New York University NYU

New York University NYU, NYU’s leadership team is dedicated to fulfilling the University’s educational mission and research enterprise, advancing a vision for its future, and sustaining its tradition of academic excellence.

Office of the President :

The major divisions of the University and their subsequent administrative units can be found in the organizational chart under the leadership of the Office of the President.

Andrew Hamilton is the sixteenth and current President of New York University. A noted chemist, scholar, and Fellow of the Royal Society, President Hamilton began his tenure in January 2016.

Office of the Provost :

As NYU’s chief academic officer, the Provost is responsible for setting the University’s academic strategy and priorities.

Georgina Dopico was named Interim Provost of NYU in May of 2022. A scholar of literature, history, culture, and gender studies in early-modern Spain, she is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature in the Faculty of Arts and Science. She joined the NYU faculty in 2000.

Board of Trustees :

The overall fiduciaries of the University—the Board of Trustees—create policy, set mission and purpose, and are tasked with building and maintaining a successful organization. They ensure good management and adequate resources and they appoint and support the Office of the President.

University Senate :

The University Senate, chaired by the President, is the chief deliberative body of the University; its membership is made up of representatives of the faculty, students, administrators, and deans.

Together, these offices and groups make up the leadership and university-wide governance structures.

Councils within the University Senate :

NYU has four councils that represent faculty, students, and administrators in the University Senate:

• Tenured/ Tenure-Track Faculty Senators Council
• Full-Time Continuing Contract Faculty Senators Council
• Student Government Assembly
  • Administrative Management Council

History of New York University (NYU) :

About New York University (NYU) :

Since its founding in 1831, NYU has been an innovator in higher education, reaching out to an emerging middle class, embracing an urban identity and professional focus, and promoting a global vision that informs its 19 schools and colleges.

Today, that trailblazing spirit makes NYU one of the most prominent and respected research universities in the world, featuring top-ranked academic programs and accepting fewer than one in eight undergraduates. Anchored in New York City and with degree-granting campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai as well as 12 study away sites throughout the world, NYU is a leader in global education, with more international students and more students studying abroad than any other US university.

NYU students come from nearly every state and 133 countries, and the university draws upon the diverse backgrounds of our faculty, staff, and students, ensuring its scholarship and teaching benefit from a wide range of perspectives. NYU takes seriously its role as an engine of social mobility, and stands out among the top US universities in its representation of low-income and first-generation students within its community.

Now among the largest private universities in the US, NYU provides a rigorous, demanding education to more than 65,000 students and undertakes $1 billion in research annually. It counts among its faculty recipients of the highest scholarly honors and is a top producer of patents and revenue from licensing among US universities. NYU has a vast network of alumni who have gone on to succeed across professions, from the sciences to the arts and government, throughout the world.

History of NYU :

In 1831, Albert Gallatin, the distinguished statesman who served as secretary of the treasury under Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, led NYU’s founding council. He would later describe his vision for the institution in a letter to a friend.

At that time, most students in American colleges and universities were members of the privileged classes. Gallatin and the founding council believed that an educated general populace was crucial to the preservation of democratic institutions. They envisioned a new kind of university: non-denominational and open to all, regardless of national origin, religious beliefs, or social background; with a varied, modern curriculum appropriate for both students “who devote themselves to scientific or literary pursuits,” and those preparing for “the learned professions, commerce, or the mechanical and useful arts.”

Throughout its 188 years, the University has evolved alongside a changing world and major turning points in history:

1832 : The College of Arts and Science holds its first classes near City Hall in Lower Manhattan. Three years later, the University moved to Washington Square, which until recently had been bordered by farmland.

Samuel F. B. Morse is named professor of sculpture and painting. Morse consulted NYU chemistry professor Leonard Gale while perfecting his invention of the telegraph in the old University Building, initiating NYU’s long tradition of innovation.

1835 : The University Building opens on Washington Square East. The building houses academic spaces on its lower floors and rental apartments above whose tenants included Winslow Homer, Samuel Colt, and the aforementioned Samuel Morse.

Stereograph of the University Building at Washington Square, late 19th century. Credit: Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The School of Law is established that same year. A half century later, it became one of the first law schools in the nation to admit women.

1839 : John Draper, professor of chemistry, takes what may have been the first human portrait taken in the US. The subject, his sister Dorothy Catherine Draper, had her face powdered with flour in an early attempt to accentuate contrast.

1841 : The School of Medicine is founded by six eminent physicians and scientists, including the most famous American surgeon of the time, Valentine Mott. Students and professors from across the US and abroad came to observe his work in the operating theater at Bellevue Hospital.

1845 : Edgar Allen Poe, an itinerant Greenwich Village resident, was a favorite of NYU students. He was a frequent guest of NYU’s Eucleian Society, where he recited poetry.

1865 : The College of Dentistry is founded. A trailblazer in modernizing dental education, it became the first dental school in the country to require a high school diploma for admission.

1886: The Graduate School of Arts and Science is founded. Twenty years earlier, NYU had become one of the first institutions in the country to award a doctoral degree for successful completion of academic work – until that time, advanced degrees in the US were typically honorary.

NYU’s graduate programs were highly successful in the 19th century, contributing to New York’s stunning commercial rise and serving as an engine of upward mobility for thousands of native-born and immigrant New Yorkers.

1888 : Women are formally admitted to the Graduate School of Arts and Science.

For Women’s History Month, a Look at NYU’s Past Photos and documents from the NYU Archives point to milestones in the history of women teaching and learning at NYU.

Chance Vought scholars pose in their dorm room in 1942. The scholarship program provided free tuition, room, board, transportation, and a $50 monthly stipend for women to study aeronautics engineering at NYU.

This Women’s History Month, as we recognize the struggles women have encountered on the way to numerous victories—and continue to look for ways to remove the remaining obstacles to true gender equity—we’re also taking a look within to tell the story of women’s contributions to our own institution. In 1873, there were just three female students at NYU. Today, women make up 57 percent of NYU’s undergraduate population of over 25,000—and the history of the intervening years is a catalogue of “firsts.”

Discussions about admitting degree-seeking female applicants to NYU began as early as 1876-1877, and women were formally admitted to the graduate department in 1888. The School of Law admitted women in 1890—60 years before Harvard. When, also in 1890, NYU became the first university in the country to create a school of pedagogy (now Steinhardt), the new school recruited female faculty and admitted women to its very first class. Stern admitted women from its inception (as the School of Commerce) in 1900, and by 1936 they made up 15 percent of the school’s total enrollment.

Two women received B.A. degrees from NYU in 1915, and when Washington Square College was founded in 1913, it opened its doors to women as well as commuters, recent immigrants, and professional students. By 1931, a local newspaper noted that “the combined faculties of Washington Square College, the School of Commerce, and the School of Education boast[ed] women prominent in the fields of vocational guidance, physical education, science sociology, and literature.”

During World War II, the Chance Vought Division of United Aircraft established a scholarship for women to complete an eight-month course in aeronautical engineering at NYU; 110 completed the program. In the Bronx, the University Heights Campus—comprising the University College of Arts and Science and the College of Engineering—became fully co–ed in 1959.

Names of women who achieved the first achievement :

• This memo from the 1980s shows that three women—Ella H. Brown, Amelia C. Barton, and Sophia Wilson—were enrolled in the School of Art in 1873-74.
• Minutes from a December 6, 1867, council meeting mark the resolution to admit women to the “benefits of the Institution.”
• 1915: A Commencement program lists the Elizabeth Stow Brown and Mary Harriet Riddle as the first women B.A. graduates of NYU.
• 1918: Women in an NYU knitting group knit socks for World War I soldiers.
• 1923: The New York Times featured Sylvia Altman, who graduated from Washington Square College at age 17.
• 1926: May Edward Chinn became the first black woman to graduate from NYU’s Bellevue Medical College.
• 1929: On one of the first of her many official visits to New York University NYU, Eleanor Roosevelt hosted tea for female students at of the School of Law.
• 1930: A page from the WSC yearbook shows the League of Women, founded in 1921 as a social organization and support system for NYU’s female students.
• 1931: A newspaper profiles female faculty Anna Yeomans Reed, Ruth B. Howland, Lucy J. Chamberlin, Eda Lou Walton, as leaders in their fields.
• 1941: The New York Sun pictures women fencing, socializing, and taking part in home management courses during fall semester at WSC. (part one)
• 1941: The New York Sun pictures women fencing, socializing, and taking part in home management courses during fall semester at WSC. (part two)
• 1934: Isabel Ebel was the only female aeronautical engineer in the country when she graduated from New York University NYU. She had previously earned a B.S. from MIT.
• 1943: The Chance Vought scholarship was awarded to a total of 110 women who completed an 8-month training in aeronautical engineering at NYU.
• 1947: The Judson Hostelry, designed by Stanford White, was completed in 1890 and purchased by NYU in 1933, later becoming a dormitory for women.
• 1953: Accomplished chemist and engineer Maria Telkes founded a solar energy research lab at the College of Engineering.
• 1958: Justice Birdie Amsterdam (NYUL ’22) became the first woman to be named “Man of the Year” by the Law Alumni Association.
• 1959-60: A 1977 memorandum indicates that women were first admitted to NYU’s School of Engineering & University College of Arts and Science in 1959.
• 1971: Red Burns co-founded the Alternative Media Center at NYU’s School of the Arts.
• 1988: Gertrude Elion (’42) won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Her work would lead to the development of the AIDS drug AZT.

1890 : The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development is founded as the School of Pedagogy—the first professional school devoted to teacher education to be established at an American university.

1894 : The University moves its undergraduate college to a spacious campus in the Bronx. Nicknamed “the Heights,” the campus was designed by Stanford White, renowned architect of several New York City landmarks, including the Washington Square Arch.

Back at Washington Square, the University Building is demolished and construction begins on the Main Building, later renamed the Silver Center.

1896 : Daniel Webster Hering, professor of physics and a pioneer in the field of radiography, takes the first human x-ray at Bellevue Hospital.

1900 :The Stern School of Business is founded. From the beginning, it is co-ed, beginning a long tradition of diversity and inclusion. By 1936 women made up 15 percent of the school’s enrollment.

1901 : The Hall of Fame of Great Americans is created at the Heights campus, featuring busts of 29 distinguished individuals. Its popularity led to the establishment of other halls of fame, including the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

1914 :New York University NYU establishes Washington Square College, an additional undergraduate program downtown. It offers an education to nearly all qualified students, regardless of background, including women, commuters, recent immigrants, and professional students.

Of the students who would attend, English professor Oscar Cargill stated, “[They were] famished…for knowledge, any kind of knowledge.” Combined with a young and creative faculty, Washington Square College was, in history professor Alexander Baltzly’s later words, “the most exciting venture in American education that I had ever heard of.”

1917 : The U.S. enters World War I, decreasing University enrollment and straining the budget. Chancellor Brown establishes branches of the Student Army Training Corps to fulfill the University’s public responsibility during the war.

1922 : The Institute of Fine Arts is founded. In 1958, it relocated to a historic mansion on the Upper East Side, in the heart of New York’s “Museum Mile.”

1929 : Thomas Wolfe, instructor of English, publishes Look Homeward, Angel while teaching at New York University NYU. Of New York University NYU students, he wrote,

…many are making sacrifices of a very considerable nature in order to get an education. They are, accordingly, not at all the conventional types of college student.

1932 : The Meyers College of Nursing is founded. It went on to be a leader in the study of HIV/AIDS and geriatric nursing.

1934 : The School of Professional Studies is founded. With nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce unemployed during the Great Depression, it established training programs for social workers and a reading clinic to improve the literary skills of job seekers.

Also in 1934, the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences is founded. Faculty members from the Institute would go on to win the Abel Prize four times in ten years—more than any other institution.

1938 : The Wagner Graduate School of Public Service is founded, notable for its focus on the application of social science theory within an urban setting.

1939 : New York University NYU’s enrollment reaches an astonishing 47,000 students, the largest private enrollment in the country. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers from working and middle-class families, many of them children of immigrants, found in New York University NYU an engine of upward mobility. The University had in many ways become the great urban university its founders dreamed of.

1942 : New York University NYU assumes an important role in military training, partnering with the Army and the Navy to train recruits in engineering, meteorology, medicine, dentistry, nursing, and foreign languages. By the close of the war, New York University NYU had registered and trained more than 29,000 students in its military programs.

1943 : As male enrollment dropped during WWII, New York University NYU filled its classrooms with a large number of women, who made up over 50 percent of enrolled students at New York University NYU from 1943 to 1945. In February 1943, the Chance Vought Division of United Aircraft established a scholarship to bring women who had majored in mathematics and physics at the nation’s leading colleges to train at New York University NYU’s Guggenheim School of Aeronautical Engineering.

1958 : The University’s first study-abroad site, New York University NYU Madrid, opens. New York University NYU’s global network will eventually expand to 13 sites on six continents.

1960 : The Silver School of Social Work is founded. From 1960s gang violence to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s to 9/11, New York University NYU’s social workers have been at the center of response efforts that turn crises into social progress.

1965 : The Tisch School of the Arts is founded. It will count among its alumni such luminaries as Martin Scorsese, Tony Kushner, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, Spike Lee, and Ang Lee.

I learned how much I didn’t know, and I learned to enjoy the pleasure of asking and trying and testing. Those three years were probably the happiest of my life.

Ang Lee, on his time at New York University NYU Tisch School of the Arts

1972 : The Gallatin School of Individualized Study is founded. Its students design unique courses of study, exploring multiple disciplines or specific areas of study not available in traditional departments.

1973 : Bobst Library opens, giving New York University NYU a central library for the first time in its history. With more than four million volumes, it is the flagship of NYU’s eleven-library system.

Meanwhile, NYU faces decreased enrollment, especially from out of state, due to a highly publicized increase in crime and economic difficulties in New York City. New York University NYU makes a reluctant decision to sell its Bronx campus.

These difficulties have one very positive result: they provide the opportunity to make a sweeping assessment of New York University NYU’s future. Emerging from the crises of the ’70s, New York University NYU daringly sought to fulfill its founders’ other dream—to transform itself from a respected metropolitan institution to a global seat of learning, in the top tier of world universities.

1981: New York University NYU School of Medicine professor Alvin Friedman-Kien first identifies a new form of sarcoma in gay men, contributing to the breakthrough in HIV/AIDS identification.

1984 : New York University NYU President John Brademas announces one of the first billion-dollar campaigns in the history of higher education – as the New York Times put it, “a brash campaign aimed at moving the school into the nation’s top tier of universities.” The campaign allows NYU to attract top scholars to its faculty and transform Washington Square from a largely commuter campus to a residential one.

1991: L. Jay Oliva is inaugurated as president and continues the advancement of the University. By the end of the millennium, New York University NYU had substantially raised the academic rankings, professional stature, and student selectivity of its divisions and departments. As one scholar wrote in 2003, “ New York University NYU is the success story in contemporary American higher education.

1994: Sir Harold Acton bequeaths his 57-acre estate in Florence, Villa La Pietra, to New York University NYU. New York University NYU Florence becomes the University’s third study-away site and ushers in a new focus on global education.

2001: The September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center impact New York University NYU profoundly. The University was located about a mile and a half from Ground Zero, with over 2,000 students living in residence halls in Lower Manhattan, some within sight of the Twin Towers.

2004: President John Sexton announces the Partners Plan – an ambitious fundraising campaign that will expand the faculty of arts and science by 20 percent within five years, continuing to raise the University’s academic stature.

2010 : New York University NYU Abu Dhabi is founded— New York University NYU’s second degree-granting campus, and the first comprehensive liberal arts and science campus in the Middle East to be operated by a major American research university. Its student body comes from 120 nations.

2013: New York University NYU Shanghai is founded in a unique partnership between New York University and East China Normal University. With half its student body hailing from China and half from around the world, it is the first Sino-U.S. joint research university and New York University NYU’s third degree-granting campus.

2014 : New York University NYU merges with Brooklyn’s Polytechnic University to create the Tandon School of Engineering, restoring the discipline of engineering to New York University NYU for the first time in forty years. New York University NYU Tandon significantly expands the University’s presence in Brooklyn, a hub for media, technology, and the arts.

History of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering >>>

Our History: Roots of Greatness :

• NYU Tandon’s long history of world-changing engineering :

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering, which traces its origins back to 1854, is the product of a union between two strong traditions. We are the result of merging a world-class research university in and of the city with an engineering school dedicated to the premise that you can be born anywhere but made right here in Brooklyn.

At NYU Tandon students of every stripe can set forth on their journeys to gratifying careers, entrepreneurial success, and technological innovation — and, just as important, to self-discovery. Our alumni have gone on to found companies, traveled beyond Earth’s limits, attained boardroom success, and reached the pinnacle of their academic fields.

They share our core belief as an institution: that harnessing the power of science and technology will lead to a more equitable society and a greener, safer, better-connected world.

1854: The Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute is founded, as well as the NYU School of Civil Engineering and Architecture.
1879: Robert G. Brown (1868) revolutionized communication by combining the receiver and mouthpiece of the phone.

1883: James J. Wood (1879) was responsible for the machinery that produced the distinctive cables of the Brooklyn Bridge. Arthur V. Abbott (1875) invented the coupling system for the bridge’s cables and a testing machine for the materials used in the construction.

1889 : Renamed the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

1890’s : The U.S. Navy began using searchlights developed by Edward R. Knowles (1870).

1907 : The first woman, Anna Erdmann, received a Bachelor’s degree from Polytechnic.

1911 : Charles R. Flint (1868) formed the Computing-Tabulating- Recording Company, which was later renamed IBM.

1914: Henry C. Goldmark (1874) coengineered the Panama Canal locks. He was later awarded a medal of honor by President Howard Taft for his crucial contribution to the project.

1942: Herman F. Mark, generally known as the Father of Polymer Science, joined the faculty and established the Polymer Research Institute.

1943: Pfizer began using a process developed by Jasper H. Kane (’28) that allowed for the mass production of penicillin.

1945 : Professor and President Ernst Weber (‘58-’69) founded the Microwave Research Institute which developed electromagnetic and microwave defense and communication systems.

1950 : William B. Kouwenhoven (’06, ’07) developed the first closed-chest cardiac defibrillator. He is also credited with discovering the efficacy of cardiac massage, the technique that would become a key to CPR.

1957 : Eugene Kleiner (’48) helped found Fairchild Semiconductor, a pioneer in transistor and integrated-circuit manufacturing. Kleiner later co-founded a venture capital firm that provided funding for such now-iconic companies as Amazon, Google and AOL.

1958 : The school officially becomes coed (although many women had attended and graduated during World War II).

1961 : Thomas Joseph Kelly (’58) led the team that designed and tested NASA’s first Lunar Module used for the Apollo 11 mission.

1962 : Francis Crick (Postdoctoral fellow with the Protein Structure Project during the ’53-’54 academic year) won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his co-discovery of DNA structure.

1967 : Joseph L. Owades (’44, ’50) hit upon the formula for making the world’s first light beer.

1969 : After Apollo 11 carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, to the Moon, Jay Greene (‘64) manned the Flight Dynamics Console during the descent phase.

1970 : Handheld laser barcode scanner invented by Jerome Swartz ‘63, ‘68 and Shelley Harrison ‘66, ‘71.

1973 : Renamed Polytechnic Institute of New York after encompassing the faculty, programs, and students of New York University College of Engineering.

1978 : Intel’s 8086 chip was introduced; its chief architect was Stephen Morse (’63).

1984 : Eleanor Baum (’64) became the first female dean of an engineering school in the United States, at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and 1995 first woman president for American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

1985 : Renamed Polytechnic University.

1992 : Former professor Rudolph Marcus won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems.

1995 : Martin L. Perl (’48) won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics.

1996 : Charles Camarda (‘74) was chosen as an astronaut candidate by NASA and ultimately logged over 333 hours in space.

2003 : The American Chemical Society designated the Polymer Research Institute as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.

2006 : Professor David Goodman is elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to wireless communications and digital signal processing.

2007 : Paolo Angelo Nespoli (’88, ‘89) traveled aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a mission specialist.

2008 : An affiliation is forged between Polytechnic and New York University NYU, creating the Polytechnic Institute of New York University NYU and paving the way for an official merger.

2009 : Ursula Burns (’80) was appointed CEO of Xerox, becoming the first African-American woman ever to head a Fortune 500 company.

2011 : Judea Pearl (’65) garnered the A. M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery for his fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence.

2013 : Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ted Rappaport publishes his seminal paper “Millimeter Wave Mobile Communications for 5G Cellular: It Will Work,” paving the way for next-generation mobile communication.

2013 : Noted physicist Katepalli Sreenivasan becomes the dean of the school.

2014 : Merger with New York University becomes official — name changes to the New York University NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering.

2015 : Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon generously donate $100 million and the school is renamed New York University NYU Tandon School of Engineering in recognition of the Tandons’ generosity and their belief in the school’s mission and promise.

2016 : CSAW, the world’s biggest student-run cybersecurity event, becomes international with competitions in India, the Middle East and North Africa.

2018 : New York University NYU Tandon’s Future Labs (a network of startup business hubs) reports an estimated economic impact on New York City’s economy of $4.06 billion since launching in 2009.

2018 : Jelena Kovačević became the Dean of the New York University NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She is the first woman to head the school since its founding.

2020 : Professor Thomas Marzetta is elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to multiple antenna arrays in wireless communications.

2021 : Professor Ted Rappaport, wireless telecommunications pioneer and founder of New York University NYU WIRELESS, is elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

2021 : Professor Zhong-Ping Jiang is elected as a foreign member of Academia Europaea’s Section on Physics and Engineering Sciences.

2021: New York University NYU Tandon rose to #36 in U.S. News & World Report rankings of best U.S. engineering schools, representing a 46-position leap from 2006, when it was ranked at 82.

2022 : New York University NYU invests $1 billion in Tandon, including the purchase of 3 MetroTech Center.

2015: The School of Global Public Health is founded. It features a cross-continental master’s degree, earned at three New York University NYU global sites over the course of a year.

2016 : Andrew Hamilton is inaugurated as New York University NYU’s 16th president. His priorities for the University include strengthening affordability, diversity, and sustainability.

2018 :The School of Medicine announces full-tuition scholarships for all current and future students. It is the only top 10-ranked medical school in the nation to do so.

Carrying Our Ideals into the Future :

In many ways, Albert Gallatin would scarcely recognize New York University NYU today. From an initial student body of 158, enrollment has grown to more than 50,000 students at three degree-granting campuses in New York City, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai, and at study away sites on six continents. Today, students come from every state in the union and from 133 foreign countries.

Though the University now operates on a larger scale, our commitment to our founding ideals of diversity and innovation has not wavered.

A 2017 study by the New York Times ranked NYU No. 4 among top colleges enrolling the highest percentage of low- and middle-income students. New York University NYU also ranked No. 8 on the economic mobility index, which measures access and outcomes for students, including the likelihood of moving up two or more

The Class of 2022 is both the most selective and the most diverse in history, with the percentage of African American students in the class doubling and the percentage of Latinx students increasing by 46 percent over the past two years. And New York University NYU’s long tradition of innovation is stronger than ever. The University has seen explosive growth in grant funding for its research – a more than 120% increase since 2010. New York University NYU boasts five entrepreneurship spaces and seven start-up incubators. Across the globe and spanning countless academic fields, New York University NYU faculty and students are advancing knowledge in the service of a better world.

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