The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, the school became a public land-grant college, then took its current name in 1939. Over the following decade, social work, nursing, and graduate programs were established. During the 1960s, UConn Health was established for new medical and dental schools. UConn is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.
With more than 32,000 students, the University of Connecticut is the largest university in Connecticut by enrollment. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". UConn is one of the founding institutions of the Hartford-Springfield regional economic and cultural partnership alliance known as New England's Knowledge Corridor. UConn was the second U.S. university invited into Universitas 21, an international network of research-intensive universities.
The school's athletic teams compete in the Big East Conference as the Huskies. UConn has gained notable recognition for its women's and men's basketball programs and are often considered "blue bloods" in the sport. The Connecticut Huskies are the top women's basketball program in the nation, having won a record 12 NCAA Division I National Championships (most in both men's and women's Division I college basketball) and a women's record four in a row (2013–2016), in addition to over 40 conference regular season and tournament championships. Across all sports, the Huskies have collectively won 26 NCAA championships.
History
UConn was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School. It was named after Charles and Augustus Storrs, brothers who donated the land for the school as well as initial funding. The Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station was founded in 1887. Women began attending classes in 1891 and were officially admitted in 1893, the same year that it became Connecticut's land-grant college and was renamed Storrs Agricultural College. In 1899, the name changed again to Connecticut Agricultural College, and, in 1933, to Connecticut State College. In its current form, the College of Agriculture is the oldest of the university's colleges and professional schools.
On May 26, 1939, Governor Raymond E. Baldwin signed the bill that allowed Connecticut State College to have its name changed to the University of Connecticut. The following year, trustees organized and developed a plan to divide the university into separate schools and colleges in Business, Education, Home Economics, Colleges of Arts and Sciences, and College of Agriculture. This was also the year the School of Social Work and School of Nursing were established. Master's degrees had been awarded since 1920, but the Graduate School was established after the reorganization of the schools in 1940, as well as the Doctoral Program for graduates which was authorized in 1943. PhDs have been awarded since 1949. The schools of law and pharmacy were also absorbed into the university.
In 1958, the School of Education established the first high school in the town of Mansfield, E. O. Smith High School, as a laboratory school for teacher training and education research. The high school, which lies adjacent to campus, was operated by the University of Connecticut until 1987, when it became the regional public high school. E.O. Smith has maintained an Agricultural Science education program since its time as a part of UConn, and junior and senior high school students may take classes for credit on UConn's campus.
During the 1970s, UConn Health was established in Farmington as a home for the new School of Medicine and School of Dental Medicine. John Dempsey Hospital opened in Farmington in 1975 and has been operated by UConn ever since.
In 1995, a state-funded program called UConn 2000 was passed by the Connecticut General Assembly and signed into law by then-Governor John G. Rowland. This 10-year program set aside $1 billion to upgrade campus facilities, add faculty, and otherwise improve the university. An additional $1.3 billion was pledged by the State of Connecticut in 2002 as part of a new ten-year improvement plan known as 21st Century UConn.
In 2001, the Institute of Comparative Human Rights (ICHR) was established at UConn, as a university‑wide institute, after the university had submitted a proposal to UNESCO to establish a UNESCO Chair in Comparative Human Rights at the university. Amii Omara-Otunnu, a tenured professor in the history department originally from Uganda, who had forged the links with South Africa, was appointed UNESCO Chair in Comparative Human Rights, which was the first UNESCO Chair in Human Rights in North America. Its focus was on engagement with South Africa, based on UConn's partnerships with a number of South African institutions, including the ANC and the University of Fort Hare. Its activities included an annual Comparative Human Rights Conference and the Comparative Human Rights Lecture Series. In March 2015 it collaborated with the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center to support the inaugural lecture series in honour of former senator and human rights champion Joseph I. Lieberman. The event was coordinated by UConn's Office of Global Affairs. The UNESCO Chair position was terminated by UNESCO on December 20, 2016, apparently because of the university not having filed paperwork to renew the position.
An agreement was reached in 2012 to launch Jackson Laboratory's $1.1 billion genomic medicine lab on the Farmington UConn Health campus as part of the Bioscience Connecticut initiative. In 2013, Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed into law Next Generation Connecticut, committing $1.7 billion in funding over a decade to enhance UConn's infrastructure, hire additional faculty, and upgrade STEM initiatives."Next Generation Connecticut. " NextGenCT. University of Connecticut, n.d. Retrieved July 20, 2013.
Two U.S. presidents have visited the Storrs campus during their term of office, Bill Clinton in 1995 and Joe Biden in 2021, to dedicate the first and second iterations of the Dodd Center for Human Rights, respectively. The Dodd Center has brought an array of other world figures to the campus, including Madeleine Albright, Elie Wiesel, Oscar Arias, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush visited the campus after leaving office.
Campuses
Storrs campus The primary and original UConn campus is in Storrs, a division of the Town of Mansfield, east of Hartford, Connecticut's capital, and bordered by the towns of Ashford, Coventry, Willington, and Windham. The campus is easily accessible from nearby thoroughfares US Route 6 in Windham and Interstate 84 in Tolland.
Libraries The University of Connecticut Libraries form the largest public research collection in the state. The main library is the Homer D. Babbidge Library, on Fairfield Way in the center of campus. In 1882, Charles Storrs donated the first volumes to the university library collection (specifically, of the agriculture school). The university formerly housed its primary library collections in the Old Whitney building, one of the first agriculture school buildings. The library migrated from Old Main to the basement of Beech Hall in 1929. The university's first librarian was Edwina Whitney, who served from 1900 to 1934. The library then moved to the Wilbur Cross Building and remained there until the 1970s. The current main library, Homer Babbidge, was formerly known as the Nathan Hale Library. It underwent renovations completed in 1998; at the time it was the largest public research library in New England.
The Storrs campus is also home to the university's Music and Pharmacy libraries, and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, home to the university's archives and special collections. Each of the regional campuses also have their own libraries. These libraries are tied into the Babbidge library through a shared catalogue.
The Babbidge-based collection places UConn among the top 30 universities in the nation for library holdings and funding, containing more than 2.5 million print volumes, approximately 2,500 current print periodicals, more than 35,000 journals through the eJournal locator, 2.8 million units of microfilm, 180,000 maps at the Map and Geographic Information Center (New England's largest public map collection), millions of electronic books, and an array of free electronic information sources. The UCL also license approximately 265 electronic search databases, many of which contain the full-text of research journals, monographs, and historic documents.
The Lyman Maynard Stowe Library, housed at UConn Health, was one of eight federally funded National Network of Libraries of Medicine libraries from 1991 to 2001. The University of Connecticut School of Law houses the School of Law Library at its campus in Hartford. The Stowe and Law libraries have catalogues separate from the Babbidge system, making the total library holdings of the University of Connecticut much higher than the 2.5 million print volumes of Babbidge. UConn participates in several outside library consortia, including the New England Law Library Consortium and the Northeast Research Libraries Consortium. The Dodd Research Center has also formed a partnership with the African National Congress to share materials with South African scholars.
Campus The UConn campus at Storrs is home to the Connecticut Repertory Theatre (CRT) run by the Department of Dramatic Arts. The theatre complex has three venues, the 486-seat Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre, the 241-seat Nafe Katter Theatre, and the 116-seat Studio Theatre. CRT is a member of the Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for the professional theatre. The Storrs campus also houses the J. Louis von der Mehden Recital Hall, the William Benton Museum of Art, and the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry.
In the 1960s, drama students from UConn participated in Theatre on Tour, which was an initiative to bring dramatic performances to "bring live drama to grass-roots theatre fans" across New England. They performed Lady Windemere's Fan, for instance, at Hotchkiss School in 1968.
UConn is the only institution in the United States that offers a master's degree in puppetry.
Among the research facilities on campus is the George Safford Torrey Life Sciences Building. Built in 1961, in 1980 the building was named in honor of the former head of the botany department.Year ending June 30, 2014 The Torrey Life Sciences Building houses offices for the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the Department of Physiology and Neurobiology, the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, and Biology Central Services.
Because it is situated in a fairly rural area, the UConn campus has facilities that allow it to be virtually self-sufficient. All heat on campus is steam, and where possible sidewalks were laid over the underground connectors to keep the snow off. In 2005, a cogeneration plant was activated, which generates most of the electricity for the campus, and uses the exhaust steam for the campus central heating system. The university owns its own public water system and waste water treatment facility. With the support of local industry, UConn is also developing and using fuel cell technology. In April 2012, UConn commissioned a fuel cell power plant at its Depot Campus that will supply the campus with clean and efficiency energy, cooling and heating. The installation of a ClearEdge Power, formerly UTC Power, PureCell System was made possible through a federal stimulus grant from Connecticut's Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority (now the Connecticut GreenBank).