University Of Minnesota - Twin Cities

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the flagship institution of the University of Minnesota System and is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units.

The Twin Cities campus is the oldest and largest in the University of Minnesota system and has the ninth-largest (as of the 2022–2023 academic year) main campus student body in the United States, with 54,890 students at the start of the 2023–24 academic year.
The campus comprises locations in Minneapolis and Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, approximately apart.

The Minnesota Territorial Legislature drafted a charter for the University of Minnesota as a territorial university in 1851, seven years before Minnesota became a state. The university is currently classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". It is a member of the Association of American Universities. The National Science Foundation ranked the University of Minnesota 22nd among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2022 with $1.202 billion. The University of Minnesota is considered a Public Ivy university.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers compete in 21 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division I Big Ten Conference and have won 29 national championships. As of March 2024, Minnesota's current and former students have won a total of 90 Olympic medals. There are 25 Nobel laureates associated with the university.

History

The University of Minnesota was founded in Minneapolis in 1851 as a college preparatory school, seven years prior to Minnesota's statehood. It struggled in its early years and relied on donations to stay open from donors, including South Carolina Governor William Aiken Jr.

In 1867, the university received land grant status through the Morrill Act of 1862. With lands taken from Dakota people, the university was able to revive itself after closing in 1858. The Dakota people have not been credited for the expropriation of their lands.

An 1876 donation from flour miller John S. Pillsbury is generally credited with saving the school. Since then, Pillsbury has become known as "The Father of the University." Pillsbury Hall is named in his honor.

Academic milestones began with Warren Clark Eustis and Henry Martyn Williamson graduating in 1873 as the university's first graduates. Helen Marr Ely was the first female graduate in 1875. The university progressed by awarding its first master's degree in 1880 and conferring its first Ph.D. in 1888.

As the 20th century began, the university expanded its academic offerings. In 1908, the university inaugurated the Program of Mortuary Science, becoming the first state university in the United States to do so. The School of Nursing was established in 1909, the first continuous nursing school on a university campus in the United States. The nursing school later opened its doors to male students in 1949.

20th-century breakthroughs at the University of Minnesota positioned it as a leader in medical innovation. In 1954, C. Walton Lillehei and F. John Lewis performed the world's first successful open-heart surgery using cross-circulation. 1955 saw Richard DeWall and Lillehei develop the bubble oxygenator, setting the stage for modern heart-lung machines. This was followed by Lillehei's performance of the first artificial heart valve implant in a human in 1958, and in the same year, Earl Bakken, co-founder of Medtronic, Inc., developed the first portable pacemaker, introduced into practice by Lillehei.

The latter part of the 20th century saw the university's continued innovation in medical transplantation, including the world's first successful kidney/pancreas transplant in 1967, a bone marrow transplant in 1968, and a living donor pancreas transplant in 1998. Another notable contribution to agriculture came in 1991, with the development of the honeycrisp apple.

Campuses

''Note: The flagship University of Minnesota campus is the Twin Cities campus, which comprises grounds in St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latter divided into areas on both the east and west banks of the Mississippi River. Administratively, these are all one campus, but for purposes of simplicity, this article will apply "campus" to its component parts where necessary to avoid confusion with the names of cities.''

As the largest of five campuses across the University of Minnesota system, the Twin Cities campus has more than 50,000 students; this makes it the ninth-largest campus student body in the United States overall. It also has more than 300 research, education, and outreach centers and institutes.

Minneapolis

The original Minneapolis campus overlooked the Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River, but it was later moved about a mile (1.6 km) downstream to its current location. The original site is now marked by a small park known as Chute Square at the intersection of and Central avenues. The school shut down following a financial crisis during the American Civil War, but reopened in 1867 with considerable financial help from John S. Pillsbury. It was upgraded from a preparatory school to a college in 1869. Today, the university's Minneapolis campus is divided by the Mississippi River into an East Bank and a West Bank.

The Minneapolis campus has several residence halls: 17th Avenue Hall, Centennial Hall, Frontier Hall, Territorial Hall, Pioneer Hall, Sanford Hall, Wilkins Hall, Middlebrook Hall, Yudof Hall, and Comstock Hall.

East Bank

The East Bank, the main portion of the campus, covers and is divided into several areas: the Knoll area, the Mall area, the Health area, the Athletic area, and the Gateway area.

The Knoll area, the oldest extant part of the university, is in the northwestern corner of the campus. Many buildings in this area are well over 100 years old, such as some of the 13 in the Old Campus Historic District. Today, most disciplines in this area relate to the humanities. Burton Hall is home to the College of Education and Human Development. Folwell Hall and Jones Hall are primarily used by the language departments. A residence hall, Sanford Hall, and a student-apartment complex, Roy Wilkins Hall, are in this area. This area is just south of the Dinkytown neighborhood and business area.

Northrop Mall is arguably the center of the Minneapolis campus. The plan for the Mall was based on a design by Cass Gilbert, although his scheme was too extravagant to be fully implemented. Several of the campus's primary buildings surround the Mall area. Northrop Auditorium provides a northern anchor, with Coffman Memorial Union (CMU) to the south. Four of the larger buildings to the sides of the Mall are the primary mathematics, physics, and chemistry buildings (Vincent Hall, Tate Laboratory and Smith Hall, respectively) and Walter Library. Smith Hall and Walter Library were built during the Lotus Coffman administration. The Mall area is home to the College of Liberal Arts, which is Minnesota's largest public or private college, and the College of Science and Engineering. Behind CMU is another residence hall, Comstock Hall, and another student-apartment complex, Yudof Hall. The Northrop Mall Historic District was formally listed in the National Register of Historic Places in January 2018.

The Health area is to the southeast of the Mall area and focuses on undergraduate buildings for biological science students, as well as the homes of the College of Pharmacy, the School of Nursing, the School of Dentistry, the Medical School, the School of Public Health, and M Health Fairview Hospitals and Clinics. This complex of buildings forms what is known as the University of Minnesota Medical Center. Part of the College of Biological Sciences is housed in this area.

Across the street from the University of Minnesota Medical Center Fairview is an area known as the "Superblock", a four-city-block space comprising four residence halls (Pioneer, Frontier, Centennial and Territorial Halls). The Superblock is one of the most popular locations for on-campus housing because it has the largest concentration of students living on campus and has a multitude of social activities between the residence halls.

The Athletic area is directly north of the Superblock and includes four recreation/athletic facilities: the University Recreation Center, Cooke Hall, the University Fieldhouse, and the University Aquatic Center. These facilities are all connected by tunnels and skyways, allowing students to use one locker room facility. North of this complex is the Huntington Bank Stadium, Williams Arena, Mariucci Arena, Ridder Arena, and the Baseline Tennis Center.

The Gateway area, the easternmost section of campus, is primarily composed of office buildings instead of classrooms and lecture halls. The most prominent building is McNamara Alumni Center. The university is also heavily invested in a biomedical research initiative and has built five biomedical research buildings that form a biomedical complex directly north of Huntington Bank Stadium.

=Architecture

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The Armory, northeast of the Mall area, is built like a Norman castle. It features a sally-port entrance facing Church Street and a tower that was originally intended to be the professor of military science's residence. Since it originally held the athletics department, the Armory also features a gymnasium. Today it is home to military science classes and the university's Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

Several buildings in the Old Campus Historic District were designed by early Minnesota architect LeRoy Buffington. One of the most notable is Pillsbury Hall, designed by Buffington and Harvey Ellis in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. Pillsbury Hall's polychromatic facade incorporates several sandstone varieties that were available in Minnesota during the time of construction. Buffington also designed the exterior of Burton Hall, considered one of the strongest specimens of Greek Revival architecture in Minnesota.

Many of the buildings on the East Bank were designed by the prolific Minnesota architect Clarence H. Johnston, including the Jacobean Folwell Hall and the Beaux-Arts edifices of Northrop Auditorium and Walter Library, which he considered the heart of the university. Johnston's son, Clarence Johnston Jr, was also an architect and designed the original Bell Museum building and Coffman Memorial Union in the 1930s.

The Malcolm Moos Health Sciences Tower, which is the tallest building on the Twin Cities campus, is a noted example of brutalist architecture.

In more recent years, Frank Gehry designed the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum. Completed in 1993, the Weisman Art Museum is a typical example of his work with curving metallic structures. The abstract structure is considered highly significant because it was built prior to the widespread use of computer-aided design in architecture. It also ushered in a new era of architecture at the university, which continued with the completion of the McNamara Alumni Center in 2000 and Bruininks Hall (formerly STSS) in 2010.

Another notable structure is the addition to the Architecture building, designed by Steven Holl and completed in 2002. It won an American Institute of Architects award for its innovative design. The Architecture building was then renamed Rapson Hall after the local modernist architect and School of Architecture Dean Ralph Rapson.

The university also has a "Greek row" of historic fraternities and sororities located north of campus on University Avenue SE.

West Bank

The West Bank covers . The West Bank is home to the University of Minnesota Law School, the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Carlson School of Management, various social science buildings, and the performing arts center. The West Bank Arts Quarter includes the Rarig Center, Barbara Barker Center for Dance, Ferguson Hall (School of Music), Ted Mann Concert Hall and Regis Center for Art. Due to the numerous arts departments on the West Bank, it is home to several annual interdisciplinary arts festivals.

Wilson Library, the largest library in the university system, is also on the West Bank, as is Middlebrook Hall, the largest residence hall on campus. The Elmer L. Andersen Library is home to the University's Archives and Special Collections Department.

St. Paul

The St. Paul campus is in the city of Falcon Heights, about from the Minneapolis campus. The default place name for the ZIP code serving the campus is "St. Paul", but "Falcon Heights" is also recognized for use in the street addresses of all campus buildings. The College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, including the University of Minnesota Food Industry Center and many other disciplines from social sciences to vocational education, are on this campus. It also includes the College of Continuing and Professional Studies, College of Veterinary Medicine, and College of Biological Sciences. The extensive lawns, flowers, trees, and surrounding University research farm plots create a greener and quieter campus. It has a grassy mall of its own and can be a bit of a retreat from the more urban Minneapolis campus. Prominent on this campus is Bailey Hall, the St. Paul campus' only residence hall. Campus Connector buses run every five minutes on weekdays when school is in session, and every 20 minutes on weekends, allowing students easy access to both campuses.

The Continuing Education and Conference Center, which serves over 20,000 conference attendees per year, is also on the St. Paul campus.

The St. Paul campus is home to the College of Design's Department of Design, Housing, and Apparel (DHA). Located in McNeal Hall, DHA includes the departmental disciplines of apparel design, graphic design, housing studies, interior design, and retail merchandising. McNeal Hall is also the home to the University's Goldstein Museum of Design.

The St. Paul campus is known to University students and staff for the Meat and Dairy Salesroom, which sells animal food products (such as ice cream, cheese, and meat) produced in the university's state-certified pilot plant by students, faculty and staff.

The St. Paul campus borders the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, which hosts the largest state fair in the United States by daily attendance. The fair lasts 12 days, from late August through Labor Day. The grounds also serve a variety of functions during the rest of the year.

Although the Falcon Heights area code is 651, the university telephone system trunk lines use Minneapolis exchanges and its 612 area code.

Commuting

Walking and riding bicycles are the most common modes of transportation among students. At times, the University Police has occasionally cited individuals for jaywalking or riding bicycles on restricted sidewalks in areas surrounding the university.

The Washington Avenue Bridge crossing the Mississippi River provides access between the East and West Banks in Minneapolis, on foot and via designated bike lanes and a free shuttle service. Several pedestrian tunnels ease the passage from building to building during harsh weather; they are marked with signs reading " The Gopher Way". The Minneapolis campus is near Interstates 94 and 35W and is bordered by the Minneapolis neighborhoods of Dinkytown (on the north), Cedar-Riverside (on the west), Stadium Village (on the southeast), and Prospect Park (on the east).

On regular weekdays during the school year, the Campus Connectors operate with schedule-less service as often as every five minutes during the busiest parts of the school day (between 7 am and 5:30 pm), slowing to once every 15 or 20 minutes during earlier or later hours. The estimated commute time between St. Paul and the East Bank is 15 minutes. In 2008, the system carried 3.55 million riders. Although the shuttle service is free, it is comparatively inexpensive to operate; with an operating cost of $4.55 million in 2008, the operating subsidy was only $1.28 per passenger. Even Metro Transit's busy Metro Blue Line light rail required a subsidy of $1.44 that year, and that was with many riders paying $1.75 or more for a ride.

Three light-rail stations serve the university along the Green Line: Stadium Village, East Bank, and West Bank. The university partnered with Metro to offer students, staff, and faculty members a Campus Zone Pass that enables free travel on the three stations that pass through campus, as well as a discounted unlimited pass for students. More recently, the university has instituted the Universal Transit Pass, which allows most students unlimited access to the Metro Transit light rail and bus networks as well as a number of other transit systems in the area.

Campus safety

The Step Up campaign is a program that helps students prevent excessive drinking, as well as sexual assault and other crimes, by teaching them how to intervene and prevent in a positive way. This is done, in part, by explaining the bystander effect. The U of M also has a SAFE-U emergency notification text messaging system that sends out a notification to all faculty, staff, and students in case of emergency. The commitment to a safe inclusive campus is also articulated through the comprehensive University of Minnesota Safety Plan, aligned with MPact 2025's Commitment 5, Action Item 5.4, emphasizing the need to assess and improve campus safety continually. The establishment of the Strategic Safety Advisory Committee and public safety forums fosters community engagement and dialogue on safety concerns and improvements. Additionally, the university has made strides in off-campus safety through nightly patrols in Dinkytown and the introduction of blue light kiosks and mobile light trailers to enhance visibility and security. Other resources help students get home safely. Calling 624-WALK secures an escort for walks to adjacent campuses and neighborhoods, and Gopher Chauffeur, a van service, offers rides near and on campus. Both are free and open to all students, staff, and faculty.

In addition, the campus has nearly 200 automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and 200 yellow phones for emergency-only calls. The University Police Station has 20 Code Blue phones around campus that immediately connect people to their office. There are also over 2,000 security cameras being monitored 24 hours a day. The university also maintains a vigilant stance on cybersecurity, conducting annual external assessments and updating strategies for risk mitigation. Emergency preparedness is also a key focus, with updated Emergency Operations Plans and disaster recovery protocols ensuring readiness for a variety of potential threats.

Sexual assaults

Minnesota Gophers football player Dominic Jones was convicted of sexual assault in 2008. In July 2009, an appeals court upheld Jones' conviction, but reduced his four-year prison sentence to one year. More than 1,000 sexual assaults on campus were reported between 2010 and 2015. No prosecutions for rape occurred, according to Katie Eichele of the Aurora Center, until the conviction of Daniel Drill-Mellum in 2016, for the rapes of two fellow students. Drill-Mellum received a six-year prison sentence.

It has been alleged that few sexual assaults on campus are reported to University police. Six resulted in arrest from 2010 to 2015; one was determined to be unfounded. In a study by campus police, in the years between 2005 and 2015, sexual assaults at the university remained the same or increased despite six sexual assault resources and many anti-crime programs on campus. In August 2020, the University of Minnesota agreed to pay $500,000 to a woman who in the fall of 2016, accused several Gophers football players of sexually assaulting her. In February 2017, a University of Minnesota panel cleared four of the 10 Gopher football players the woman accused and agreed with investigators' recommendation that four other players be expelled and the other two players should be suspended for a year.

Academics

The university is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units:

Six university-wide interdisciplinary centers and institutes work across collegiate lines:
* Center for Cognitive Sciences
* Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences
* Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota
* Institute for Engineering in Medicine
* Institute for Translational Neuroscience
* Institute on the Environment
* Minnesota Population Center

The university (system-wide) offers 154 undergraduate degree programs, 24 undergraduate certificates, 307 graduate degree programs, and 79 graduate certificates. The university offers the majority of these programs and certificates at its Twin Cities campus. The university has all three branches of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). The Twin Cities campus, as well as the campuses at Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester, are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC).

Admissions

For Fall 2025 admission, Minnesota received over 43,000 applications for a freshman class of roughly 7,100 students. Although its acceptance rate has risen in recent years, Minnesota still characterizes admission to the university as "highly competitive."

Of the 50% of enrolled freshmen in 2024 who submitted ACT scores; the middle 50 percent Composite score was between 27 and 33. Of the 50% of the incoming freshman class who submitted SAT scores; the middle 50 percent Composite scores were 1350–1500.

The University of Minnesota is a college sponsor of the National Merit Scholarship Program and sponsored 97 Merit Scholarship awards in 2020. In the 2020–2021 academic year, 112 freshman students were National Merit Scholars.

Rankings

In 2024, Minnesota was ranked as the 26th best university in the United States by the ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'', and 25th in the United States in ''Washington Monthly''s 2021 National University Rankings. Minnesota's undergraduate program was ranked 53rd among national universities by '' U.S. News & World Report'' for 2023, and 23rd in the nation among public colleges and universities. The same publication ranked Minnesota's graduate Carlson School of Management as 28th in the nation among business schools, and 6th in the nation for its information systems graduate program. Other graduate schools ranked highly by ''U.S. News & World Report'' for 2022 include the University of Minnesota Law School at 22nd, the University of Minnesota Medical School, which was 4th for family medicine and 5th for primary care, the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy, which ranked 3rd, the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, which ranked 9th, the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development, which ranked 10th for education psychology and special education, and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, which ranked 10th.

In 2020, the Center for Measuring University Performance ranked Minnesota 16th in the nation in terms of total research, 30th in endowment assets, 24th in annual giving, 28th in the number of National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine memberships, 9th in its number of faculty awards, and 14th in its number of National Merit Scholars. Minnesota is listed as a "Public Ivy" in 2001 Greenes' Guides ''The Public Ivies: America's Flagship Public Universities''.

In 2021, the University of Minnesota was ranked as the 40th best university in the world by the ''Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)'', which assesses academic and research performance. The same 2021 ranking by subject placed the University of Minnesota's ecology program as 2nd best in the world, management program as 10th best, biotechnology program as 11th best, mechanical engineering and medical technology programs as 14th best, law and psychology programs as 19th best, and veterinary sciences program as 20th best. The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) for 2021–22 ranked Minnesota 46th in the world and 26th in the United States. The 2021 Nature Index, which assesses the institutions that dominate high-quality research output, ranked Minnesota 53rd in the world based on research publication data from 2020. '' U.S. News & World Report'' ranked Minnesota as the 47th best global university for 2021. The 2015 ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' placed Minnesota 46th worldwide, based primarily on teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.

Research

Inventions by University of Minnesota students and faculty have ranged from food science to health technologies. Most of the public research funding in Minnesota is funneled to the University of Minnesota as a result of long-standing advocacy by the university itself.

The university developed Gopher, a precursor to the World Wide Web which used hyperlinks to connect documents across computers on the internet. However, the version produced by CERN was favored by the public since it was freely distributed and could more easily handle multimedia webpages. The university also houses the Charles Babbage Institute, a research and archive center specializing in computer history. The department has strong roots in the early days of supercomputing with Seymour Cray