Indiana University Bloomington abbreviated "IU Bloomington" and colloquially referred to as "IU" or simply "Indiana" is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. With over 40,000 students, IU Bloomington is the flagship institution of the Indiana University system and its largest university.
It is a member of the Association of American Universities and has numerous schools and programs the comprise part of IU, including the Jacobs School of Music, the IU School of Informatics and Computing, the Kelley School of Business, the School of Public Health, the School of Nursing, the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, the Maurer School of Law, the IU School of Library and Information Science, and the IU School of Education.
With a Fall 2014 total campus enrollment of 42,634 students, IU Bloomington is the largest university campus in the state. While 55.2% of the student body was from Indiana, students from 49 of the 50 states, Washington D.C., and 165 foreign nations were also enrolled. The university is home to an extensive student life program, with about 17 percent of undergraduates joining the Greek system. Indiana athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are known as the Indiana Hoosiers. The university is a member of the Big Ten Conference.
Among IU Bloomington's many graduate-level programs are the highly ranked Kelley School of Business, School of Education and Maurer School of Law. Indiana's law school is an innovative program renowned for its first-year team-based approach, a diversion from the typical legal education. Distinguished Indiana alumni include composer and songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, who penned "Georgia on My Mind"; CEO and Founder of Cisco System, John Chambers; and famed dieter Jared Fogle, a spokesman for the Subway sandwich chain.
In terms of academics and other criteria, IU Bloomington ranks in top 100 national universities in the United States and the top 50 public universities in the country. The school's sports teams are notorious competitors in the NCAA Division I Big Ten Conference, and, since Indiana University does not have a mascot, all teams are known simply as Hoosiers. There are more than 650 student organizations on campus, and more than 5,000 students go Greek in the school's large community of fraternities and sororities.
Indiana's state government in Corydon founded Indiana University in 1820 as the "State Seminary." Construction began in 1822; It was originally located at what is now called Seminary Square Park near the intersection of Second Street and College Avenue. The first professor was Baynard Rush Hall, a Presbyterian minister who taught all of the classes in 1825-27; he focused on Greek Latin. In the first year, he taught twelve students and was paid $250. Hall was a classicist who believed that the study of classical philosophy and languages formed the basis of the best education. The first class graduated in 1830. From 1820 to 1889 a legal-political battle was fought by the school in Vincennes that claimed to be the legitimate state university.
In 1829 Andrew Wylie became the first president, serving until his death in 1851. The name became "Indiana College" in 1829 and in 1838 the name finally became "Indiana University." Wylie and David Maxwell, president of the board of trustees, were devout Presbyterians. They spoke of the nonsectarian status of the school, but generally hired fellow Presbyterians. Presidents and professors were expected to set a moral example for their charges. After six ministers in a row the first non-clergyman to become president was the young biology professor David Starr Jordan in 1885. Jordan followed Baptist theologian Lemuel Moss, who resigned after a scandal broke regarding his involvement with a female professor.
Jordan president 1884-1891 improved the university's finances and public image, doubled its enrollment, and instituted an elective system along the lines of his alma mater, Cornell University. Jordan became president of Stanford University,
Growth was slow. In 1851 IU had nearly a hundred students and seven professors. IU admitted its first woman student, Sarah Parke Morrison in 1867, making IU only the fourth public university to admit women on an equal basis with men. Morrison went on to become the first female professor at IU in 1873.
Mathematician Joseph Swain was IU's first Hoosier-born president, 1893 to 1902. He established Kirkwood Hall in 1894; a gymnasium for men in 1896, which later was named Assembly Hall; Kirkwood Observatory in 1900; and he began construction for Science Hall in 1901. During his presidency, student enrollment increased from 524 to 1,285.
In 1883, IU awarded its first Ph.D. and played its first intercollegiate sport baseball prefiguring the school's future status as a major research institution and a power in collegiate athletics. But another incident that year was of more immediate concern: the original campus in Seminary Square burned to the ground. The college was rebuilt between 1884 and 1908 at the far eastern edge of Bloomington. Today, the city has expanded eastward, and the "new" campus is once again at the center of the city. One challenge was that Bloomington's limited water supply was inadequate for its population of 12,000 and could not handle university expansion. The University commissioned a study that led to building a reservoir for its own use.
In 1902 IU enrolled 1203 undergraduates; all but 65 were Hoosiers. There were 82 graduate students including 10 from out-of-state. The curriculum emphasized the classics, as befitted a gentleman, and stood in contrast to the service-oriented curriculum at Purdue, which presented itself as of direct benefit to farmers, industrialists and businessmen.
The first extension office of IU was opened in Indianapolis in 1916. In 1920/1921 the School of Music and the School of Commerce and Finance (what later became the Kelley School of Business) were opened. In the 1940s Indiana University opened extension campuses in Kokomo and Fort Wayne. The controversial Kinsey Institute for sexual research was established in 1945.
