Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise eleven undergraduate and graduate schools, including the Walsh School of Foreign Service, McDonough School of Business, Medical School, Law School, and a campus in Qatar. The school's main campus, on a hill above the Potomac River, is identifiable by its flagship Healy Hall, a National Historic Landmark. The school was founded by and is affiliated with the Society of Jesus, and is the oldest Catholic institution of higher education in the United States, though the majority of students presently are not Catholic.

Georgetown is ranked among the top universities in the United States and admission is highly selective. The university offers degree programs in forty-eight disciplines, enrolling an average of 7,500 undergraduate and 10,000 post-graduate students from more than 135 countries. The school's athletic teams are nicknamed the Hoyas and include a men's basketball team, which has won a record eight Big East championships, appeared in five Final Fours, and won a national championship in 1984.
Georgetown's notable alumni include 13 Nobel Prize Laureates, 28 Rhodes Scholars, 32 Marshall Scholars, 33 Truman Scholars, 429 Fulbright Scholars, 2 U.S. Presidents, and 2 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, as well as international royalty and 14 foreign heads of state. Among the world's leading institutions in government and international relations, the school's alumni include more U.S. diplomats than any other university and many members of the United States Congress.

History

Founding

Jesuit settlers from England founded the Province of Maryland in 1634. In 1646, the defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Roman Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including missionary Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. During most of the remainder of Maryland's colonial period, Jesuits conducted Catholic schools clandestinely. It was not until after the end of the American Revolution that plans to establish a permanent Catholic institution for education in the United States were realized.

Because of Benjamin Franklin's recommendation, Pope Pius VI appointed former Jesuit John Carroll as the first head of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, even though the papal suppression of the Jesuit order was still in effect. Carroll began meetings of local clergy in 1783 near Annapolis, Maryland, where they orchestrated the development of a new university. On January 23, 1789, Carroll finalized the purchase of the property in Georgetown on which Dahlgren Quadrangle was later built. Future Congressman William Gaston was enrolled as the school's first student on November 22, 1791, and instruction began on January 2, 1792.

During its early years, Georgetown College suffered from considerable financial strain. The Maryland Society of Jesus began its restoration in 1805, and Jesuit affiliation, in the form of teachers and administrators, bolstered confidence in the college. The school relied on private sources of funding and the limited profits from local lands which had been donated to the Jesuits. To raise money for Georgetown and other schools in 1838, Maryland Jesuits conducted a mass sale of some 272 slaves to two Deep South plantations in Maringouin, Louisiana, from their six in Maryland, ending their slaveholding.

President James Madison signed into law Georgetown's congressional charter on March 1, 1815, creating the first federal university charter, which allowed it to confer degrees, with the first bachelor's degrees being awarded two years later. In 1844, the school received a corporate charter, under the name " The President and Directors of Georgetown College", affording the growing school additional legal rights. In response to the demand for a local option for Roman Catholic students, the Medical School was founded in 1851.

Post-Civil War expansion

The U.S. Civil War greatly affected Georgetown as 1,141 students and alumni enlisted in one army or the other, and the Union Army commandeered university buildings. By the time of President Abraham Lincoln's May 1861 visit to campus, 1,400 troops were living in temporary quarters there. Due to the number of lives lost in the war, enrollment levels remained low until well after the war. Only seven students graduated in 1869, down from over 300 in the previous decade. When the Georgetown College Boat Club, the school's rowing team, was founded in 1876 it adopted two colors: blue, used for Union uniforms, and gray, used for Confederate uniforms. These colors signified the peaceful unity among students. Subsequently, the school adopted these as its official colors.

Enrollment did not recover until during the presidency of Patrick Francis Healy from 1873 to 1881. Born in Georgia as a slave by law and mixed-race by ancestry, Healy was the first head of a predominantly white American university of acknowledged African descent. He identified as Irish Catholic, like his father, and was educated in Catholic schools in the United States and France. He is credited with reforming the undergraduate curriculum, lengthening the medical and law programs, and creating the Alumni Association. One of his largest undertakings was the construction of a major new building, subsequently named Healy Hall in his honor. For his work, Healy is known as the school's "second founder."

After the founding of the Law Department in 1870, Healy and his successors hoped to bind the professional schools into a university, and focus on higher education. The School of Medicine added a dental school in 1901 and the undergraduate School of Nursing in 1903. Georgetown Preparatory School relocated from campus in 1919 and fully separated from the university in 1927. The School of Foreign Service (SFS) was founded in 1919 by Edmund A. Walsh, to prepare students for leadership in diplomacy and foreign commerce. The School of Dentistry became independent of the School of Medicine in 1956. The School of Business was separated from the SFS in 1957. In 1998 it was renamed the McDonough School of Business in honor of alumnus Robert E. McDonough.

Besides expansion of the university, Georgetown also aimed to expand its resources and student body. The School of Nursing has admitted female students since its founding, and most of the university classes were made available to women on a limited basis by 1952. With the College of Arts and Sciences welcoming its first female students in the 1969–1970 academic year, Georgetown became fully coeducational.

Modern era

In 1975, Georgetown established the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, soliciting funds from the governments of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Libya as well as American corporations with business interests in the Middle East. It later returned the money it received from Muammar Qaddafi's Libyan government, which had been used to fund a chair for Hisham Shirabi, and also returned further donations from Iraq. Georgetown ended its bicentennial year of 1989 by electing Leo J. O'Donovan, S.J. as president. He subsequently launched the Third Century Campaign to build the school's endowment. In December 2003, Georgetown completed the campaign after raising over $1 billion for financial aid, academic chair endowment, and new capital projects. In 2005, Georgetown received a $20 million gift from Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, member of the Saudi Royal Family; at that time the second-largest donation ever to the university, it was used to expand the activities of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

In October 2002, Georgetown University began studying the feasibility of opening a campus of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Qatar, when the non-profit Qatar Foundation first proposed the idea. The School of Foreign Service in Qatar opened in 2005 along with four other U.S. universities in the Education City development. That same year, Georgetown began hosting a two-week workshop at Fudan University's School of International Relations and Public Affairs in Shanghai, China. This later developed into a more formal connection when Georgetown opened a liaison office at Fudan on January 12, 2008, to further collaboration.

John J. DeGioia, Georgetown's first lay president, has led the school since 2001. DeGioia has continued its financial modernization and has sought to "expand opportunities for intercultural and interreligious dialogue." DeGioia also founded the annual Building Bridges Seminar in 2001, which brings global religious leaders together, and is part of Georgetown's effort to promote religious pluralism. The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs was begun as an initiative in 2004, and after a grant from William R. Berkley, was launched as an independent organization in 2006. Additionally, The Center for International and Regional Studies opened in 2005 at the new Qatar campus. Between 2012 and 2018, Georgetown received more than $350 million from Gulf Cooperation Council countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

Jesuit tradition

Georgetown University was founded by former Jesuits in the tradition of Ignatius of Loyola; it is a member of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Georgetown is not a pontifical university, though seven Jesuits serve on the thirty-six member Board of Directors, the university's governing body. Catholic spaces at the university fall within the territorial jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Washington, such as Dahlgren Chapel, the university's principal Catholic place of worship. Fifty-two members of the Society of Jesus live on campus, and are employed by Georgetown mostly as professors or administrators. Jesuit Heritage Week has been held every year since 2001 to celebrate the contributions of Jesuits to the Georgetown tradition.

The role that Georgetown's Catholic heritage has played in its policies has been controversial at times, even as its influence is relatively limited. Stores in University-owned buildings are not allowed to sell or distribute birth control products. The university hosts the Cardinal O'Connor Conference on Life every January to discuss the anti-abortion movement. Georgetown University Medical Center and Georgetown University Hospital, operated by MedStar Health, are prohibited from performing abortions. However, , the hospital did perform research using embryonic stem cells.

Georgetown has been criticized by religious groups, such as the Cardinal Newman Society, for not following the teachings of the church. The school has come under criticism for hosting prominent pro-abortion rights speakers, such as John Kerry and Barack Obama. Washington's Archbishop, Donald Wuerl, also criticized the university for inviting pro-abortion rights Kathleen Sebelius to be a commencement speaker. Religious groups have likewise denounced Georgetown for being too LGBT-friendly and for allowing gay-themed events, including a performance, during which "a male student went as a high-heeled Mary and danced to Madonna's ' Like a Virgin' while Jesus (a woman) looked on."

Between 1996 and 1999, the administration added crucifixes to many classroom walls, a change that attracted national attention. Before 1996, crucifixes had hung only in hospital rooms and historic classrooms. Some of these crucifixes are historic works of art, and are noted as such. According to a 2004 interview with Imam Yahya Hendi, the school's on-campus Muslim cleric, pressure to remove the crucifixes comes from within the Catholic community, while he and other campus faith leaders have defended their placement. The Intercultural Center is an exception to this controversy, rotating displays of various faith and culture symbols in the lobby. In 2009, Georgetown's religious symbols were brought back to national attention after the university administration covered-up the name of Jesus in preparation for President Barack Obama's speech on campus.

Academics

, the university had 7,463 undergraduate students and 11,542 graduate students. Bachelor's programs are offered through Georgetown College, the School of Nursing and Health Studies, the Robert Emmett McDonough School of Business, the School of Continuing Studies, and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, which includes the Qatar campus. The School of Dentistry closed in 1990 after 89 years in operation. Some high school students from Georgetown Visitation are permitted to attend classes for Advanced Placement credit.

Georgetown University offers undergraduate degrees in forty-eight majors in the four undergraduate schools and the opportunity for students to design their courses of study. All majors in Georgetown College are open as minors to students in that school, the School of Nursing and Health Studies, and the School of Business. Students in the School of Foreign Service can complete select certificates that complement the school's focus on foreign affairs and attain a minor in one of twelve languages but do not have access to the same minor selection as the other three schools. All courses are on a credit hour system. Georgetown offers many opportunities to study abroad, and about 50% of the undergraduate student body spends time at an institution overseas.

Master's and doctoral programs are offered through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Law Center, the School of Medicine, the McCourt School of Public Policy, and the School of Continuing Studies. Master's students occasionally share some advanced seminars with undergraduates, and most undergraduate schools offer abbreviated bachelor's and master's programs following completion of the undergraduate degree. The McDonough School of Business and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service both offer master's programs. The School of Foreign Service is renowned for its academic programs in international affairs. Its graduate program was ranked first in the world by Foreign Policy, and its undergraduate program was ranked fourth. The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies also offer a Master's of Arab Studies, as well as certificates.

Each graduate school offers at least one double degree with another graduate school. Additionally, the Law Center offers a joint degree with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The School of Continuing Studies includes the Center for Continuing and Professional Education, and operates four types of degree programs, over thirty professional certificates and non-degree courses, undergraduate and graduate degrees in Liberal Studies, as well as summer courses for graduates, undergraduates, and high school students.

Rankings and admissions

Admission to Georgetown has been deemed "most selective" by '' U.S. News & World Report'', with the university receiving 27,650 applications and admitting 11.7% of those who applied for the Class of 2025. , Georgetown's graduate schools have acceptance rates of 3.6% to the School of Medicine, 21.2% to the Law Center, 25% to the MSFS, and 35% to the MBA program. In 2004, a National Bureau of Economic Research study on revealed preference of U.S. colleges showed Georgetown was the 16th most-preferred choice. The School of Foreign Service (SFS) has been ranked #1 in the United States for international affairs according to Niche, as well as #1 in the world according to Foreign Policy Magazine. The Medical School is ranked 44th in research and 87th in primary care, while the McDonough School of Business ranked 25th in MBA programs, second in international business, fifth in nonprofit management, and 13th in part-time business studies. Georgetown University Law Center is ranked 14th in the United States and 12th in the world, as well as first in clinical training and part-time law, second in tax law, third in international law, fifth in criminal law, seventh in health care law, ninth in constitutional law, and tenth in environmental law.

The undergraduate schools maintain a restrictive Early Action admissions program, as students who have applied through an Early Decision process at another school are not permitted to apply early to Georgetown. 94% of students accepted for the class of 2017 were in the top 10% of their class and the interquartile range of SAT scores was 700–770 in Reading/Writing and 680–780 in Math. Georgetown accepts the SAT and ACT, though it does not consider the writing portion of either test. Over 55% of undergraduates receive financial aid, and the university meets 100% of demonstrated need, with an average financial aid package of $23,500 and about 70% of aid distributed in the form of grants or scholarships.

Faculty

, Georgetown University employed 1,414 full-time and 1,196 part-time faculty members across its three Washington, D.C. campuses, with additional staff at SFS-Qatar. The faculty comprises leading academics and notable political and business leaders, and are predominantly male by a two-to-one margin. Politically, Georgetown University's faculty members give more support to liberal candidates, and while their donation patterns are generally consistent with those of other American university faculties, they gave more than average to Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

The faculty includes scholars such as the former President of the American Philological Association James J. O'Donnell, theologian John Haught, social activists Sam Marullo and Chai Feldblum

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