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Georgia Institute of Technology
| Motto | Progress and Service |
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| Established | 1885 |
| School type | Public University |
| President | G. Wayne Clough |
| Location | Atlanta, GA, USA |
| Enrollment | 16,500 undergraduate and graduate |
| Faculty | 800 |
| Endowment | US$719 million |
| Campus | Atlanta, 400 acres (1.61 km²) |
| Sports teams | Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, NCAA Division 1A. 8 men's varsity teams, 7 women's. Tech Athletics |
| Website | www.gatech.edu |
The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is located in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. With over 16,000 students, Georgia Tech is one of four public research universities in the University System of Georgia. Founded on October 13, 1885 as the Georgia School of Technology, it assumed its present name in 1948. Georgia Tech is best known for its programs in engineering, though it also offers degrees in architecture, science, management, computer science, and social sciences. It has the nation's top industrial engineering program, as well as one of the top aerospace engineering programs. The Institute's current president is Dr. G. Wayne Clough.
Unlike similarly-named universities (such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology), Georgia Institute of Technology is a public institution.
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Georgia Tech's campus in midtown Atlanta was the site of the athletes' village, and a venue for a number of athletic events for the 1996 Summer Olympics. It was also the home of early radio station WGST AM from 1924 to 1930.
Georgia Tech is also sometimes called the North Avenue Trade School, although this was never its official title. The name stems from the fact that the campus is bordered to the south by North Avenue, and that the school, in its earlier years was operated much like a trade school, with students working part of the day in a machine shop, and the other part of the day in classrooms.
Consistently ranked among the top engineering schools in the world and one of the top ten public universities in the United States, Georgia Tech has been broadening its programs by strengthening its undergraduate and graduate offerings in other fields. For example, its Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts includes degree programs in the humanities and social sciences (often with a distinct science-and-technology focus), such as public policy, international affairs, economics, modern languages, history and sociology, communication and cultural studies, and digital media.
Georgia Tech has one of the most unbalanced male-to-female ratios of any co-ed university with almost three times as many male students as females. However, this is slowly changing, presumably due to the university's growing liberal arts programs, as well as outreach programs to encourage more female high school students to consider careers in science and engineering, such as the "Women In Engineering" program. The Freshman class of 2005-2006 currently has one of the highest male/female ratios at 71% to 29%.
In 1999, Georgia Tech began offering local degree programs to engineering students in Southeast Georgia, and in 2003 established a physical campus in Savannah, Georgia. Georgia Tech Savannah offers undergraduate and graduate programs in engineering, and boasts a robust research program with many activities centered on coastal concerns. It is also home to the regional offices of the Georgia Tech Economic Development Institute and the Advanced Technology Development Center.
Georgia Tech also operates a campus in France, known as Georgia Tech Lorraine. Georgia Tech Lorraine is known for a much-publicized lawsuit pertaining to the language used in advertisements; see Toubon Law.
The university further collaborated with the National University of Singapore to set up The Logistics Institute - Asia Pacific in Singapore.
In addition to research performed by the schools, the University also has an organization referred to as the Georgia Tech Research Institute that provides sponsored research in a variety of technical specialties including radar, electro-optics, and materials engineering.
The Georgia Tech campus is located in Midtown, an area north of downtown Atlanta. Although a number of skyscrapers are visible from all points on campus — most notably the headquarters of both BellSouth and The Coca-Cola Company as well as Atlanta's tallest building, the Bank of America building — the campus itself has few buildings over a few stories and has a great deal of greenery. This gives it a distinctly suburban atmosphere quite different from other Atlanta campuses such as that of Georgia State University or Emory.
The campus is organized into four main parts: West Campus, East Campus, Central Campus, and Technology Square. West Campus and East Campus are both occupied primarily by student living complexes, while Central Campus is reserved primarily for buildings used for teaching and research. Technology Square, located across the Downtown Connector and embedded in the city east of East Campus, is home to the College of Management, the official school bookstore, a hotel, as well as offices for a number of faculty and graduate students, the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center, the Georgia Tech Economic Development Institute, and Georgia Electronics Design Center research groups. The buildings in Technology Square also host a variety of small businesses as well as business ventures spawned by Georgia Tech research.
West Campus is occupied primarily by apartments and coed undergraduate freshman dormitories. The Campus Recreation Center (formerly the Student Athletic Complex), a volleyball court, a large, low natural green area known as the Burger Bowl, a large, and a flat artificial green area known as the SAC Field are all located near the western side of the campus. Also within easy walking distance of West Campus is City Cafe, which is open 24 hours, Rocky Mountain Pizza, and Engineer's Bookstore, an alternative to Georgia Tech's official bookstore. West Campus is also home to a music club operated by students called Under the Couch [1] as well as a small diner and convenience store, West Side Market. Due to limited space, all auto travel proceeds via a network of one-way streets which connects West Campus to the larger campus roads Ferst Road and Hemphill Avenue. The dining hall for West Campus, the Woodruff Dining Hall, or 'Woody's', is part of the Woodruff student dormitory.
East Campus houses all of the Fraternities and Sororities as well as most of the undergraduate freshman dormitories. Although the residences are similar, East Campus is decidedly more urban than West Campus. It abuts on the Downtown Connector, which is infamous for its traffic and suffers from high pollution during peak hours. However, via a number of bridges over the highway as well as a tunnel under it, East Campus has quick access to Midtown and its businesses such as The Varsity as well as having access to Tech Square. Georgia Tech's stadiums, such as the famous Bobby Dodd Stadium, are located on East Campus, and tech Square is accessible on foot from there. East Campus's dining hall, Brittain, is modeled after a medieval church, complete with carved columns and stained-glass windows showing symbolic figures. While much more architecturally appealing than Woodruff, Brittain's food is consistently ranked below West Campus alternatives. The main road leading from East Campus to Central Campus is a sharp incline referred to as "Freshman Hill" or simply "The Hill."
Reserved primarily for academic, research, and office buildings, Central Campus has no residences. Buildings like the Howey Physics Building, the Boggs Chemistry Building, the College of Computing, the Skiles building, which houses the math and humanities departments, and the Ford Environmental Science & Technology Building, provide the various academic functionalities of the campus. Intermingled with these are a variety of research facilities, such as the Centennial Research Building, the Pettit Microelectronics Research Center, the Electronic Research Building, and the Petit Biotechnology Building. Tech's administrative buildings, such as the Student Services Building (Flag Building), Tech Tower, and the Bursar's Office are also located here. However, Central Campus doesn't altogether lack places to waste time; it has a large library with sizable computer clusters, a small traditional eatery called Junior's Grill, as well as a large communal building for students, called the Student Center. The Student Center includes a number of eating places, computer clusters, a game room, the Post Office, a darkened Music Listening Room. In front of the Student Center is a fountain monument called the Kessler Campanile, which students often refer to as 'The Shaft'. Yellow Jacket Park, the area of Central Campus in front of the Student Center, has many trees and benches around its edges but the center is kept open and uninterrupted.
Some areas of Central Campus, such as the Boggs Chemistry and Industrial Engineering buildings, are more accessible from West Campus. Others, such as Skiles, Junior's, Tech Tower, and the library are more accessible from East Campus. East Campus has foot access to Tech Square, but Tech Square can also be reached from anywhere on campus via the Tech Trolley transportation system.
Tech has a number of legends and traditions, some of which have persisted for decades.
Distinguished graduates and former students include:
Business:
Public Service:
The Sciences:
Arts & Entertainment:
Athletics:
Not many schools of Tech's relatively small size (around 16,000) and high academic standing (top 5 among engineering schools, top 10 among public schools, top 40 among all schools) do as well or better in the "big three" traditional American sports. Eliminating schools which are not state-supported, there are only a handful.
The school's sports teams are variously called the Yellowjackets, the Ramblin' Wreck, and the Engineers, but the official nickname is Yellow Jackets. They participate in NCAA Division I-A, in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The school mascot is Buzz. The school's traditional football rival is UGA; the rivalry was, at one time, considered one of the fiercest in college football. The rivalry is commonly referred to as Clean Old Fashioned Hate, which is also the title of a 1986 book about the subject.
Tech's fight song "I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech" is known worldwide. It was adapted from an old drinking song ("Son of a Gambolier"), and embellished with trumpet flourishes by Frank Roman. In 1959, then VP Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev sang it together when they had their famous cold war confrontation in Moscow, to reduce the tension. Nixon didn't know any Russian songs, but Khrushchev knew that one American one. It was sung on the Ed Sullivan show. It was played in space. Gregory Peck sang it while strumming a ukulele in Man in a Grey Flannel Suit. John Wayne whistled it in The High and the Mighty. It is played after every GT score in a football game. If GT is winning big, the opponent fans get sick of hearing it. The Edwin H. Morris & Company (later acquired by Paul McCartney's company, MPL) obtained a copyright in 1931.
There are multiple explanations for where how the term "Ramblin' Wrecks" became associated with Georgia Tech. The most plausible is that many GT engineering grads found jobs in the jungles of South America in the early 1900s, where they concocted mechanical contraptions to tame the jungle and get around. The first Ramblin' Wreck of record was a 1914 Ford Model T owned by Floyd Field, Tech's first dean of men. In 1961, a gold and white Model A, known as the Ramblin' Wreck, led the team onto the field for the first time, and it has done so at home games ever since.[7] The annual "Ramblin' Wreck" parade at Homecoming displays some really strange contraptions, judged for ingenuity.
Tech has seventeen varsity sports. In men's sports, in addition to football, basketball, and baseball, there's golf, tennis, swimming & diving, track & field, and cross country. For women, there's basketball, softball, volleyball, tennis, swimming & diving, track & field, and cross-country. Fourteen of these sports finished in the top 25 during the 2004-5 school year.
Georgia Tech's football team plays at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Historic Grant Field, the oldest on campus stadium among Division I-A teams. Georgia Tech claims 4 national championships in football: 1917 under the legendary coach John Heisman; 1928 under William Alexander; 1952 under the famous Bobby Dodd; and, 1990 under Bobby Ross. The team is currently coached by Chan Gailey, who is best known for his stints with the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers. As of the end of the 2005 season, Tech is one of only six Div. I-A teams to have played in a bowl game in each of the past nine years. Only 5 schools have longer bowl streaks. Georgia Tech's winning percentage of .667 in bowl games is the best in college football among teams with 20 bowl appearances. The Yellow Jackets are 22-11 in bowl games as of 2004. During the Dodd glory years of the early 50s, Tech won six bowls in six years, back when there were few bowls. In 1955, it was the first school to win what were then considered the four major bowls: Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Cotton . In 2005 Georgia Tech's football program was cited for major NCAA violations. The infraction was due to use of academically ineligible players between the 1998-1999 and 2004-2005 academic years. As part of the punishment, all Georgia Tech football victories between those years were vacated. The school was also put on NCAA probation and scholarship availabilities were limited.
Georgia Tech's men's basketball team plays at Alexander Memorial Coliseum. The team is currently coached by Paul Hewitt. The Yellow Jackets advanced to their first NCAA finals in 2004, losing to UConn. In 2005, the Jackets lost to the University of Louisville in the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament.
The 2005-2006 team, after losing rising senior Jarrett Jack to the NBA, features two upperclassmen and nationally ranked sophomore and freshmen recruiting classes.
Bobby Cremins, the previous coach, led Georgia Tech to several NCAA basketball tournaments and finished with a 354-237 record. The Yellow Jackets reached the NCAA Final Four in 1990 under Cremins with his "Lethal Weapon 3" team featuring Brian Oliver, Dennis Scott, and Kenny Anderson. The basketball court at Georgia Tech was later named Cremins Court for Cremins' accomplishments.
Georgia Tech's baseball team is currently coached by Danny Hall. The Yellow Jackets are frequently ranked in the Top 10 at the beginning of the season, and almost always finish in the Top 20. Tech has advanced to the NCAA playoffs in 19 of the past 20 years. Tech has been to the College World Series twice, in 1994 (when it lost the Championship game) and 2002. GT is second only to Stanford in players named to the USA Baseball National Team over the years. In 2005, Tech won the ACC Championship (regular season & tournament) and its regional, but lost it super-regional to the University of Tennessee. A new 3500-seat baseball stadium was built in 2002. The name of the old stadium, Russ Chandler Stadium, was retained, and it's still affectionately referred to as "the Rusty C." There are always a number of Tech alum in "the bigs." Two of them were among the starters in the 2005 "All Star Game."
Georgia Tech is consistently ranked near the top in golf. The success of several alumni on the pro circuit is testimony to the quality of GT players. These include David Duval, Stewart Cink, and the legendary Bobby Jones.
Tech's softball, volleyball, and tennis teams have improved dramatically in recent years. Individuals have excelled in track & field and swimming & diving.
The downside to being considered one of the most elite and toughest engineering schools in the world plays itself out on the students' social life. Because of the heavy workload at Georgia Tech, most students are overly stressed, worried about tomorrow's test, and driven by the desire for the degree. Students have only minimal time for social functions. Compounding this problem greatly are the fact that a majority of the students are from in state and many spend weekends and free time at home, and the heavily skewed population by sex (approximately 70% male).
This has led to strong reputation within the school of it being more of a test of spirit than an enjoyable life experience, as well as a number of disturbing statistics. For five years in a row, the Princeton Review, a private review of colleges on many levels across the US (one of the institutions by which Georgia Tech openly lays claim to its reputations for excellence in engineering) ranked Georgia Tech amongst the top 10 most hated schools by its own students, and in the top 3 worst party schools, by a poll of students. US News and World report, in a nationwide review of college binge drinking and alcoholism, ranked Ga Tech 17th for alcoholism nationwide-the only school on the danger list that wasn't also in the top 50 party schools that year. In 2003, the School of Psychology found that nearly 30% of students polled on campus showed signs of antisocial alcoholism, or knew another student who expressed similar signs.
The school has made great strides to correct these issues, to limited success. Most notably have been the FASET (Familiarization and Adaptation to the Surroundings and Environs of Tech - and also ' For All Students Entering Tech ') and Freshmen Experience (a freshman only dorm life program to encourage friendships and a feeling of social involvement) programs, encouraging freshman and new transfer students to become involved in social activities and extracurricular activities on campus. Part of the importance of the Freshmen Experience program comes from the schools high rate of underclassmen dropouts who are discouraged by lack of a social scene in their first year of college and daunted by the average time taken by most students to finish their undergraduate degrees(only 24% of freshmen make it to graduation in 4 years). The most notable improvement that the school has actively undertaken is to increase female student recruitment, with the incoming freshman class in 2004 having the highest incoming female percentage in recent history-almost 35%, largely due to increasing the number of liberal arts majors offered.
Certain shots from the tour portions of the movie Road Trip (2000) (when Tom Green's character is giving the tour) were shot on Georgia Tech's campus. Buildings filmed include the main library (look for a fountain with no water in it) and Skiles classroom building.
The Georgia Tech library was also featured as the library at the fictitious Atlanta A&T University in the movie Drumline (2002). Tech is also mentioned by name in the movie, when the only white student at the black university is asked (jokingly) "what's the matter, not enough black kids at Georgia Tech?"
The Georgia Tech football team was portrayed near the end of the 1993 film Rudy. In a famous scene from the movie, the title character finally gets a chance to play for the University of Notre Dame as he is put into the ballgame towards the closing moments of the Irish-Yellow Jacket matchup. There are some inaccuracies in the portrayal.
The Georgia Tech ATΩ fraternity house was featured in the 1992 film Love Potion No. 9 starring Tate Donovan and a then largely unknown Sandra Bullock.
The Tech campus, especially Rose Bowl Field football practice area and the former Heisman Gym were used in filming the 1984 movie, The Bear, starring Gary Busey as Paul "Bear" Bryant.
The 1993 Touchstone Pictures movie "The Program" (starring James Caan as the coach, Omar Epps and Craig Sheffer as players, and Halle Berry and Kristy Swanson as co-eds), features (at the start and near the end) Georgia Tech (in gold helmets with white GT logo, blue and then white jerseys, and gold pants) playing a fictional "ESU" team" (with garnet and gold colors suggesting FSU).
In the movie, "Devil's Advocate", starring Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves, Pacino tells Reeves that one of the interns on their law firm goes to Georgia Tech.
As mentioned in an earlier section, Gregory Peck played and sang the world-renowned "Ramblin' Wreck" fight song in "Man in a Gray Flannel Suit" and John Wayne whistled a bit of it in the 1954 movie "The High and the Mighty" (after convincing the captain to attempt to make it to San Francisco rather than ditch the plane in the ocean). It was no doubt carefully selected as a sign of success, since Georgia Tech was in its glory days of football, winning six bowl games in six years and being named National Champion by organizations in 1951, 1952, and 1956, though Georgia Tech currently only claims to the 1952 season.
Scenes for various other movies have been filmed on the Tech campus, mostly in front of, or in, fraternity houses.
The movie "Hyderabad Blues" depicts a graduate student returning home to India to face his parents' proposal of marriage. The student, Nagesh Kukunoor, is seen wearing a Georgia Tech T-shirt. Additionally, Nagesh attended Georgia Tech as a graduate student before becoming a movie producer.
"John Heisman: Principles of Football" [Hill Street Press, 2000] describes the philosophy and plays used by the great John Heisman, Tech's first paid coach.
"Dodd's Luck" [Golden Coast Publishing, 1987] describes Bobby Dodd's highly successful football coaching career in his own words.
In Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full" novel, the central character, a developer named Charlie Croker (who was a former 250-lb GT football player), is pressured by Atlanta leaders to support Fareek Fanon, a modern, black, Georgia Tech football star who may or may not have raped the white socialite daughter of a prominent Atlanta businessman; while the girl's father pressures Charlie to denounce the accused football player. [8]
In B. B. Rose's novel, "Halls of Poison Ivy", Georgia Tech is the setting of the murder of a graduate student. The administration and several students feature prominently in the ensuing mystery.
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University System of Georgia |
| Atlantic Coast Conference: Boston College | Clemson | Duke | Florida State | Georgia Tech | Maryland | Miami North Carolina | North Carolina State | Virginia | Virginia Tech | Wake Forest |
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