Columbia University, private, nonsetarian institution of higher learning located in New York City. Founded in 1754 as King’s College, it was renamed Columbia College when it reopened in 1784 after the American Revolution. Throughout the 19th century, graduate and professional schools were added, and the school became Columbia University in 1912. Columbia College remains the undergraduate liberal arts school for men, and Barnard College, founded 1889 and part of the university since 1900, is the undergraduate liberal arts school for women. Located on land adjacent to the university, Barnard has its own president, faculty, and trustees and is responsible for its financial endowment. The music, classics, mathematics, physics, and religion departments are joint departments with Columbia, and some undergraduate classes are held with Columbia College. Upon graduation, a Barnard student receives the degree of bachelor of arts conferred by Columbia. Other units affiliated with the university are the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Teachers College; and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which, together with the Presbyterian Hospital and allied institutions, forms the nucleus of a great medical centre. A series of institutes offers specialized study and research.

The American Press Institute provides a series of seminars annually for every level of personnel in newspaper publishing. There are area institutes giving specific training in Russian, East Asian, Near and Middle Eastern, east central European, and Israeli and Jewish studies. The American Assembly, established in 1950 at Harriman, N.Y., serves as a forum for discussion of broad policies of national and international import. The university enjoys reciprocal agreements with such New York City institutions as the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden, the New York Zoological Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Besides its Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory at Alpine, N.Y., and its cyclotron at Nevis Estate, Irvington, N.Y., the university has associated organizations and facilities at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass.; the Long Island Biological Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.; the Brookhaven National Laboratories, Upton, N.Y.; and the Yale-Columbia Southern Observatory in San Juan Province, Argentina. In the early 1970s undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at Columbia University numbered about 17,500.


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Author Resource BoxOriginaly from the states, but I moved to Italy. I manufacture hydraulic systems for agricultural industries.Read Gerald Magiani Profile