A global outlook, useful idealism, a enthusiasm for public assistance: They're component of American University today, plus they were in the new air in 1893, when AU was chartered by Congress. George Washington had imagined a "national university" in the country's capital. But it got John Fletcher Hurst to observed a university that, in lots of ways, embodies that dream.
Today's students would discover a kindred spirit in Hurst, who studied overseas in the 1850s and ventured through the center East and South Asia later on, writing a cultural record of Sri Lanka actually. By enough time ground was broken in 1896, he was the respected Methodist bishop of Washington, D.C., with a eyesight of a university that could train public servants for future years. The terrain Bishop Hurst chose for AU was on the rural fringe of the country's capital, nonetheless it had been rich with Washington background. Abraham Lincoln had visited troops at Fort Gaines, which perched on the huge ground placed by Ward Circle and the Katzen Arts Centre now.
Presidential footsteps would continue steadily to echo through AU record. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of a setting up, named for Hurst's good friend, President William McKinley. When the Methodist-affiliated university opened up in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson gave the commitment.
Growing with Washington
If AU's Washington ties had been evident right away, thus was its groundbreaking spirit. The first 28 learners included five girls, a notable figure at the same time before women of all ages could vote, and an African American college student earned a fellowship in 1915 to go after a doctorate.
Undergraduates were admitted in 1925 first, where time graduate students possessed shifted to a downtown campus on F Street, near to the White House. It had been there in the center of downtown that in 1934, in the beginning of the New Deal, AU released a scheduled program to greatly help train federal workers in new ways of public administration. President Franklin Roosevelt, who spoke at the function launching the scheduled program, promised it could have the "hearty cooperation" of most branches of his administration. This program would evolve into today's School of Open public Affairs.
During World Battle II, college students shared the campus with the Navy, that used it for training and research. It wasn't the very first time that war impacted AU directly. During World Battle I, the still generally undeveloped campus have been switched over briefly to the battle department for make use of as a armed service camp, training and testing site.
The time after World Battle II was a period of growth and invention. The Washington Semester Program, founded in 1947, started out drawing students from around the nation--and ultimately, the world--to take part in what was a new concept: semester internships in the country's capital.
In 1949, the Washington College of Laws merged with AU, adding its wealthy history--it was founded for ladies in 1896--to the pioneering spirit of the university. By that same 12 months, although nation's capital was nonetheless a segregated area, the AU network included over 400 African American students.
Post-war expansion
The 1950s brought even more expansion. By 1955, the business enterprise program launched in 1924 had grown so large it became another school, now referred to as the Kogod Institution of Business.
Ground was shattered for the institution of International Provider in 1957 by President Dwight Eisenhower, who urged the brand new school to keep in mind that "the waging of peace needs the very best we have."
A few years later on, President John Kennedy employed the 1963 AU commencement as the event for a pivotal overseas policy speech contacting the Soviet Union to utilize america on a nuclear check ban treaty.
It was just the start of a news-making 10 years at AU. Like their peers around the united states, AU students angry about the Vietnam War took their concerns to the streets--but here, that often meant blocking the cars of Washington's policy makers because they passed the campus on the daily commutes, or hosting students who originated from around the country to become listed on the protests in the country's capital.
The next years brought a quieter campus, however the presssing issues of your day continued to activate faculty and pupils as new centers, institutes, and programs had been born and departments and schools expanded. In 1984, the educational school of Communication was established, reflecting the growth of the journalism program from the first courses in the 1920s.
A new century
Academic programs gained high national rankings continuously, and the grade of AU's learners was reflected in the lot of merit awards and prestigious nationwide scholarships and fellowships, such as for example Fulbright awards and Presidential Control Fellowships.
The university's growing status in the imaginative arts was underscored with the starting of the 296-chair Harold and Sylvia Greenberg Theatre in 2003 and the Katzen Arts Middle in 2005. With 130,000 square legs of space, the Katzen carries a 30,000 square ft . art museum with three floors of exhibition space, the Washington area's major university facility for exhibiting art.
In 2007, Neil Kerwin, SPA/BA '71, started to be the first alum to be president of AU. A observed scholar of public insurance plan and the regulatory procedure, he has been section of the lifestyle of AU for 40 years, as pupil, professor, dean, and provost, and is currently guiding the university through the procedure of applying its strategic strategy, "American University and another 10 years: Leadership for a Changing Community," which expresses a conviction that AU's educational strengths happen to be grounded in its main values of interpersonal responsibility and a committed action to cultural and intellectual diversity.
It's a perspective for the twenty-primary century, but it's grounded in ideals that get back to John Fletcher Hurst and the imagine a university which makes a notable difference in the lives of its learners, its community, and the global world.