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Last updated on Friday, December 18, 2015
(BLOOMINGTON) - In advance of Indiana University’s appearance in the 2015 Pinstripe Bowl on December 26, playing Duke University, here are some behind-the-scenes facts about the Hoosiers.
1. Indiana University -- with nearly 115,000 students at eight accredited four-year degree-granting institutions in the state and more than 600,000 living alumni worldwide -- was founded at Bloomington, Ind., in 1820. One of the oldest public universities west of the Allegheny Mountains, it will celebrate its bicentennial in 2020. Enrollment this fall at IU Bloomington (42,588 degree-seeking students) surpassed the 40,000-student mark for the eighth consecutive year and includes about 2,500 students from New York and more than 1,500 from New Jersey who have been admitted in the past two years.
2. IU Bloomington's 1,937-acre campus in the rolling hills of southern Indiana is considered one of the five most beautiful campuses in the nation, as cited in Thomas Gaines' book, "The Campus as a Work of Art."
3. The IU Bloomington Libraries, considered one of the top academic libraries in the country, has 17 library sites across campus. The new Learning Commons and Scholars' Commons in Herman B Wells Library will have more than 1 million visitors this year. Its new innovative service hubs support cutting-edge research on-site and help students achieve their highest academic goals with newly available technological tools.
4. The university's rare-books collection, the Lilly Library, has holdings totaling about 450,000 books, 150,000 pieces of sheet music and many culturally important items such the Gutenberg Bible; the Shakespeare "First Folio" printed in 1623; a first edition, in its original pasteboard binding, of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" published in 1813; and the papers of author Kurt Vonnegut, poet Sylvia Plath and director Orson Welles.
5. In addition to its success on the gridiron, IU has many successful academic programs. The 6,200-student undergraduate program at IU's Kelley School of Business is ranked eighth by Bloomberg Businessweek and No. 1 by corporate recruiters in the same survey. IU has been a pioneer in online education, and Kelley's online MBA and MS programs are ranked No. 1 by U.S. News and World Report. U.S. News continues to rank IU's School of Public and Environmental Affairs as the No. 2 graduate program, ahead of Harvard, Princeton and other major universities. IU's School of Education, Jacobs School of Music, Maurer School of Law and schools in the College of Arts and Sciences also are renowned and have been recognized by national publications.
6. IU's School of Global and International Studies offers many opportunities for international education, including greater foreign language proficiencies, better understanding of how societies are developing worldwide and deeper knowledge of globalization. It also aims to strengthen and expand IU's already formidable reputation in research and scholarship in international studies by marshaling the expertise of more than 350 core and affiliated faculty members from across the university and seven federally funded Title VI national resource and language centers, three federally funded Language Flagship programs and a total of 21 international institutes and programs. The school is also one of five founding institutions in the Carnegie International Policy Scholars Consortium, which connects basic research in the social sciences and humanities with policy-relevant investigations and analysis. The school is led by Lee Feinstein, former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Poland, who served secretaries of state and defense. Other faculty include former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, the longest-serving senator in Indiana's history and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and longtime U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This fall, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry helped to celebrate the opening of the school's new home on the Bloomington campus.
7. More than 90 faculty members affiliated with IU have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a recognition by the world's largest general scientific organization. The IU faculty has also included 50 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 25 members of the National Academy of Sciences and members of learned societies in Australia, France, Mexico, Sweden, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Elinor Ostrom, the only woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, taught at IU for four decades. Other IU faculty been awarded Pulitzers, Oscars and Emmy Awards, as well as major research grants from the National Science Foundation, Ford, Guggenheim, Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations.
8. IU is a national leader in high-speed research computing networks, thanks to early and continued investment in some of the fastest university-owned supercomputers. Earlier this year, IU was awarded a $4.8 million National Science Foundation grant to operate TransPAC, the high-speed network that connects U.S. researchers with counterparts in Asia. In 2014, IU researchers won more than $20 million in highly competitive federal information technology grants, creating advanced tools for medical and scientific breakthroughs.
9. In September, in an effort to address some of the most urgent challenges facing the state, nation and the world, IU launched the most ambitious research program in the university's history. IU will invest at least $300 million over five years in a Grand Challenges research program to develop transformative solutions for some of the planet's most pressing problems. The program will address challenges that are too big to ignore -- such as global water supplies; the availability of energy; infectious diseases; harnessing the power of, and protecting, big data; and climate change -- by catalyzing collaborative and interdisciplinary research, as well as new partnerships with community organizations, industry and government.
10. IU has launched two schools of public health in recent years. The schools, one in Bloomington and the other in Indianapolis, are the only such schools in the state and are dedicated to improving the health of Indiana's urban and rural residents.
11. Despite its location in a nearly landlocked Midwestern state, the Office of Underwater Science in the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington is an international leader in the creation of underwater parks and museums as a way to protect underwater treasures, such as Capt. Kidd's wrecked ship the Quedagh Merchant and precious corals.
12. IU is the home of the world-famous Kinsey Institute, originally known as the source of the "Kinsey Reports" in the 1950s. Today's research focuses on specific issues in sexual behavior, including how people make sexual decisions; hook-ups and long-term relationships; condom use and errors; and hormonal influences. The research collections include artwork, films and library materials spanning centuries and cultures.
13. IU's Jacobs School of Music has long been recognized as one of the most competitive and acclaimed institutions for the study of music. Its more than 1,600 students come from all 50 states and as many as 55 countries. The school offers more than 1,100 performances a year, including seven fully staged operas and three ballets. Its more than 180 full-time faculty include internationally celebrated performers, scholars and teachers.
14. IU Bloomington is home to IU Cinema, a state-of-the-art venue that showcases new art house releases, foreign language films, classics and documentaries. The cinema regularly hosts screenings and talks with directors and film actors, including Meryl Streep, Werner Herzog, Glenn Close, Roger Corman and faculty member Robby Benson. One the few THX-certified cinemas in the nation, it also has access to more than 82,000 film reels and related materials in the university's archives, including collections from filmmakers John Ford and Orson Welles.
15. More than 13,400 IU alumni reside in greater metropolitan New York, and 42,100 alumni live within a 250-mile radius of the Big Apple. Well-known IU Bloomington alumni now making a name for themselves in New York include Suzanne Collins, author of the "Hunger Games" books; Kevin Kline, an Academy and Tony Award-winning actor; Michael Uslan, executive producer of the "Batman" movies; acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell; and Brett Yormark, CEO of the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center. Other IU alumni include Jonathan Banks, star of "Breaking Bad" and "Community"; Ryan Murphy, the creator of the popular television programs "Glee" and "Nip/Tuck"; Michael Higgins, Ireland's ninth president; Mark Cuban, a successful business magnate and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks; Will Shortz, crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times; Meg Cabot, author of "The Princess Diaries"; Sage Steele, ESPN sports anchor; Dick Enberg, legendary sports broadcaster; Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia; Hoagy Carmichael, composer of such American pop standards as "Star Dust" and "Georgia on My Mind"; Ernie Pyle, legendary war correspondent; journalists Tavis Smiley, Anthony DeCurtis, Sherri Sylvester and Jane Pauley; actress Sarah Clarke; and Grammy winners Sylvia McNair and Booker T. Jones.
16. IU alumni who have distinguished themselves in sports include current New York Jet (and former New York Giant) James Brewer, former New York Giants John Hanley Cannady, Thomas Lewis and Eric Moore, and former New York Jets Carl Barzilauskas and Moses Gray. They also include the late New York Knicks great Walt Bellamy, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, 1960 Olympic gold medalist, NBA first overall pick in 1961 and Rookie of the Year in 1962; and former New York Knicks coaches Mike Woodson, who led IU to the 1979 NIT Championship, and Isiah Thomas, the Final Four MVP when IU won the championship in 1981 and a former member of the Detroit Pistons and a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Other prominent IU alumni athletes include Mark Spitz, an Olympic gold medalist in 1968 and 1972; and George Taliaferro, an All-American football player who led the Hoosiers to their only undefeated championship and the first African American to be drafted by the National Football League.
17. IU football players excel in the classroom as well as on the field. Adam Replogle (now with the Atlanta Falcons) in 2012 and safety Mark Murphy (now a software engineer) in 2013 became the eighth and ninth IU players to collect Academic All-America honors. Murphy was named Academic All-American again in 2014 and was the recipient of the National Football Foundation's National Scholar-Athlete Award. For the second time in Wilson's tenure, the program set a school record with 26 Academic All-Big Ten recipients in 2013. Along with 24 honorees in 2011, 22 in 2012, 21 in 2014 and 18 in 2015, IU has set a program five-year record with 111 award winners in head coach Kevin Wilson's five seasons.
18. IU student-athletes who enrolled from 2004-07 earned a Graduation Success Rate score of 84 percent, according to the most recent NCAA report. Six IU programs finished with a perfect 100 score. IU also excelled in the most recent NCAA report on the Academic Progress Rate, a real-time measure of eligibility and retention for Division I programs. IU's men's basketball team was the only one in the Big Ten to earn a perfect APR score of 1,000; in fact, coach Tom Crean's squad has earned a perfect APR score for four straight years.
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