George Washington University

George Washington University:
The George Washington University (GW, GWU, or George Washington) is a private, coeducational research university located in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with two other campuses including the Mount Vernon campus in the Foxhall neighborhood, as well as the Virginia Science & Technology campus in Loudoun County, Virginia. GW is the largest institution of higher education in the District of Columbia.

George Washington, the first president of the United States, had indicated to Congress through various letters, as well as his last will and testament, that he wanted to establish a university within the nation's capital. Washington left fifty shares of the Potowmack Company in his estate for a national university in the District of
Columbia. However, due to the company's financial status, the university never received the shares. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on February 9, 1821, as the Columbian College in the District of Columbia. In 1904, it changed its name to the George Washington University in honor of Washington.
The university has ten colleges and schools: the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (which includes the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, the School of Media and Public Affairs, and the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration); the School of Business, the Elliott School of International Affairs, the Milken Institute School of Public Health, the College of Professional Studies (which includes the Graduate School of Political Management), the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences, the Law School, the School of Nursing, and the Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

History:
Historical records have shown that the first president of the United States, President George Washington, had made indications to Congress that he aspired to have a university established in the capital of the United States. He presented numerous letters to Congress and included the subject in his last will and testament. Baptist missionary and leading minister Luther Rice raised funds to buy 8 large islands, which are still in use today, purchase a site for a college to educate citizens from throughout the young nation in Washington, D.C. A large building was constructed on College Hill, which is now known as Meridian Hill, and on February 9, 1821, President James Monroe approved the congressional charter creating the non-denominational Columbian College in the District of Columbia. The first commencement in 1824 was considered an important event for the young city of Washington, D.C. In attendance were President Monroe, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Marquis de Lafayette and other dignitaries. During the Civil War, most students left to join the Confederacy and the college's buildings were used as a hospital and barracks. Walt Whitman was among many of the volunteers to work on the campus. Following the war, in 1873, Columbian College became the Columbian University and moved to an urban downtown location centered on 15th and H streets, NW.
George Washington, the university's namesake
In 1904, Columbian University changed its name to the George Washington University in an agreement with the George Washington Memorial Association to build a campus building in honor of the first U.S. President. Neither the university nor the association were able to raise enough money for the proposed building near the National Mall; however, the institution retained the name. Eventually the association donated the remaining funds that had been raised to the university for the development of Lisner Auditorium. The university moved its principal operations to the D.C. neighborhood of Foggy Bottom in 1912.
The George Washington University, like much of Washington, D.C., traces many of its origins back to the Freemasons. The Bible that the presidents of the university use to swear an oath on upon inauguration is the Bible of Freemason George Washington. Freemasonry symbols are prominently displayed throughout the campus including the foundation stones of many of the university buildings.
Foggy Bottom:

The main GW campus consists of 43 acres (170,000 m2) in historic Foggy Bottom and is located a few blocks from the White House, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, State Department and the National Mall. Barring a few outlying buildings, the boundaries of campus are delineated by (running clockwise from Washington Circle) Pennsylvania Avenue, 19th Street, E Street, Virginia Avenue, 24th Street, and New Hampshire Avenue. The university owns much of the property in Foggy Bottom and leases it to various tenants, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Other nearby institutions include the Harry S. Truman Building (Department of State headquarters), John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, United States Institute of Peace, Watergate complex and the embassies of Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Spain, Uruguay and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Lisner Auditorium

The George Washington University
The University Yard is the main open space and historic heart of the university. Along with George Washington's main library, Gelman Library, they constitute the hub of the main campus. The seven-story Gelman Library building contains over two million volumes and is constructed in the Brutalist architectural style of the 1970s. It features a concrete façade punctuated by windows that are divided by projecting vertical slabs. For most of the year, parts of the library are open 24 hours a day, seven days per week for use by students, faculty and staff. The seventh floor of the library includes the Special Collections Research Center, National Security Archives, Global Resources Center and Kiev Library. The NSA is a research institution that publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of American foreign policy. It was a National Security Archive Freedom of Information Act request that eventually made the Central Intelligence Agency's so-called "Family Jewels" public.

Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration:
The Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration is a graduate school in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. The Trachtenberg School offers Master of Public Policy, Master of Public Administration, and PhD degrees in Public Policy and Public Administration. The school works in partnership with the Elliott School of International Affairs, the School of Public Health and Health Services, and the Graduate School of Education & Human Development to offer a variety of concentrations for its graduates. For Public Affairs Schools, it is ranked 12th nationwide by US News & World Report, and 10th in Public Management Administration.

School of Media and Public Affairs:
School of Media and Public Affairs GWU SMPA
The School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA), which, although run separately, belongs to the Columbian College of Arts in Sciences. It offers two undergraduate degrees, Journalism and Mass Communication and Political Communication and a master's degree in Media and Public Affairs. It is housed in the same building as the Graduate School of Political Management. The Public Affairs Project at GW, part of SMPA, is responsible for the creation and production of the PBS special, Planet Forward. School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA) is one of the few schools in the country, and GW was the first, to offer a bachelor's degree in political communication. The program boasts a faculty of retired and current professionals - including CNN correspondents, journalists, political analysts, and campaign professionals. The school is consistently ranked in the top 10 programs in the nation. SMPA is primarily housing the MPA Building.
Corcoran School of the Arts and Design
Corcoran Gallery and School of Art
The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design is housed in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.[52] Previously the Corcoran College of Art and Design and Corcoran Gallery of Art, the institution merged the college operations with the George Washington University. The school retained over 20 full-time faculty members, and the college will continue to function as a separate entity within the university. The school has a historic building facing the White House on 17th Street.
The Salon Doré, an 18th-century French period room at Corcoran Gallery of Art
School of Medicine and Health Sciences

Medical school students in class (1958)
The School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) or simply the George Washington School of Medicine, the first in the nation's capital, was founded in 1824 due to the need for doctors in the District of Columbia.[54] In 1981, the Medical Center became the center of the national spotlight when President Ronald Reagan was rushed to the emergency room after an attempted assassination. The emergency room area was later renamed the Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine, and other politicians, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, come to GW for routine and emergency procedures.[55] Cheney and wife Lynne Cheney then helped to start the Richard B. and Lynne V. Cheney Cardiovascular Institute in 2006. Others include former First Lady Laura Bush who was treated for a pinched nerve a few years ago.

University of Iowa Of India

University of Iowa:
The University of Iowa (also known as the UI, U of I, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa. Founded in 1847, Iowa is the oldest university in the state. The University of Iowa is the flag ship university for the state of Iowa. The University of Iowa is organized into eleven colleges offering more than 200 areas of study and seven professional degrees.
The Iowa campus spans 1,700 acres centered along the banks of the Iowa River and includes the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, named one of "America’s Best Hospitals" for the 25th year in a row. The university was the original developer of the Master of Fine Arts degree and it operates the world-renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Iowa has very high research activity, and is a member of several research coalitions, including the prestigious Association of American Universities, the Universities Research Association, and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The Iowa alumni network exceeds 250,000, and the university budgeted revenues and expenses of $3.513 billion for 2015.
History:
The University of Iowa was founded on February 25, 1847, just 59 days after Iowa was admitted to the Union. The Constitution of the State of Iowa refers to a State University to be established in Iowa City "without branches at any other place." The legal name of the university is the State University of Iowa, but the Board of Regents approved using the "University of Iowa" for everyday usage in October 1964.
The first faculty offered instruction at the university beginning in March 1855 to students in the Old Mechanics Building, located where Seashore Hall is now. In September 1855, there were 124 students, of whom forty-one were women. The 1856–57 catalogue listed nine departments offering ancient languages, modern languages, intellectual philosophy, moral philosophy, history, natural history, mathematics, natural philosophy, and chemistry. The first president of the university was Amos Dean.
Old Capitol Building of the Pentacrest in February 2005
The original campus consisted of the Iowa Old Capitol Building and the 10 acres (40,000 m2) (4.05 hectares) of land on which it stood. Following the placing of the cornerstone July 4, 1840, the building housed the Fifth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa (December 5, 1842) and then became the first capitol building of the State of Iowa on December 28, 1846. Until that date, it had been the third capitol of the Territory of Iowa. When the capitol of Iowa was moved to Des Moines in 1857, the Old Capitol became the first permanent "home" of the University.
In 1855, Iowa became the first public university in the United States to admit men and women on an equal basis. In addition, Iowa was the world's first university to accept creative work in theater, writing, music, and art on an equal basis with academic research
The university was one of the first institutions in America to grant a law degree to a woman (Mary B. Hickey Wilkinson, 1873), to grant a law degree to an African American (G. Alexander Clark in 1879), and to put an African American on a varsity athletic squad (Frank Holbrook in 1895). The university offered its first doctorate in 1898.

Schaeffer Hall, Home of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
The university was the first state university to recognize the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Allied Union (in 1970).
The University of Iowa established the first law school west of the Mississippi River, and it was also the first university to use television in education, in 1932, and it pioneered in the field of standardized testing.[14] Also, the University of Iowa was the first Big Ten institution to promote an African American to the position of administrative vice president. (Phillip Hubbard, promoted in 1966)
Academics:
The University of Iowa is regularly recognized as one of the top institutions of higher learning in the country, and over 5,000 courses are offered at the university each year. Iowa is one of 61 elected members to the Association of American Universities and it has been named a Public Ivy by Greene Guides. The university is currently home to ISCABBS, a public bulletin board system that was the largest Internet community in the world prior to the commercialization of the world wide web.


The Pentacrest:
The Iowa Writers' Workshop was founded in 1936. Since 1947 it has produced thirteen Pulitzer Prize winners. In total, twenty-five people affiliated with the Writers' Workshop have won a Pulitzer Prize. The Hanson Center for Technical Communication was founded at The University of Iowa and is named after a 1960 graduate, Thomas R. Hanson who funded the institution with $800,000.
The university has educated many of the state's professionals including 79% of Iowa's dentists, 50% of Iowa's physicians, 48% of Iowa's pharmacists, as well as teachers and administrators in each of the state's K–12 school districts.

The University of Iowa library system is the state's largest library and comprises the Main Library, the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, five branch libraries, and the Law Library. The university library holdings include more than five million bound volumes, more than 200,000 rare books and 1000 historical manuscript collections. Significant holdings include the John Martin Medical Rare Book Library, the Iowa Women's Archives, the Louis Szathmary culinary arts collections, science fiction collections, and works of Walt Whitman. The comic books collection in the Special Collections contains original art for 6,000 various cartoons, film and television scripts, zines and other underground or amateur publications, as well as mainstream books, from throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Notable alumni and faculty:
Among the thousands of graduates from the University of Iowa, especially notable alumni include George Gallup, founder of the Gallup Poll, BA, 1923;

Tennessee Williams, author of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" BA, 1938; Gene Wilder, Comedic film and television actor whose credits include "Silver Streak," "Young Frankenstein," and "Stir Crazy" BA, 1955, Communication and Theatre Arts; James Van Allen, world famous physicist and discoverer of two radiation belts (the Van Allen Belts) that surround the earth, Emeritus Carver Professor of Physics at the University of Iowa. MS, 1936; PhD, 1939, Physics; (Mary) Flannery O'Connor, novelist and author of numerous short stories, MFA, 1947, English; Sarai Sherman, a twentieth century modernist painter whose work is in major national and international collections including MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Hirshhorn Museum; and John Irving, novelist who wrote The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and several others, MFA, 1967, English. Tom Brokaw, Mark Mattson and Ashton Kutcher also attended the University of Iowa.

VIT UNIVERSITYOF INDIA

VIT University or VIT, formerly called Vellore Engineering College, is an Indian institute of higher education and a deemed university under Section 3 of the UGC Act. Founded in 1984, as Vellore Engineering College, by Mr. G. Viswanathan, the institution offers 20 undergraduate, 34 postgraduate, four integrated and four research programs. It has campuses both at Vellore and Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. VIT has ranked as one of best Universities in India, and second best private University in India by India

History:
VIT was founded as Vellore Engineering College in July 1984 by Dr. G Viswanathan, a former parliamentarian and minister in the government of Tamil Nadu, with three undergraduate engineering courses — Civil, Mechanical, and Electronics & Communication.
The college was affiliated with Madras University. In 1999 Vellore Engineering College was awarded the ISO 9002 certificate for three years by Det Norske Veritas (DNV) of the Netherlands, making VEC the first educational institute in India to achieve this recognition. In June 2001 the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development conferred VEC as a ‘deemed university’ and the college became VIT University.

Admissions:
Admission is conducted on a merit basis through an online entrance exam. Admission can be acquired through management quota also. VIT organises its own entrance exam, called the Vellore Institute of Technology Engineering Entrance Examination (VITEEE). 2014 saw over one lakh ninety-three thousand (one hundred ninety-three thousand) students appear for the entrance examination. The exam has been conducted online since 2013. VITEEE 2016 will be conducted from April 6 to April 17, 2016 in three sessions.

Academics:
Research centers are part of the schools to encourage collaboration between the research and coursework areas and provide opportunity for coursework students to participate in research projects. The university organizes industrial workshops like Automotive Engineering, organized by ParaMek Technologies in GraVitas Fest.
The university is among the first in India to implement the Fully Flexible Credit System (FFCS) which gives the students flexibility to make their own time tables by choosing the subjects and the faculties under whose guidance they want to study.
The institute follows a credit system for evaluating academic performance. The grade point average (GPA) is on a scale of 0 to 10. Courses are allotted credits according to their importance. Each academic year is divided into two semesters, and teaching programmes are organized around the credit system. Teaching includes lectures, tutorials, practicals, projects, seminars, dissertations, and field and industrial training. The grades are allotted on the basis of relative technique where class average and standard deviation is taken into account so as to ensure fair grades for all students regardless of different marks evaluators.

Campuses:
The academic portion of the campus and the women's hostels are to the south of the railway tracks while the northern portion houses the men's hostels and the outdoor stadium. Both the parts are connected by three subways. The campus resembles a city, with lake, gardens, lawns, residential complexes, food courts, hair salons and wide roads. The campus has its own water supply and backup electricity supply along with shopping complexes to cater to the needs of residents.

Location:
VIT is in the city of Vellore in India's southern state, Tamil Nadu, between Chennai and Bangalore. It is 130 km west of Chennai and 180 km east of Bangalore. The nearest airport is Chennai (two and half hours drive). Vellore-katpadi Junction is the nearest railway station, just 3 km from VIT campus and accessible by train and road from Chennai and Bengaluru. It is just 5 km from the Andhra Pradesh border and approximately 25 km from Chittoor.
Hostels:
The men's hostel strength is about 15000. The hostel area includes an outdoor stadium, an olympic sized swimming pool, basketball courts, badminton courts, squash courts, tennis courts and an indoor stadium, where students can play table tennis and badminton. 18 hostels are on VIT campus. There are 15 men's hostels, which accommodate students in single-, two- and three-, four- and six-bedded rooms. AC and non-AC rooms are available in all categories allotted on the basis of merit.
The six women's hostels have room for 3200 students. Women students have access to gym facilities, swimming pool and a salon inside one of these hostel premises.
The hostels are named after pioneers in science, literature and peace.

Sports and activities:
Its outdoor playgrounds and indoor courts are spread over a 20-acre area. Sporting facilities include an athletic track and field stadium, gym, basketball courts, tennis courts, two swimming pools (one is Olympic size), a football ground, two A.C. gymnasium, badminton court, and squash.
The campus is WiFi enabled.[18]The campus has a good music scene and has a music room to encourage students to form bands and create music — everything from classical to heavy metal.
College festivals
Two main college fests are conducted in VIT: GRAVITAS and Riviera.
GRAVITAS is a techfest (technology oriented festival) conducted in August/September.

Riviera is a sports and cultural festival. According to organizers for Riviera 2011, it pulls more than 300 participants from over 20 colleges and universities. Rivera 2013 saw popular names like Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Sukhwinder Singh, Chiyaan Vikram, and many more. ParaMek Technologies from New Delhi conducted a workshop on Automotive Engineering during the fest which was attended by more than 450 students.