Reference.com

Stony Brook University

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

State University of New York at Stony Brook, commonly known as Stony Brook University is a public research university located in Stony Brook, New York, United States (on the north side of Long Island, about east of Manhattan, New York).

Stony Brook is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York system, and has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students. The University operates two SUNY-wide research centers (the Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the Marine Sciences Research Center). The University also operates Brookhaven National Labs under contract from the U.S. Department of Energy.

History

The university was founded in 1957 as the State University College on Long Island with about 100 students enrolled. The first temporary campus was at the William Robertson Coe Planting Fields estate in Oyster Bay. Originally, Stony Brook was a college for preparing secondary school teachers in mathematics and the sciences. Since 1962, the campus has been located on land donated by philanthropist Ward Melville. The original donation consisted of over 400 acres (1.6 km²), but the campus has since grown to about three times that size. Among the four SUNY University Centers, Stony Brook is the only one that was founded after the SUNY system was established.

The Stony Brook campus was initially concentrated around what was called G-Quad (now Mendelsohn Quad), and almost all offices were located here. Classes took place in the Humanities building, and some classes were still offered at Oyster Bay. However, the 1960s and 1970s witnessed rapid growth under university president John S. Toll. More buildings were erected on campus, and academic programs and enrollment grew.

During the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, Stony Brook was a hotbed of activism.

In the 1990s the school underwent a project to revitalize the campus. Numerous buildings were renovated, including the Student Activities Center, as well as each residential quad. More recently, the school completed construction of a massive Charles B. Wang Asian American Center that was funded, in part, by a $50 million dollar donation from Charles Wang. The university also constructed Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium for $22 million in 2002. Recently new apartments have been added for undergraduates. Renovations were recently completed on the original Humanities building, and new apartments continue to be built. Recently, a donation of $60 Million was made by retired math professor Dr. James Simons for the construction of the Simons Center for Physics and Geometry.

Due to its long history as a concert venue it was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on October 15, 2006.

Although Stony Brook is a state institution, private philanthropy plays an ever-increasing role in the development of the university. Stony Brook's endowment, managed by the Stony Brook Foundation, currently amounts to over $110 million.

Academics

The University is divided into numerous schools:

  • College of Arts and Sciences
  • College of Business
  • College of Engineering and Applied Sciences
  • School of Dental Medicine
  • School of Health Technology and Management
  • School of Journalism
  • School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences
  • School of Medicine
  • School of Nursing
  • School of Professional Development
  • School of Social Welfare

Stony Brook is also one of only ten national universities awarded a 1998 National Science Foundation recognition award for integrating research and education. In 2001 it became a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an invitation-only organization of the top 62 research universities in the U.S. In the last three years two Nobel Prizes were awarded to professors for their work conducted at Stony Brook. The University generates $160 million annually in external research funding and has an annual $2.5 billion economic impact on the region. Stony Brook co-manages Brookhaven National Laboratory through Brookhaven Science Associates, a 50-50 partnership with Battelle Memorial Institute. Stony Brook is also one of only two public schools in New York to have a medical school and a dental school, the other being University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.

State University of New York Research Centers

The Marine Sciences Research Center (MSRC) is the State University of New York's center for marine and atmospheric research, education, and public service. More than 200 graduate and undergraduate students from 16 different nations currently work and study at MSRC. The Center's students study coastal oceanographic processes and atmospheric sciences in a natural and academic setting that offers abundant opportunities for conducting field work, solving real problems in both local and distant environments, and learning to express their opinions in the weekly seminars. The Marine Sciences Research Center was incorporated into the new School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SOMAS) on June 15, 2007. The new school also includes the newly approved marine undergraduate majors and faculty at Southampton. Also, the University co-manages Brookhaven National Laboratory, joining an elite group of universities – including Berkeley, University of Chicago, Cornell, MIT, and Princeton – that run federal laboratories. In the Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering area, some of the research centers of Stony Brook University are the Institute for Mathematical Sciences, the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Nuclear Theory Institute, among others. In the biomedical sciences, the Center for Biotechnology, the Institute of Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, among many others.

In July 2007 Stony Brook "won a grant from the Department of Defense to devise ways to prevent terrorists from corrupting computers, and another from the Department of Homeland Security to design a system to detect radiation without triggering false alarms.

The campus

Main campus

The main campus is located at the geographic midpoint of Long Island, approximately east of New York City and west of Montauk. It is split into three portions: West Campus, East Campus, and South Campus.

The West Campus houses the majority of academic buildings and campus housing. It is the location of the original buildings at the Stony Brook site, including Mendelsohn Quad, which now serves as a residential quad. In addition to this quad, there are five other residential quads located on the West Campus, in addition to apartments for both graduates and undergraduates. The residential quads surround the Academic Mall, which contains the academic buildings. The center of the mall is the Frank Melville Jr. Memorial Library, and around this building are academic buildings housing the arts, sciences, and engineering departments. The Student Activities Center is the focus of campus life and is located across from the library. The Staller Center sits adjacent to the library and contains the largest movie screen in Long Island's Suffolk County. The Stony Brook Sports Complex holds various facilities for athletics and the largest gym in Suffolk County with a capacity of more than 5,000 people. Behind the Sports Complex sits the Kenneth P. Lavalle Stadium, which seats 8,136.

The East Campus is separated from the West Campus by Nicolls Road. It is home to the Stony Brook University Medical Center. The hospital is the largest in Suffolk County, and the attached Health Sciences Center (HSC) and Basic Science Tower (BST) houses numerous laboratories, the medical school, and numerous Allied Health programs. The Chapin Graduate Apartment Complex and the Long Island High Technology Incubator can also be found on the East Campus.

The South Campus is the smallest of the three and is separated from the West Campus by the Ashley Schiff Forest Preserve. It is home to the School of Dental Medicine, the Marine Sciences Research Center, and the Cody Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities.

Branch campuses

Manhattan

In 2002 the University established a presence in Manhattan with the opening of Stony Brook Manhattan. It is located on the 2nd floor of 401 Park Avenue South. The facility allows Stony Brook to offer professional and graduate courses targeted towards students in the city, as well as undergraduate courses during the summer and winter sessions. It is currently being expanded with another floor in an adjoining building.

Southampton

On March 24, 2006, the University completed the purchase of the 81 acre Southampton College (on the east end of Long Island) property from Long Island University with the intent to develop it as a full college campus focusing on academic programs related to the environment and sustainability. Since then Stony Brook expanded its program originally started in the fall of 2005 when it started offering an undergraduate marine sciences program, with teaching and research facilities at the campus leased from Long Island University. An enrollment of about 2,000 students is expected within the next five years. Professor Martin Schoonen was appointed interim dean of Southampton campus on August 3, 2006.

Research and Development Campus

On November 3, 2005, the University announced that it had formally acquired of the adjacent Flowerfield property, originally owned by the Gyrodyne Company of America, through eminent domain, three years after the University had expressed its desire to acquire the property.

Stony Brook intends to use this property as a Research and Development Campus, similar to other university-affiliated science parks around the country. The campus will ultimately house ten new buildings. Set for completion in 2008 is the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology. Construction for the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center is scheduled to commence soon and is expected to be completed by 2009.

Athletics

The varsity sports teams were formerly known as the Patriots, but were renamed and are currently known as the Seawolves. The basketball and volleyball teams play at the Sports Complex, while the football, soccer and lacrosse teams now play at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium. There are numerous other fields located in the northern portion of West Campus that are used by the baseball and softball teams, as well as track, tennis and other sports.

Stony Brook joined NCAA Division I in 1999 and all varsity sports teams compete in the America East Conference with the exception of football. The football team will compete as a Division I-AA Independent in 2007, after leaving the Northeast Conference at the end of the 2006 season. Stony Brook will join the Big South Conference as an associate football member in 2008.

Recent successes include the men's soccer team winning the 2005 America East Championship and reaching the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament, and the football team sharing the 2005 Northeast Conference Championship with Central Connecticut State University.

The athletics department produces a weekly television news show called The Sports Report, and is available as a podcast.

Rankings

In 2005 "Stony Brook was one of 33 universities in The Center's Top American Research Universities that ranked 26th through 50th nationally in at least one of the measures, and the University scored better in the category than such institutions as the University of Massachusetts, Tufts University, the University of Tennessee, and Indiana University.

In August 2007 U.S. News & World Report, for the sixth time, ranked SBU among the top 100 national universities in the United States and among the top 50 public national universities. The University was tied for 96th in the U.S. News rating of "best national universities," and tied for 45th in the category of "top public national universities. In January 2007 it was ranked 34th best value among the country’s public institutions for in-state students by Kiplinger's Personal Finance.

In 2005, the University tied for 97th in the U.S. News rating of national universities, which the magazine defines as universities that "offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master's and doctoral degrees; many strongly emphasize research." Stony Brook was tied for 45th in the category of top public national universities. Stony Brook's engineering program was tied for 67th for universities whose highest degree offered is a doctorate; the university was one of only 36 cited by the US News for the integration of research into undergraduate education. Stony Brook also ranked 24th in least debt among national universities.

In 2001 it became a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an invitation-only organization of the top 62 research universities in the U.S.

The University is cited nine times as being among the best in the nation in the current rankings of graduate schools in US News & World Report’s 2007 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.” The departments with the highest rankings were Physics (22), Mathematics (26) and Geoscience (28). The Nuclear Physics program ranked No. 4 and the Geometry program (categorized as a Mathematics specialty) was ranked No. 7, just behind Columbia and ahead of Michigan, the University of Chicago, and NYU. In addition, the philosophy department is considered to be among the top programs in the United States for the study of continental philosophy, particularly in the area of phenomenology.

In 2006, Stony Brook was ranked as the 136th best university in the world—out of more than 8,300—by the London-based Times Higher Education Supplement.

The University was also ranked among the top 152 universities in the world by the Institute for Higher Education in Shanghai. It was also ranked among the top 100 universities in North and Latin America, with the Institute grouping it in the category of number 58-77. Joining Stony Brook in that grouping were such institutions as Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

The Princeton Review (not associated with Princeton University) ranked Stony Brook #1 for least happy students, #12 for Diverse Student Population, and is listed as one of the "Best Northeastern Colleges" and "America's Best Value College".

Public safety issues

There have been talks among SBU officials, including the University Police Assistant Chief, about the trend of rising crime at Stony Brook over the past few years. It included one robbery at knife-point, a false report of an armed gunmen on campus and a dorm invasion. According to a report by CBS News there is a rising crime wave. There has also been a rise of date rapes on campus.

In addition there are long-standing issues with the surrounding volunteer fire departments involving their response to the University. Since the 1970s, Setauket and Stony Brook Volunteer Fire Departments have both complained of the extremely high false alarm rate at the University overtaxing their limited resources.

Names and logos

Throughout its first 50 years, Stony Brook has undergone a number of changes in its logo and on how it is named. In 1957, while it was still located in Oyster Bay, it was officially called the State University College of Long Island at Oyster Bay. A year after, it was changed to State University Center on Long Island at Oyster Bay.

When it moved to its present campus in Stony Brook in 1962, it became officially known as the State University of New York at Stony Brook, or SUNY-Stony Brook (SUNY-SB). Another form used in documents was University at Stony Brook (USB) as can be seen in one of the previous logos.

Today, the university is more popularly known and marketed as Stony Brook University, with the new logo designed by Milton Glaser.

Notable faculty and alumni

For greater information, see People associated with State University of New York at Stony Brook

Notable research and discoveries at Stony Brook

There have been many notable research projects and important scientific discoveries at Stony Brook.

Years Research/discovery
1969 Dated Moon rocks and estimated the age of the Moon
Created a new ultrasound method that speeds up the healing of bone fractures
Discovered the link between emphysema and smoking
Developed the drug that is recommended for all cardiac angioplasties (abciximab)
1974 Created the first MRI image of a living organism
Discovered the Golden Bamboo Lemur
Identified and cataloged 328 distant galaxies
Using a single electron, created the smallest electric switch in the world
1976 Discovery of supergravity
1982 Found the cause of Lyme disease
Invented virtual colonoscopy
1998 FDA approved abciximab and Periostat (doxycycline), SUNY's first two drugs
1998 Discovered important fossil linking birds to dinosaurs
2002 Synthesized the first virus, in vitro, polio
August 2007 Homo erectus may not have evolved from Homo habilis
October 2007 Three Stony Brook Professors Shared Nobel Prize Awarded for Climate Change Panel

See also

References

External links



Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 13:07:48 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation