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Harvey Mudd College

Harvey Mudd College is a private college of science, engineering, and mathematics, located in Claremont, California. It is one of the institutions of the contiguous Claremont Colleges.

The college is named after Harvey Seeley Mudd, one of the initial investors in the Cyprus Mines Corporation. Although involved in the planning of the new institution, Mudd died before it opened. Harvey Mudd College was funded by Mudd's friends and family, and named in his honor.

As one of the Claremont Colleges, which includes other small undergraduate colleges such as Pitzer College, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, and Pomona College, which adjoin the Harvey Mudd campus, university resources (libraries, dining halls, etc.) are shared and students from Harvey Mudd College are encouraged to take classes, especially classes outside their major of study, at the other 4 Claremont Colleges as well as at Harvey Mudd. Likewise, students from the other Claremont Colleges are allowed to take classes at Harvey Mudd. Together the Claremont Colleges provide the resources and opportunities of a large university while enabling the specialization and personal attention afforded by the individual colleges.

Academics

Harvey Mudd College's mission is to educate scientists, engineers, and mathematicians well-versed in the social sciences and humanities so that they better understand the impact of their work on society. The college offers four-year degrees in chemistry, mathematics, physics, computer science, biology, and engineering, as well as interdisciplinary degrees in mathematical biology, and a joint major in either computer science and mathematics, or biology and chemistry. Students may also elect to complete an Independent Program of Study (IPS) made up of courses of their own choosing. Usually between two and five students graduate with an IPS degree each year. Finally, one may choose an off-campus major offered by any of the other Claremont Colleges, provided one also completes a minor in one of the technical fields that Harvey Mudd offers as a major.

Because of its mission statement, Harvey Mudd places an unusually strong emphasis on general science education, requiring a full one-third of courses, known as the "common core," outside of one's major. Students are also required to take another one-third of their courses in the humanities, in keeping with the school's tradition of "science with a conscience." The final one-third of courses comprises those in the student's major. The integration of research and education is an important component of the educational experience at Harvey Mudd; upon graduation, every student has had some kind of research experience, in the form of a senior thesis or a Clinic Program experience. The undergraduate focus of HMC means that, unlike many other science and engineering institutions, undergraduates at HMC get unique access to research positions over the summer and during the school year.

A unique aspect of an HMC education is the Clinic Program, in which teams of students work for a year on a project supplied by a company, make regular reports to the company, and, at the end of the year, deliver a product. There are Clinic projects in engineering, computer science, mathematics, physics, and other majors. This kind of real-world experience gives students a first-hand look at a particular industry, and gives the company an inexpensive team of four students, many of whom they recruit after graduation.

Reputation

The middle 50% of entering SAT scores are 740–800 (out of 800) in mathematics, 690–760 in critical reading, and 680–760 in writing. A third of the student body are National Merit Scholars, and about 40 percent of graduates go on to earn a Ph.D. — the highest rate of any undergraduate college in the nation.

As of 2008, it is tied for 14th with Grinnell College among liberal arts colleges in the United States and is ranked second behind Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology as the best undergraduate engineering program at a school whose highest degree is a bachelor's or master's by U.S. News & World Report. In 2006, Harvey Mudd was also named one of the "new Ivy leagues" by Kaplan and Newsweek, while the mathematics department won the first American Mathematical Society Award for Exemplary Program.

Harvey Mudd College is said to be one of the few colleges the nation with very low grade inflation. This perception may be due to a period of significant grade deflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Only six students in the history of the college have achieved a perfect 4.0 GPA.

In 1997, Harvey Mudd College became the sole American undergraduate-only institution ever to win 1st place in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. As of 2007, no American school has won the world competition since then.

Harvey Mudd College had long held out as the last four-year college or university in the U.S. to accept only SAT and not ACT test scores in its admissions process. Since August 2007, however, (the beginning of the application process for the class of 2011) it started accepting ACT results.

Student life

Harvey Mudd College dormitories

The official names for the dormitories are (listed in order of construction):

Mildred E. Mudd Hall (East Dorm)
West Hall (West)
North Hall (North)
Marks Residence Hall (South)
J. L. Atwood Residence Hall (Atwood)
Case Residence Hall (Case)
Ronald and Maxine Linde Residence Hall (Linde)
Frederick and Susan Sontag Residence Hall (Sontag)

Atwood and Case were occasionally referred to as New Dorm and New Dorm II up until the addition of Linde and Sontag; Mildred E. Mudd Hall and Marks Hall are almost invariably referred to as East and South.

When Case was being built some students decided as a prank to move all of the survey stakes exactly one foot in one direction. They did such a precise job that the construction crew didn't notice until after they had laid the foundation, but California earthquake law forced them to reinspect the new location at some significant expense. Furthermore, the plumbing has never worked quite right. Case is also very occasionally known as Seventh dorm (despite being the sixth dorm built); some have called it the Pink Dorm, inasmuch as the cinder blocks used in its construction seemed to some the color of shrimp.

South Dorm is in the northwest corner of the quad. "East" was the first dorm, but it wasn't until West was built to the west of it that it was actually referred to as East. Then North was built, directly north of East. When the fourth dorm (Marks) was built, there was one corner of the quad available (the northwest) and one directional name (South) left. It got both, and to this day South is more 'north' on the compass than North dorm is.

The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth dorms are Atwood, Case, Linde, and Sontag, respectively. They were collectively referred to as "the Colonies" by some students, a reference to the fact that they are newer and are at the far end of the campus, a full two blocks away from the academic buildings; these dorms are now more commonly referred to as "the Outer Dorms." The college purchased an apartment building adjacent to the newer dorms to house additional students, but it was demolished to make room for the newest dorm, Sontag.

Since a student from any of the four classes can live in any of the dormitories, several of the dorms have accumulated long-standing traditions and even 'personalities'. Two examples of these traditions are the parties Long Tall Glasses (a formal affair thrown by North) and TQ Nite (a tequila-centered party thrown by West). The personality of a dorm morphs, of course, as Harvey Mudd alumni may find upon visiting the alma mater long past graduation.

Athletics

Athletics teams from Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and Scripps College compete as one team. Male athletic teams are called the Stags, and women's teams are called the Athenas. The teams participate in the NCAA's Division III and in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

The HMC honor code

HMC students developed, live by and enforce an Honor Code themselves. The Honor Code states:

The Honor Code is so well followed that the college entrusts the students to 24-hour per day access to all buildings including labs and timed take-home closed-book exams. (See external links below for more information.)

Architecture

The original buildings of campus were designed by Edward Durell Stone. Most are covered with thousands of square concrete features, called "warts" by the students, which would be perfectly suited to buildering except that, while some are set into the wall, others are simply glued on. In addition, these warts have the unusual usefulness of being great 'shelves' for unicycles and skateboards. One can walk towards Galileo Hall and see the warts (especially those near the entrances of buildings) being used as racks for unicycles and skateboards. Interestingly enough, the unofficial mascot of Harvey Mudd (featured on many college handbooks and other publications) is one of these concrete blocks with a face, arms, and legs, named "Wally the Wart."

Most of the computer labs and many classrooms are located in the basements (called the Libra Complex) of the concrete-block buildings. All of the buildings that make up the Libra Complex are interconnected via a series of underground tunnels, enabling convenient inter-building access (such as during times of rainy weather or by people averse to sunlight).

Transportation on campus

In the early 1970s the first unicycle appeared on campus. The notion caught on, and for a time there were dozens on campus. For many students it was a "rite of passage" to learn to ride. The unicycling club, known as Gonzo Unicycle Madness, was formed, and to this day organizes an annual eight plus mile ride (each way) known as "The Foster's Run," to "The Donut Man" donut shop in Glendora (originally known as "Foster's Donuts" hence the name of the event) for strawberry donuts. Upon return to the campus, the ritual of the "shakedown" takes place (dismounting and then repeatedly jumping up and down in the dormitory courtyard), a necessary procedure after a unicycle ride of nearly twenty miles, especially for male riders. At irregular intervals club members also meet to play unicycle hockey. In the early 1990s, though, the ridership of unicycles waned at the college. Currently, very few Mudders ride unicycles. However, despite this drop in popularity, unicycling continues to be an integral part of the Mudd mythos.

Other than walking, the leading form of transportation among Mudders is skateboarding. Because the paths of Mudd are smooth and the route to the academic building on one side of campus from the dorms is so straightforward, skateboarding to class is very popular—and Mudders as a whole skate more than the students of any of the nearby Claremont Colleges.

Rivalry with Caltech

There is a long-standing rivalry between Harvey Mudd and the nearby Caltech, although this rivalry is basically unacknowledged by Caltech. For example, in 1986, students from Mudd stole a memorial cannon from Fleming House at Caltech (originally from the National Guard) by dressing as maintenance people and carting it off on a flatbed truck for "cleaning. Harvey Mudd eventually returned the cannon after the Caltech President threatened to take legal action. In 2006, MIT replicated the prank and moved the same cannon to their campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Another Mudd prank involved slight modifications to a freeway sign. By placing parentheses around "Pasadena City College", an institution much less prestigious than Caltech, Mudd students changed the sign to read:

California Institute of Technology

(Pasadena City College)

Next Exit

Notable alumni

Astronauts and Aeronautics

George "Pinky" Nelson, 1972, astronaut, flew on three Space Shuttle program missions, and was the first American to walk in space without a tether to a spacecraft.
Stan Love, 1987, astronaut, currently a crew member for Space Shuttle STS-122 aboard Atlantis. He has been a "capcom" or communications officer with the International Space Station.

Entertainment

Michael G. Wilson, 1963, producer of the James Bond series of films.
Scott Stokdyk, 1991, Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor.
Michael Tapper, 2000, a ex-member of the band We Are Scientists on Virgin Records.

Software and Engineering

Donald D. Chamberlin, 1966, co-inventor of SQL (database query language) and IBM representative to the working group developing the XQuery language.
Joseph Costello, 1974, chairman and CEO of think3, and former president and CEO of Cadence Design Systems.
Bruce Nelson, 1974, inventor of the remote procedure call for computer communications.
Ned Freed, 1982, co-author of the MIME email standard (RFCs 2045-2049).
Jonathan Gay, 1989, creator of Flash software.
Dominic Mazzoni, 1998, creator of the Audacity sound editing program.
Nabeel Gareeb, CEO of MEMC Electronic Materials, Incorporated. Sixth highest paid CEO in 2007 (with a salary of $79.6 million).

Politics

Richard H. Jones, 1972, former US Ambassador to Israel, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, and Chief Policy Officer and Deputy Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Business

Eric B. Kim, 1976, Chief Marketing Officer of Intel, former CMO of Samsung Electronics.

Steve Barbarich, 1987, author of The Complete Manual on How to Make Money from Your Inventions And Patents, CEO and founder of ChooseHotTubsDirect, ChooseOutdoorKitchens, AbsolutelyNew

Miscellaneous

Joe Pelton, 2000, professional poker player and winner of 2006 Legends of Poker tournament.
Karl Mahlburg, 2001, a mathematician who proved Freeman Dyson's "crank conjecture" about certain congruences involving partition functions.
Sean Plott, 2008, professional Starcraft player that represented the United States in the 2004 and 2005 World Cyber Games Grand Final. Also, a stand-up comedian .