Auburn University
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Template:Infobox American Universities Auburn University (AU) is a state university located in Auburn, Alabama in the United States. With over 23,000 students and 1,200 faculty, it is the largest university in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 1, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts school affiliated with the Methodist Church. The college was donated to the state of Alabama in 1872, when it became the state's public land-grant university under the Morrill Act and was renamed the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama. In 1892, the college became the first four-year coeducational school in the state. The college was renamed the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (API) in 1899. In 1960, its name was changed to Auburn University, as it had become popularly known.
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History
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Auburn University was chartered by the Alabama Legislature as the East Alabama Male College on May 6, 1856, under the guidance of the Methodist Church. However, from its very first day, it has always been called "Auburn." The first President of the institution was Reverend William J. Sasnett, and the school opened its doors in 1859 to a student body of eighty and a faculty of ten. The early history of Auburn is inextricably linked with the Civil War and the reconstructionist South. Some of the first secession debates in Alabama occurred in Langdon Hall on the campus of the East Alabama Male College. Classes were held in "Old Main" until the college was closed due to the Civil War, when most of the students and faculty left to enlist. The campus was used as a training ground for the Confederate Army, and "Old Main" served as a hospital for Confederate wounded.
To commemorate Auburn's contribution to the Civil War, a cannon lathe used for the manufacture of canons for the Confederate Army and recovered from Selma, Alabama, was presented to Auburn in 1952 by brothers of Delta Chapter of the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. It sits today on the lawn next to Samford Hall.
The school was reopened in 1866 following the end of the Civil War and has been open ever since. In 1872, control of the institution was transferred from the Methodist Church to the State of Alabama for financial reasons. Alabama placed the school under the provisions of the Morrill Act as a land-grant institution, the first in the South to be established separate from the "state" university. This act provided for 240,000 acres (971 km²) of Federal land to be sold in order to provide funds for an agricultural and mechanical school. As a result, in 1872 the school was renamed to the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama.
Under the provisions of this act, land-grant institutions were also supposed to teach miltary tactics and train officers for the United States military. In the late 1800s, most students at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama were enrolled in the cadet program, learning military tactics and training to become future officers. Each county in the state was allowed to nominate two cadets to attend the college free of charge.
In 1892, two historic events occurred: women were first admitted to the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama, and football was first played as a school sport. Eventually, football replaced polo as the main sport on campus. In 1899, the school name was again changed, this time to Alabama Polytechnic Institute.
On October 1, 1918, nearly all of Alabama Polytechnic Institute's able-bodied male students 18 or older voluntarily joined the United States Army for short-lived military careers on campus. The student-soldiers numbered 878, according to API President Charles Thach, and formed the academic section of the Student Army Training Corps. The vocational section was composed of enlisted men sent to Auburn for training in radio and mechanics. The students received honorable discharges two months later following the Armistice that ended World War I. API struggled through the great depression, having scrapped an extensive expansion program by then-President Bradford Knapp. Faculty salaries were cut drastically, and enrollment decreased along with state appropriations to the college.
During World War II, API again found its place training officers for the U.S. Military on campus; Auburn produced over 32,000 troops for the war effort. Following the end of World War II, API, like many colleges around the country, experienced a period of massive growth caused by returning soldiers taking advantage of their GI Bill offer of free education. In the five-year period following the end of the war, enrollment at API more than doubled. This lead to a severe shortage of housing on campus; trailers housed many students during this time, and would continue to be a major source of student housing into the 1980s.
Recognizing that the school had moved beyond its agricultural and mechanical roots, it was granted university status by the Alabama Legislature in 1960 and officially renamed Auburn University, a name that better expressed the varied academic programs and expanded curriculum that the school had been offering for years. Like most universities in the American South, Auburn was racially segregated prior to 1963, with only white students being admitted. Compared to the images of George Wallace standing in the door of the University of Alabama, integration went smoothly at Auburn, with the first African-American student being admitted in 1964, and the first doctoral degree being granted to an African-American in 1967.
Today, Auburn has grown since its founding in 1856 to have the largest on-campus enrollment in the state of Alabama, with over 23,000 students and a faculty of almost 1,200 at the main campus in Auburn. Additionally, there are over 6,000 students at the Auburn University at Montgomery satellite campus established in 1967.
However, in recent years Auburn's growth has been partially overshadowed by controversies surrounding the university's Board of Trustees, especially Colonial Bank President Bobby Lowder. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) claimed that trustees had conflicts of interest in their business affairs with the university and improperly interfered in the school's day-to-day affairs. As a result, SACS placed Auburn on academic probation. The probation was lifted in December 2004.
Academics
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Auburn has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the highest-ranked public university in the state of Alabama for 11 consecutive years and in the 2004 rankings was 44th among the nation's top 50 public universities. The university's core curriculum has been recognized as one of the best in the nation.
The university currently consists of thirteen schools and colleges. Programs in engineering, architecture and business have been ranked among the best in the country and Auburn also boasts strong programs in veterinary medicine, mathematics, science and journalism. The Old Rotation on campus is the oldest continuous agricultural experiment in the Southeast, and third oldest in the United States, dating from 1896. In 2003, Auburn started the first Bachelor of Wireless Engineering degree program in the US.
Schools and year originated:
- College of Agriculture, 1872
- College of Architecture, Design and Construction, 1907
- College of Business, 1967
- College of Education, 1915
- Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, 1872
- School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, 1984
- College of Human Sciences, 1916
- College of Liberal Arts, 1986
- School of Nursing, 1979
- James Harrison School of Pharmacy, 1885
- College of Sciences and Mathematics, 1986
- College of Veterinary Medicine, 1907
- Graduate School, 1872
Student life
Housing
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For most of the early history of Auburn, boarding houses and barracks made up most of the student housing. Even into the 1970s, boarding houses were still available in the community. It wasn't until the great depression that Auburn began to construct the first buildings on campus that were "dorms" in the modern sense of the word. As the university gradually shifted away from agricultural and military instruction to more of an academic institution, more and more dorms began to replace the barracks and boarding houses.
Auburn's first dorms were hardly luxurious. Magnolia Dormitory, built in the 1950s and demolished in 1987, was once used by the state of Alabama in its defense against a lawsuit brought by state prison inmates. The inmates claimed that housing two men in a cell of particularly small dimensions constituted 'cruel and unusual punishment.' The state argued in court that students at Auburn actually paid to live in even smaller living spaces—at Magnolia Dorm. The inmates lost the case.
One quirk of Auburn's student housing that for almost fifty years made it unique in the country was the high percentage of Auburn students living in mobile homes located off campus. This trend began in the late 1940s as a result of massive housing shortages due to returning soldiers taking advantage of the GI Bill. Trailers provided an economical, readily available source of housing with the additional bonus of providing privacy not found in a dormitory. Often a student would live in the same trailer that his or her siblings or other family relatives had lived in during their years at Auburn.
In the last twenty years, the city of Auburn has experienced a rapid growth in the number of apartment complexes constructed, and the number of students living in trailers has rapidly declined. However, even today there are large trailer parks located off Wire and Webster roads southwest of Auburn where many students live. Most Auburn students, however, live off-campus in the tenement-like apartment complexes and condos that surround the immediate area around the university. Less than 25 percent of Auburn students live on campus.
Auburn's on-campus student housing consists of four complexes located at various locations over campus. The Quad is the oldest of the four, dating to the great depression projects begun by the Works Progress Administration and located in Central Campus. Made up of 11 buildings, the Quad houses mostly undergraduates in coed, alternating-floor buildings. The Hill is made up of 14 buildings and is located in South Campus, though it is traditionally referred to only as "The Hill." The Hill houses mostly undergraduate women with the exception of the two high-rise dormatories (Boyd and Sasnett), which are coed on alternating floors.
The Village is located west of Campus and consists of 19 buildings of one- and two-bedroom apartments. This area was originally designated as married student housing, ideal for students who were already starting small families during their final years at Auburn. However, it now houses mostly undergraduates. The Extension is a block of six buildings, each comprised of two-bedroom apartments housing undergraduates.
Greek life
Male Greeks in Auburn are roughly divided into two separate areas: Old Row and New Row. "Old Row" traditionally was made up of the fraternities whose houses were located along Magnolia Avenue on the north side of campus. "New Row" is made up of fraternities whose houses were located along Lem Morrison Drive southwest of campus. However, being an "Old Row" or "New Row" fraternity doesn't really depend on where the house is located but on the age of the fraternity. Ergo, there are some "Old Row" fraternities with houses on "New Row" Lem Morrison Drive because they moved there. Today's "Old Row" on and around Magnolia Avenue was once the "New Row," as the first generation of fraternity houses at Auburn were on or near College Street. Most of these houses were demolished by the end of the 1970s, and only two fraternity houses remain on College today.
Because of the stipulations of a grant to Auburn made in the early 1900s, female Greek sororities are not allowed to have private houses. Instead, they are housed in the dorms located on the Hill. This had the unintended side effect of keeping dues for these sororities among the lowest in the nation.
Greek Life is important at Auburn, but is not as prevalent as at other institutions such as the University of Alabama. Roughly 18 percent of men and 34 percent of women are in greek organizations at Auburn. Some say that because of the low percentages there is a marked lack of animosity between greeks and independents.
Athletics
The school's sports teams are known as the Tigers, and they participate in the NCAA's Division I-A athletics and in the Western Division of the 12-member Southeastern Conference (SEC). Auburn is very competitive nationally in many sports in which it competes including football, baseball, women's basketball, and swimming and diving (men's and women's).
Football
Auburn's football team, currently coached by Tommy Tuberville, won a national championship in 1957. Two Auburn players, Bo Jackson in 1985 and Pat Sullivan in 1971, have won the Heisman Trophy. The Trophy's namesake, John Heisman, coached at Auburn from 1895 until 1899. Auburn is the only school that Heisman coached at (among others, Georgia Tech and Clemson) that has produced a Heisman Trophy winner. Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium has a capacity of 87,451 ranking as the eighth-largest on-campus stadium in the NCAA as of August 2004. Auburn played the first football game in the Deep South in 1892 against the University of Georgia at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. The Tigers' first bowl appearance was in 1937 in the Bacardi Bowl played in Havana, Cuba—the only college bowl game to ever be played outside the United States. As of 2004, AU Football has won six SEC Conference Championships and five western division championships. Auburn plays arch-rival Alabama each year in a game known as the Iron Bowl.
Auburn completed the 2004 season with an unblemished 13–0 record, winning the SEC championship outright for the first time since 1987. However, this achievement was somewhat overshadowed by the Tigers being left out of the BCS championship game in deference to two other undefeated, higher ranked teams, USC and Oklahoma. The 2004 team was led by quarterback Jason Campbell and running backs Carnell Williams and Ronnie Brown. The team gained a new offensive coordinator, Al Borges, who led the team to use the west coast style offense which maximized the use of both star running backs.
Swimming and diving
In the last decade under head coach David Marsh, Auburn's swimming and diving program has become a virtual dynasty in the SEC and threatens to do the same nationally, with consecutive NCAA championships for both the men and women in 2003 and 2004. The men won their third consecutive title in 2005, and the women were national runner-up to Southeastern Conference rival Georgia. The 2004 championship was the third in a row for the women. The Auburn men have won the SEC Championship eleven out of the last twelve years and also won national championships in 1997 and 1999. Coach Marsh has been an US Olympic coach and AU swimmers have represented the US and several other countries in recent Olympics. Auburn's most famous swimmer is Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines, winner of three gold medals at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Auburn's most successful female Olympic swimmer is Kirsty Coventry (swimming for her home country of Zimbabwe) who won a gold, silver and bronze medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
Women's basketball
The Auburn women's basketball team has been consistently competitive both nationally and within the SEC. Despite playing in the same conference as perenial powerhouse Tennessee and other competitive programs such as LSU, Georgia, and Vanderbilt, Auburn has won four regular season SEC championships and four SEC Tournament championships. AU has made sixteen appearances in the NCAA women's basketball tournament and only once, in the Tigers first appearance in 1982, have the Tigers lost in the first round. Auburn played in three consecutive National Championship games from 1988–1990 and won the Women's NIT in 2003. When Coach Joe Ciampi announced his retirement after twenty-five years at the end of the 2003–2004 season, the resulting search snared the highly experienced, former Purdue and US National and Olympic team head coach, Nell Fortner. Standout former Auburn players include: Ruthie Bolton-Holyfield, Vickie Orr, Carolyn Jones, Chantel Tremitiere and Monique Morehouse.
Baseball
Auburn Baseball has won six SEC championships, three SEC Tournament championships, appeared in sixteen NCAA Regionals and reached the College World Series (CWS) four times. After a disappointing 2003–2004 season, former Auburn assistant-coach Tom Slater was named head coach. Samford Stadium-Hitchcock Field at Plainsman Park is considered one of the finest facilities in college baseball and has a seating capacity of 4096 not including lawn areas. In addition to Bo Jackson, Auburn has supplied several other stand-out players to Major League Baseball, including Frank Thomas, Gregg Olson, Tim Hudson, Mark Bellhorn and Gabe Gross.
Traditions
Tiger Walk
Before each Auburn home football game, thousands of Auburn fans line Donahue Avenue to cheer on the team as they walk from Sewell Hall (the athletes' dormitory) to Jordan-Hare Stadium. The tradition began in the 1960s when groups of kids would walk up the street to greet the team and get autographs. During the tenure of coach Doug Barfield, the coach urged fans to come out and support the team, and thousands did. Today the team, led by the coaches, walks down the hill and into the stadium surrounded by fans who pat them on the back and shake their hands as they walk. The largest Tiger Walk occurred on December 2, 1989, before the first ever home football game against rival Alabama—the Iron Bowl. On that day, an estimated 20,000 fans packed the one block section of road leading to the stadium. According to former athletic director David Housel, Tiger Walk has become "the most copied tradition in all of college football."[1] (http://espn.go.com/page2/s/maisel/031120auburn.html)
Toomer's Corner
The intersection of Magnolia and College streets in Auburn, which marks the transition from downtown Auburn to the university campus, is known as Toomer's Corner. It is named after Toomer's Drugs, a small store on the corner that has been an Auburn landmark for over 150 years. Hanging over the corner are two massive old-growth oak trees, and anytime anything good happens concerning Auburn, toilet paper can usually be found hanging from the trees. Also known as "rolling the corner," This tradition is thought to have originated in the 1950s and until the mid 1990s was relegated to only to celebrating athletic wins. However, in recent years it has become a way to celebrate anything good that happens concerning Auburn. In 2002, students even rolled the corner to celebrate NCAA probations against arch-rival Alabama.
"War Eagle"
There are many stories surrounding the origins of Auburn's battle cry, "War Eagle." The most popular account involves the first Auburn football game in 1892 between Auburn and the University of Georgia. According to the story, in the stands that day was a old Civil War soldier with an eagle that he had found injured on a battlefield and kept as a pet. The eagle broke free and began to soar over the field, and Auburn began to march toward the Georgia end-zone. The crowd began to chant, "War Eagle" as the eagle soared. After Auburn won the game, the eagle crashed to the field and died but, according to the legend, his spirit lives on ever time an Auburn man or woman yells "War Eagle!" The battle cry of "War Eagle" also functions as a greeting for those associated with the University. For many years, a live golden eagle has embodied the spirit of this tradition.
Wreck Tech Pajama Parade
The Wreck Tech Pajama Parade originated in 1896, when a group of mischievous Auburn ROTC cadets, determined to show up the more well-known engineers from Georgia Tech, sneaked out of their dorms the night before the football game between Auburn and Tech and greased the railroad tracks. According to the story, the train carrying the Georgia Tech team slid through town and didn't stop until it was halfway to the neighboring town of Loachapoka, Alabama, The Georgia Tech team was forced to walk the five miles back to Auburn and, not surprisingly, were rather weary at the end of their journey. This likely contributed to their 45–0 loss. While the railroad long ago ceased to be the way teams traveled to Auburn and students never greased the tracks again, the tradition continues in the form of a parade through downtown Auburn. Students parade through the streets in their pajamas and organizations build floats. This tradition has recently been renewed with Georgia Tech returning to Auburn's schedule after nearly two decades of absence.
Selected Student Organizations
Media
- One of the leading literary journals in the region, The Southern Humanities Review has been published at the University by members of the English faculty, graduate students in English, and the Southern Humanities Council since 1967, publishing the work of nationally known authors such as Kent Nelson, R. T. Smith, and Robert Clark Young
- The Auburn Plainsman - the university's student-run newspaper, has won 22 Pacemaker Awards (http://www.ocm.auburn.edu/news_releases/plainsman.html) from the Associated College Press (http://www.studentpress.org/) since 1966. Only the University of Texas' student paper has won more.
- WEGL 91.1 FM (http://wegl.auburn.edu/) - The Auburn campus radio station.
- The Auburn Circle (http://www.auburn.edu/circle/)- The student general-interest magazine. The Circle publishes poetry, art, photography, fiction, nonfiction, creative nonficiton, and architectural and indstrial design from the Auburn community.
Politics
- Auburn University College Democrats (http://www.auburn.edu/student_info/college_democrats/)
- Auburn University Libertarians (http://www.auburn.edu/libertarian)
- Auburn University College Republicans (http://www.auburn.edu/aucr/)
Statistics
- Schools and colleges: 13
- Campus: ~375 buildings on 1,840 acres (7 km²)
- Library total volumes: 5,316,652
Enrollment
- 2003 Fall enrollment: 23,152
- Undergraduate: 20,048
- Graduate: 3104
- Student-to-faculty ratio: 16 to 1
- 2003 applicants/entering freshmen:
Notable
Faculty
- Byron Blagburn; professor of pathobiology specializing in parasitology; developed the PROGRAM flea pill for pets in 1995.
- Wayne Flynt; a leading authority on Alabaman history and Baptist history in Alabama. The author of eleven books, including the Pulitzer Prize nominated Poor But Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites.
- Nels Madsen; engineering professor who won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for his work on motion-capture technology for computer character animation involving mapping human motion onto the motion of a computer character. He gained recognition when Peter Jackson selected his software for use in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
- James Voss; former US astronaut and veteran of five spaceflights; teaching courses on Space Mission Design.
Alumni
- Gen. Holland Smith (1901); USMC, "father of modern U.S. amphibious warfare"
- William Spratling (1921); silversmith and artist, "father of Mexican silver"
- Gordon Persons (1922); Governor of Alabama, 1951-1955
- Paul Rudolph (1940); architect, chairman of Yale Department of Architecture - 1958 to 1965
- Vince Dooley (1954, M.His 1963); University of Georgia Head Football Coach 1964-1988, Athletic Director 1979-2004
- Hank Hartsfield (1954); astronaut, STS-4, STS-41-D, STS-61-A
- Millard Fuller (1957); founder of Habitat for Humanity
- Fob James (1957); Governor of Alabama, 1979-1983, 1995-1999
- Carl Mundy Jr. (1957); USMC General and Commandant
- Ken Mattingly (1958); astronaut, Apollo 13 (pulled), Apollo 16 (spacewalk), STS-4
- Anne Rivers Siddons (1958); best-selling author
- Samuel Ginn (1959); wireless communications pioneer and former chairman, Vodafone.
- Don Logan (1966); Chairman, Time Warner's Media & Communications Group
- Joe Leonard (1967); chairman/CEO, AirTran Airways
- Larry M. Bryant, PhD (1968); race car driver
- Joe Forehand (1971); Chairman, Accenture
- James Voss (1972); astronaut, STS-44, STS-53, STS-69, STS-101, ISS
- Jimmy Johnson (1974); cartoonist, "Arlo and Janis"
- Samuel Mockbee (1974); architect, founder of Auburn's Rural Studio, 2004 AIA Gold Medal
- Kathryn Thornton (1974); astronaut, second US woman in space, spacewalk, STS-33, STS-73
- Cynthia Tucker (1976); syndicated columnist, Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor
- Jan Davis (1977); astronaut, STS-47, STS-60
- Rheta Grimsley-Johnson (1977); syndicated newspaper columnist
- Bill Holbrook (1980); cartoonist, "On The Fast Track", "Save Havens" and "Kevin & Kell"
- Rowdy Gaines (1982); Olympic gold medalist, world record holder and television sports commentator
- Tim Dorsey (1983); author
- Harold D. Melton (1988); Georgia Supreme Court Justice (appointed 2005)
- Jimmy Wales (1989); founder of the Wikipedia
- Frank Thomas (1990); professional baseball player
- Bo Jackson (1992); former professional football and baseball player
- Johnny Micheal Spann (1992); First American killed in combat after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
Attendees (did not graduate)
- Charles Barkley; former professional basketball player (joined the NBA after his junior year in 1984)
- Jimmy Buffett; singer/songwriter (attended Auburn, but graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi)
- Victoria Jackson; comedian of Saturday Night Live fame (attended Auburn for one year but graduated from Furman University)
- Takeo Spikes; NFL linebacker
Appearances
- Auburn was mentioned in the 2003 Sony Pictures' film Big Fish, directed by Tim Burton and starring Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, and Billy Crudup. The film was based upon the novel, Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, by Daniel Wallace. However, the campus you see in the movie is actually Huntingdon College in Montgomery. The Book by Daniel Wallace has a more prominant mention of Auburn.
- Auburn has made a number of cameos in the syndicated comic strip Kevin & Kell, drawn by Auburn alumnus Bill Holbrook. Appearances include 16-Dec-98 (http://www.kevinandkell.com/1998/kk1216.html), 3-Nov-04 (http://www.kevinandkell.com/2004/kk1103.html), 4-Nov-04 (http://www.kevinandkell.com/2004/kk1104.html), 5-Nov-04 (http://www.kevinandkell.com/2004/kk1105.html), and 6-Nov-04 (http://www.kevinandkell.com/2004/kk1106.html).
See also
References
- Auburn University Athletic Department (2004). 2004 Auburn Football Media Guide (http://www.auburntigers.com/football/page.cfm?doc_id=7323). Retrieved 2 June 2005.
External links
- Auburn University (http://www.auburn.edu/)—official site.
- Auburn Tigers Athletics (http://www.auburntigers.com/)
- The Plainsman (http://www.theplainsman.com/)—the university's student-run newspaper.
- Remembering the Experience (http://www.auburn.edu/univrel/multimedia/publications/experiences/)