Schools and Colleges of Columbia University

A list of the schools and colleges of Columbia University.

## Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

**Columbia University Roy and Diana Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons** (**VP&S**) is the medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

Founded in 1767 by Samuel Bard as the medical department of King's College (now Columbia University), VP&S was the first medical school in the Thirteen Colonies to award the Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree. Beginning in 1993, VP&S was also the first U.S. medical school to hold a white coat ceremony. Following a gift of $250 million from Roy and Diana Vagelos in 2017, the school became the first medical school in the nation to replace loans with scholarships for all students who qualify for financial aid when it did so in 2018.

Columbia is affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the nation's 4th-ranked hospital according to *U.S. News & World Report*. Students additionally rotate through its affiliate hospitals: Harlem Hospital Center; Stamford Hospital in Stamford, CT; and Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, NY.

## Columbia University College of Dental Medicine

The **Columbia University College of Dental Medicine**, often abbreviated **CDM**, is one of the twenty graduate and professional schools of Columbia University. It is located at 630 West 168th Street in Manhattan, New York City. According to American Dental Education Association, CDM is one of the most selective dental schools in the United States based on average DAT score, GPA, and acceptance rate. In 2014, 2,029 people applied for 80 positions in its entering class. The median undergraduate GPA and average DAT score for successful applicants in 2020 were 3.62 and 22.8, respectively.

## Columbia Law School

**Columbia Law School** (**CLS**) is the law school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university in New York City. It was founded in 1858 as the **Columbia College Law School**, and was known for its legal scholarship dating back to the 18th century. Graduates of the university's colonial predecessor, King's College, include such notable early-American legal figures as John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, and Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, who were co-authors of *The Federalist Papers*. Since 2014, the law school has been ranked No. 1 on the *National Law Journal*'s "Go-To Law Schools" ranking, which measures the percentage of graduates securing employment at the largest 100 law firms in the U.S.

Columbia Law has many distinguished alumni, including United States presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; ten justices of the Supreme Court of the United States; numerous U.S. Cabinet members and presidential advisers; US senators; representatives; governors; and more members of the *Forbes 400* than any other law school in the world.

According to Columbia Law School's 2021 ABA-required disclosures; 98.3 percent of the Class of 2021 obtained employment within ten months of graduation, with the 25th percentile, median, and 75th percentile starting base salary for graduates all being at least $215,000.

## Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science

The **Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science** (popularly known as **SEAS** or **Columbia Engineering**; previously known as **Columbia School of Mines**) is the engineering and applied science school of Columbia University. It was founded as the School of Mines in 1863 and then the School of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry before becoming the School of Engineering and Applied Science. On October 1, 1997, the school was renamed in honor of Chinese businessman Z.Y. Fu, who had donated $26 million to the school.

The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science maintains a close research tie with other institutions including NASA, IBM, MIT, and The Earth Institute. Patents owned by the school generate over $100 million annually for the university. SEAS faculty and alumni are responsible for technological achievements including the developments of FM radio and the maser.

The School's applied mathematics, biomedical engineering, computer science and the financial engineering program in operations research are very famous and highly ranked. The current SEAS faculty include 27 members of the National Academy of Engineering and one Nobel laureate. In all, the faculty and alumni of Columbia Engineering have won 10 Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics.

The school consists of approximately 300 undergraduates in each graduating class and maintains close links with its undergraduate liberal arts sister school Columbia College which shares housing with SEAS students. The School's current dean is Shih-Fu Chang, who was appointed in 2022.

## Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

The **Graduate School of Arts and Sciences** (also known as **GSAS**) is the graduate school of Columbia University. Founded in 1880, GSAS is responsible for most of Columbia's graduate degree programs in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The school offers MA and PhD degrees in approximately 78 disciplines.

## Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

**Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation** (**GSAPP**) is the architecture school of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. It is regarded as an important and prestigious architecture school. It is also home to the Masters of Science program in Advanced Architectural Design, Historic Preservation, Real Estate Development, Urban Design, and Urban Planning.

The school's resources include the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, the United States' largest architectural library and home to some of the first books published on architecture, as well as the origin of the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals.

Recent deans of the school have included architects James Stewart Polshek (1972–1987), Bernard Tschumi (1988–2003), Mark Wigley (2004–2014), Amale Andraos (2014–2021), Weiping Wu (Interim Dean, 2022), and Andrés Jaque (2022–present).

## Teachers College, Columbia University

**Teachers College, Columbia University** (**TC**) is the graduate school of education of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Founded in 1887, Teachers College has served as one of the official Faculties and the Department of Education of Columbia University since 1898. It is the oldest and largest graduate school of education in the United States.

Teachers College alumni and faculty have held prominent positions in academia, government, music, non-profit, healthcare, and social science research. Overall, Teachers College has over 90,000 alumni in more than 30 countries. Notable alumni and former faculty include John Dewey, Art Garfunkel, Dr. Ruth Westheimer (Dr. Ruth), Carl Rogers, Margaret Mead, Bill Campbell, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Thorndike, Rollo May, Donna Shalala, Albert Ellis, William Schuman (former president of the Juilliard School), Lee Huan (Premier of the Republic of China), Shirley Chisholm (first black woman elected to the United States Congress), Hafizullah Amin (leader of Afghanistan), Hamden L. Forkner (founder of Future Business Leaders of America), and E. Gordon Gee (has held more university presidencies than any other American including Brown University and Vanderbilt University).

## Columbia University School of Nursing

**School of Nursing** is the graduate school of nursing at Columbia University in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1892, it stands as one of the oldest nursing schools in the United States.

The School of Nursing was the first nursing school to award a master's degree in a clinical specialty. The school was the first to be elected a World Health Organization Collaborating Center for International Nursing Development in Advanced Practice.

## Columbia University School of Social Work

**Columbia University School of Social Work** is the graduate school of social work of Columbia University. It is the nation's oldest social work program, with roots extending back to 1898, when the New York Charity Organization Society's first summer course was announced in *The New York Times* and began awarding the Master of Science (MS) degree in 1940. With an enrollment of over 900, it is one of the largest social work schools in the United States. The combination of its age and size has led to the School becoming a repository for much of the reference literature in the social work field.

## Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

The **Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism** is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City.

Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism schools in the world and the only journalism school in the Ivy League. It offers four graduate degree programs.

The school shares facilities with the Pulitzer Prizes. It directly administers several other prizes, including the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, honoring excellence in broadcast and digital journalism in the public service. It co-sponsors the National Magazine Awards, also known as the Ellie Awards, and publishes the *Columbia Journalism Review*.

In addition to offering professional development programs, fellowships and workshops, the school is home to the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Admission to the school is highly selective and has traditionally drawn a very international student body. A Board of Visitors meets periodically to advise the dean's office and support the school's initiatives.

## Columbia Buisness School

**Columbia Business School** (**CBS**) is the business school of Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Established in 1916, Columbia Business School is one of six Ivy League business schools and is one of the oldest business schools in the world.

## Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

The **Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health** is the public health graduate school of Columbia University. Located on the Columbia University Medical Center campus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, the school is recognized by the Council on Education for Public Health.

Founded in 1922 as the DeLamar Institute of Public Health, it is one of the oldest public health schools in the United States. It became an official school within Columbia University in 1945. In 1999, following a $33 million grant from the Joseph L. Mailman Foundation, the school was renamed the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health.

The Mailman School is considered a preeminent school of public health in the United States, and is consistently ranked among the top in the nation by the *U.S. News & World Report*. Admission to the school is highly selective and has traditionally drawn a very international student body. Currently, the school enrolls over 1,600 students and is one of the largest recipients for sponsored research pertaining to public health.

The school is home to the Calderone Prize, the most prestigious award in the field of public health, as well as numerous world-renowned research centers, including the Center for Infection and Immunity, ICAP, the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, and the Center for Environmental Health Sciences in Northern Manhattan.

## School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

The **School of International and Public Affairs** (**SIPA**) is the international affairs and public policy school of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university located in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. It is consistently ranked one of the leading graduate schools for international relations in the world. SIPA offers Master of International Affairs (MIA) and Master of Public Administration (MPA) degrees in a range of fields, as well as the Executive MPA and Ph.D. program in Sustainable Development.

SIPA's alumni include former heads of state, business leaders, journalists, diplomats, and elected representatives. Half of SIPA's nearly 1,400 students are international, coming from over 100 countries. SIPA has more than 70 full-time faculty, many of which include the world's leading scholars on international relations.

## Columbia University School of the Arts

The **Columbia University School of the Arts** (also known as **School of the Arts** or **SoA**) is the fine arts graduate school of Columbia University in Morningside Heights, New York. It offers Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degrees in Film, Visual Arts, Theatre and Writing, as well as the Master of Arts (MA) degree in Film Studies. It also works closely with the Arts Initiative at Columbia University (CUArts) and organizes the Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF), a week-long program of screenings, screenplay, and teleplay readings.

Founded in 1965, the school is one of the leading institutions for the study of visual and performing arts in the United States. Among the school's distinguished graduates are sculptors David Altmejd and Banks Violette, visual artist Lisi Raskin, painters Marc Handelman and Dana Schutz, screenwriter Jennifer Lee and James Mangold, screenwriter and actress Gülse Birsel and directors Kathryn Bigelow and James Gunn.

## Columbia University School of Professional Studies

The **School of Professional Studies** is one of the schools comprising Columbia University. It offers eighteen master's degrees, courses for advancement and graduate school preparation, certificate programs, summer courses, auditing and lifelong learning programs, high school programs in New York City and abroad, and a program for learning English as a second language.

## Columbia Climate School

The **Columbia Climate School** is Columbia University's school of trans-disciplinary climate research. Announced in July 2020, the Climate School is the first new school to be established at the university in 25 years.

As of August 2023, the school offers the Master of Arts (M.A.) in Climate and Society, the Master of Science (M.S.) in Sustainability Management, and the Master of Science (M.S.) in Sustainability Science, with the last two programs being offered in partnership with Columbia School of Professional Studies.

Since 2021, the Columbia Climate School has been the official university partner of The Climate Group for Climate Week NYC annually.

## Columbia College

**Columbia College** is the oldest undergraduate college of Columbia University, a private Ivy League research university in New York City. Situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan, it was founded by the Church of England in 1754 as **King's College** by royal charter of King George II of Great Britain. It is Columbia University's traditional undergraduate program, offering BA degrees, and is highly selective, with fewer than four percent of applicants being offered admission as of 2022. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.

Columbia College (along with Columbia Engineering) is distinctive for its comprehensive Core Curriculum and is among the most selective of American colleges, with an admission rate as low as 3.73 percent.

## Barnard College

Main article: Barnard College

**Barnard College**, officially titled as **Barnard College, Columbia University**, is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia University's trustees to create an affiliated college named after Columbia's recently deceased 10th president, Frederick A.P. Barnard. The college is one of the original Seven Sisters—seven liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that were historically women's colleges.

Barnard is currently one of four Columbia undergraduate colleges with independent admission, curriculum, and financials. Students share classes, libraries, clubs, Greek life, athletic fields, and dining halls with Columbia, as well as sports teams, through the Columbia-Barnard Athletic Consortium,an agreement that makes Barnard the only women's college to offer its students the ability to compete in NCAA Division I athletics. Students receive their diploma from Columbia University.

Barnard offers Bachelor of Arts degree programs in about 50 areas of study. Students may also pursue elements of their education at Columbia, the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and The Jewish Theological Seminary, which are also based in New York City. Its 4-acre (1.6 ha) campus is located in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, stretching along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets. It is directly across from Columbia's main campus and near several other academic institutions.

Barnard College alumnae include leaders in science, religion, politics, the Peace Corps, medicine, law, education, communications, theater, and business. Barnard graduates have been recipients of Emmy, Tony, Grammy, Academy, and Peabody Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, MacArthur Fellowships, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and the Pulitzer Prize.

## Columbia University School of General Studies

The **School of General Studies, Columbia University** (**GS**) is a liberal arts college and one of the undergraduate colleges of Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights, New York City. GS is known primarily for its traditional B.A. program for non-traditional students (those who have had an academic break of at least one year or are pursuing dual degrees). GS students make up almost 30% of the Columbia undergraduate population.

GS offers dual-degree programs with several leading universities around the world. It offers dual degrees with List College of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Sciences Po in France, Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, Tel Aviv University in Israel, and City University of Hong Kong. It also offers the BA/MA Option with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Combined Plan and the MS Express program with the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and five-year joint degrees with the School of International and Public Affairs. GS offers the Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program, the oldest and largest program of its kind in the United States.

Notable alumni include Nobel Prize winners Simon Kuznets, Baruj Benacerraf, and Louise Glück, as well as Isaac Asimov, J.D. Salinger, Amelia Earhart, Leonard Cohen and Princess Firyal of Jordan.