higher education and research: an institution of scholars unafraid to cross boundaries, share ideas, and ask difficult questions. Chicago’s leadership was noted by Frederick Rudolph, professor of history at Williams College, who wrote in his 1962 study, The American College and University: A History, “No episode was more important in shaping the outlook and expectations of American higher education during those years than the founding of the University of Chicago, one of those events in American history that brought into focus the spirit of an age.” At Chicago, campus and community are interconnected in partnerships that serve both to support the community and train future policymakers, social workers, artists, and social and political leaders. Eighty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize have been students, researchers, or faculty here. While the University of Chicago contributes specifically to the metropolis, the city in turn serves as a living laboratory for addressing social issues on a national and global scal

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