University of Arkansas
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University of Arkansas,
Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
http://www.uark.edu

The University of Arkansas, known also as the U of A or UA, is a public co-educational land-grant university. It is the main (or "flagship") campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Founded as Arkansas Industrial University in 1871, its present name was adopted in 1899. It is noted for its strong architecture, agriculture (particularly poultry science) and business programs. It is also noted for the national success of its debate teams, and for its engineering program winning the 2006 national solar-powered boat championships.

The University of Arkansas strives to be known as a "nationally competitive, student-centered research university serving Arkansas and the world". The school recently completed their "Campaign for the 21st Century", in which they raised over $1 billion for the school, including the creation of a new Honors College, and added money for their endowment. Among these gifts were the largest donation given to a business school at the time ($50 million), and the largest gift given to a public university in America ($300 million), both given by the Walton Family Charitable Foundation.

Enrollment for the fall semester of 2005 was 17,821, with 2,948 (17%) being graduate students. The University campus is represented by 130 buildings on 345 acres, including the Inn at Carnall Hall, which serves as an on-campus hotel facility. Academic programs are in excess of 200. The ratio of students to faculty is 17:1.

The University of Arkansas was founded in 1871, on the site of a former hilltop farm that overlooked the Ozark Mountains (giving it the nickname "The Hill").

The University was established under the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862. The University’s founding also satisfied the provision in the Arkansas Constitution of 1868 that the General Assembly was to "establish and maintain a State University."

Initially, to found the University, $130,000 was raised by the citizens of Washington County. This was in response to the competition created by the Arkansas General Assembly’s Organic Act of 1871, providing for the "location, organization and maintenance of the Arkansas Industrial University with a normal department [i.e., teacher education] therein."

Completed in 1875, Old Main, a two-towered brick building designed in the Second Empire style, was the primary instructional and administrative building. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is known for it's northern tower being taller than the southern tower. Although the original plans called for the southern tower to be taller, as a post-Civil War salute to the South, northern contractors switched the plans and made the northern tower higher. The southern tower features a clock, and at 5 pm every day, the chimes from the northern tower play the school's Alma Mater. Old Main housed many of the earliest classes taught at the university, and has served as the offices of every college within the University during its history. Today, in addition to hosting classes, it contains the restored Giffels Auditorium and historic displays, as well as the administrative offices of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences.

The lawn at Old Main serves as an arboretum, where each type of tree found in the state of Arkansas is also found on the lawn. Sitting at the edge of the lawn is Spoofer's Stone, noted as a meeting place for couples. When a couple got engaged, they broke a piece of the stone off. Today the stone is protected, as it had steadily decreased in size over the years.

Beginning with the class of 1876, the names of University of Arkansas graduates are inscribed in "Senior Walk," which meanders more than five miles across the entire campus, and is one of a kind nationally. The sidewalks of the university bear the engraved names of everyone who has ever graduated (with any type of degree) from the University. Most recently, the names of all the recipients of honorary degrees were added. School superstition states that it is bad luck to step on the Class of 1900.

One of the most unique structures at Arkansas is the Chi Omega Greek Theatre, a gift to the school by the national headquarters of the sorority. It marked the first time in the history of Greek letter social organizations that a national sorority had presented a memorial of its foundation to the institution where it was founded. Chi Omega was organized on April 5, 1895, at the University of Arkansas and is the mother (Psi) chapter of the national organization. The theater has been used for commencements, convocations, concerts, dramas, and pep rallies. The largest crowd ever assembled here–upwards of 6,000, according to professor Walter J. Lemke–was for a concert by the Army Air Corps Band during World War II. From 1934 to 1991, the space under the stage was used for a rifle range by the Army ROTC.

The University of Arkansas became the first major Southern public university to admit an African-American student without litigation when Silas Hunt of Texarkana, an African American veteran of World War II, was admitted to the University's law school in 1948. Roy Wilkins, administrator of the NAACP, wrote in 1950 that Arkansas was the "very first of the Southern states to accept the new trend without fighting a delaying action or attempting to . . . limit, if not nullify, bare compliance."

The most widely-implemented automated mail sorting equipment in the world–the Wide Area Bar Code Reader–was developed by the University of Arkansas’ College of Engineering. A $50,000 grant from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to Professors Dwight F. Mix and J.E. Bass in 1989 began the research and development effort. By 1999, more than 15,000 University of Arkansas bar code readers were located in every major USPS facility, increasing the efficiency of processing 20 billion pieces of mail a year at a savings of $200 million. This R&D effort has spawned four additional electronic systems to help the USPS "read the mail".

During the 1980s, Professors Allen Hermann and Zhengzhi Sheng of the Department of Physics were in the vanguard of research in superconductivity: the phenomenon whereby Direct Current (DC) electricity, once started, can flow essentially forever. The Thallium-based material they discovered at Arkansas held the world's record for high temperature, 125K, for five years (1988-93) and drew international attention to the University. Their work led to numerous patents and a manufacturing agreement, as well as further advances in high-density electronics.