Harvard University

Harvard University, founded 16 years after the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. The University has grown from nine students with a single "master" to an enrollment of more than 18,000 degree candidates, including undergraduates and students in ten graduate and professional schools. An additional 13,000 students enroll annually in one or more courses in the Harvard Extension School. More than 15,000 people work at Harvard, including some 2000 faculty. There are also more than 8600 faculty appointments in affiliated teaching hospitals.

Seven presidents of the United States — John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rutherford B. Hayes, John F. Kennedy, and George W. Bush — were graduates of Harvard. Its faculty produced 40 Nobel Laureates as of 2002.

Harvard College was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was named for its first benefactor, John Harvard of Charlestown, a young minister who, upon his death in 1638, left his library and half his estate to the new college.

During its early years, Harvard College offered a classic academic course based on the English university model but consistent with the Puritan philosophy of the first colonists. Although many of its early graduates became ministers in Puritan congregations throughout New England, the College was never formally affiliated with a specific religious denomination. The mission of the College, according to the 1650 charter, was: "The advancement of all good literature, artes, and Sciences."

As Harvard College grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, the curriculum was broadened, particularly in the sciences, and produced or attracted a long list of famous scholars, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, William James, the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Agassiz, and Gertrude Stein.

In the 20th century, presidents A. Lawrence Lowell, James Bryant Conant, Nathan M. Pusey, Derek Bok, and Neil L. Rudenstine each made significant contributions toward strengthening the quality of undergraduate and graduate education at Harvard while, at the same time, maintaining the university's role as a preeminent research institution.

Lawrence H. Summers became Harvard's 27th president on July 1, 2001. Summers has identified several important priorities for the university, including strengthening undergraduate education by increasing direct contact among professors and students, expanding opportunities for students to study abroad, fostering "science literacy" so that students from every discipline can participate fully in what he envisions as "the century of biology and life science," reviewing the undergraduate Core Curriculum, increasing financial support for graduate students, and planning for the expansion of Harvard's presence in Allston, Mass.