Tuskegee University

Infobox University
name = Tuskegee University
native_name =


image_size =
caption = Tuskegee University Seal
latin_name =
motto = "Scientia Principatus Opera"
mottoeng = "Knowledge, Nation, Deeds"
established = 1881
closed =
type = Private, HBCU
affiliation =
endowment = $71,192,358
officer_in_charge =
chairman =
chancellor =
president = Benjamin F. Payton
vice-president =
superintendent =
provost =
vice_chancellor =
rector =
principal =
dean =
director =
head_label =
head =
faculty =
staff =
students =
undergrad = 2,510
postgrad = 890
doctoral =
other =
city = Tuskegee
state = Alabama
province =
country =
United States
coor = coord|32|25|48.76|N|85|42|27.81|W|type:edu
campus = Rural 5000 Acres
former_names =
free_label =
free =
sports =
colors = Crimson and Gold
color box|#DC143C color box|#FFD700
colours =
nickname =
mascot = Golden Tigers
athletics =
affiliations =
website = [http://www.tuskegee.edu/ www.tuskegee.edu]

footnotes =

Tuskegee University is a private, historically black university located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund. The campus forms the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, a National Historic Landmark.

Academics

Tuskegee University is ranked by "U.S. News & World Report" as one of "America's Best Colleges". In addition, Tuskegee was ranked 6th in U.S. News & World Report HBCU rankings.

chools and colleges

* [http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/category.asp?C=35008&nav=menu200_9/ College of Agricultural, Environmental and Natural Sciences]
* [http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/category.asp?C=35009&nav=menu200_9/ College of Business and Information Science]
* [http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/category.asp?C=35010&nav=menu200_9/ College of Engineering, Architecture and Physical Sciences]
* [http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/category.asp?C=35018&nav=menu200_9/ College of Liberal Arts and Education]
* [http://www.onemedicine.tuskegee.edu/ College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health]

National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care

National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care is the nation's first bioethics center devoted to engaging the sciences, humanities, law and religious faiths in the exploration of the core moral issues which underlie research and medical treatment of African Americans and other underserved people. The official launching of the Center took place two years after President Bill Clinton's apology to the nation, the survivors of the Syphilis Study, Tuskegee University, and Tuskegee/Macon County, Alabama for the U.S. Public Health Service medical experiment. [cite web|url=http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/category.asp?C=35026&nav=menu200_14/National|title=Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care]

History

Planning and establishment

The school was the dream of Lewis Adams, a former slave and George W. Campbell, a former slave owner. Adams could read, write and speak several languages despite having no formal education. He also was an experienced tinsmith, harness-maker and shoemaker and Prince Hall Freemason, an acknowledged leader of the African-American community in Macon County, Alabama.

During Reconstruction, the period following the American Civil War, the South was impoverished. Many blacks were illiterate and had few employable job skills. Adams was especially concerned that, without an education, the recently freed former slaves would not be able to support themselves. Campbell, of like-thinking, had become a merchant and a banker. He had little experience with educational institutions, but he was willing to contribute all of his resources and efforts to make the school a success.

W.F. Foster, a white candidate for the Alabama Senate, came to Adams with a question. What would Adams want in return for securing the votes of African Americans in Macon County for Foster and another white candidate? In response, Adams asked for a normal school for the free men, freed slaves and their children (a "normal school", at that time, was the name for a teacher's college) to be established in the area.

Foster and the other candidate were elected. He worked with the fellow legislator Arthur L. Brooks to draft and pass legislation authorizing $2,000 to create the school. Adams, Thomas Dyer, and M.B. Swanson formed Tuskegee's first board of commissioners. They wrote to Hampton Institute in Virginia, asking the school to recommend someone to head their new school. Former Union Army General and Hampton Principal Samuel C. Armstrong felt that he knew just the man for the job: 25 year-old Booker T. Washington.

Booker T. Washington's leadership

Few African Americans were part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology community in its early years. The first African American student to attend MIT was Robert Robinson Taylor, who enrolled in 1888.

Robert Taylor arrived in Boston in September 1888 from Wilmington, North Carolina. Taylor ws born on June 8, 1868 in Wilmington.

In June 1890 and again in September 1891, Taylor was recommended for the Loring Scholarship, which he held for two consecutive academic years: 1890-1891 and 1891-1892. It has been said that Taylor may be the first recipient of the Loring Scholarship.

During Robert Taylor's course of study at MIT, Taylor talked in person on more than one occasion with Booker T. Washington. It is not certain exactly how or when Washington got wind of Taylor's excellent record at MIT, but Washington was often on the lookout for qualified African Americans whom he hoped to recruit for leadership roles at Tuskegee.

What Washington had in mind was for Taylor to develop the industrial program at Tuskegee and to plan and direct the construction of new buildings for the campus.

At the MIT faculty meeting on May 26, 1892, Taylor was one of 12 students in Course IV recommended for the degree in architecture.

The class of 1892 was the largest on record since MIT's founding.

After graduation Taylor did not head directly to Tuskegee. Robert Taylor finally accepted the Tuskegee offer in the fall or winter of 1892.

Taylors first building on the Tuskegee campus was the Science Hall (Thrasher Hall) completed in 1893. The new Science Hall was constructed entirely by students, using bricks made also by students under Taylor's supervision. The project epitomized Washington's philosophy of instilling in Tuskegee students, the descendants of former enslaved Africans, the value and dignity of physical labor and it provided an example to the world of the capabilities of African Americans in the building trades, and it underscored the larger potential of the manual training curricula being developed at Tuskegee.

A number of other buildings followed including the original Tuskegee Chapel, erected between 1895 and 1898. After the Chapel came The Oaks, built in 1899, home of the Principal of Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington.

From 1899-1902 Taylor returned to Cleveland to work on his own and for the architectural firm of Charles W. Hopkinson. Following his return to Tuskegee from Cleveland in 1902, he served as architect and director of "mechanical industries" until his retirement in the mid-1930s.

To develop a sound curriculum at Tuskegee, both Washington and Taylor looked to MIT as a model. Taylor's own admiration for MIT as a model for Tuskegee's development was conveyed in a speech that he delivered at MIT in 1911.

Taylor cited examples to the 1891 US Congress in a paper to illustrate the kinds of rigorous ideas, approaches, and methods that Tuskegee had adopted from MIT and successfully applied within the context of a black educational institution.

Throughout his life, Taylor retained a deep respect for MIT. In 1942, less than a decade after his retirement from Tuskegee, he wrote to the secretary of his MIT class indicating that he had just been released from treatment for an unspecified illness at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "Thanks to a kind Providence and skillful physicians," he said, "I am much better now."(62) Not long afterwards--on December 13, 1942--he died suddenly while attending services in the Tuskegee Chapel, the building that he considered his outstanding achievement as an architect.

Robert Taylor also served for a period as vice-principal of Tuskegee, beginning in 1925.

In 1929, under the joint sponsorship of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Liberian government, and Firestone Rubber, he went to Kakata, Liberia to lay out architectural plans and devise a program in industrial training for the proposed Booker T. Washington Institute in Liberia, "the Tuskegee of Africa."

Robert Taylor served on the Mississippi Valley Flood Relief Commission, appointed by President Herbert Hoover, and was chairman of the Tuskegee chapter of the American Red Cross.

Following his retirement to his native Wilmington, North Carolina in 1935. The governor of North Carolina appointed Taylor to the board of trustees of what is now Fayetteville State University.

tudent activities

More than 100 groups, including Greek letter fraternities and sororities, are active on Tuskegee University's campus.

Tuskegee's students can also participate in dozens of civic organizations, student media groups, service groups, state clubs and honor societies representing virtually every academic discipline.

Students also have the option of developing their own campus organizations with the approval of the Dean of Students.

Athletics

Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference/2008 Standings|team=TUTuskegee University is a member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC).

The baseball program has won thirteen SIAC championships and has produced several professional players, including big-leaguers Leon Wagner, Ken Howell, Alan Mills and Roy Lee Jackson.

The prominence of Tuskegee University football is longstanding as well. Among its records include: 27 SIAC championships; eight national HBCU championships; 70 winning seasons out of 113; 16 undefeated seasons; eight appearances in the Pioneer Bowl (championship match up between the SIAC and CIAA champs) in the bowl's 10 years of existence; 12 other postseason games not including the Pioneer Bowl; 23 NFL pro draft picks; about 40 free agents in the NFL, CFL and Arena football league; first HBCU to win 500 career games.

The Sheridan Broadcasting Network, the national polling agency that ranks black college football programs, recently named Tuskegee the No. 1 football team in the nation. In addition to winning the university's 600th career victory and a national championship, the Golden Tigers of Tuskegee also won their second consecutive SIAC championship, the sixth in the last decade.

With these achievements Tuskegee continues the tradition of being the Winningest Black College Football program in the Nation, being the #2 all time in Wins and Win Percentage in NCAA Division II Football along with being a Top 40 Football program tradition in the South averaging 10.2 wins a season dominating the SIAC Conference with their latest Conference title coming in 2007.

Tuskegee was also the first black college to have a football stadium, Cleve Abbott Memorial Stadium.

Notable faculty and staff

Notable alumni

ee also

*List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama

References

External links

* [http://www.tuskegee.edu/ www.tuskegee.edu] - Official web site
* [http://www.nps.gov/tuin www.nps.gov/tuin] - Tuskegee Institute (National Park Service site)