San Jose State University (original) (raw)
San Jose State University, also known as San Jose State and SJSU, is the first university in what became the California State University system.
Campus
The main 154 acre (62 hectare) campus of San Jos� St. is a rectangle in downtown San Jose, California, bordered by San Fernando Street (north), Fourth Street (west), San Salvador Street (south), and Tenth Street (east). The athletic fields, additional student housing and parking are located about 1.5 miles south on Seventh Street at the South Campus.
San Jose State maintains a facility at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport as part of the Aviation Department, and manages the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in Moss Landing, California, on the Monterey Bay, a cooperative research facility of seven CSU campuses.
Organization
The university has eight colleges:
- Applied Sciences & Arts
- Business
- Education
- Engineering
- Humanities & the Arts
- Science
- Social Sciences
- Social Work as well as schools of Journalism, Library & Information Science and Music & Dance.
Students
The campus has approximately 30,000 students. It is one of the most ethnically diverse in the state, with large Asian, Filipino and Latino enrollments.
The engineering, science and business schools claim to have more graduates in Silicon Valley than any other school in the U.S.
Faculty
San Jose State has about 1,600 faculty memebers, 87 percent of which hold doctorate degrees.
Research collections located at SJSU include the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies and the Martha H. Cox Center for Steinbeck Research.
SJSU research partnerships include the SJSU Metropolitan Technology Center at the NASA Research Park, Moffett Field, California and the Cisco Networking Laboratory, funded by Cisco Systems,
Sports, Clubs, and Traditions
SJSU sports teams are known as the Spartans, and compete in the Western Athletic Conference in NCAA Division I (I-A for football). The school has achieved an international reputation in judo, having won 38 national championships in the sport, as of 2003.
History
San Jose State was founded in 1857 as Minns' Evening Normal School, in San Francisco, California, and is the oldest public institution of higher learning on the West Coast of the United States. In 1862, the California legislature took possession of the school, renaming it the California State Normal School. The school moved to San Jose in 1871, becoming San Jose Normal School, and was given Washington Square Park at Fourth and San Carlos Streets to locate their campus, where it remains.
In 1921, the legislature changed the school's name to San Jose Teachers Training College. In 1935, the name was changed again, this time to San Jose State College. In 1961, SJSC joined the California State College System (later the California State University (CSU) system). In 1972 SJSC was granted university status, and the name was changed to CSU, San Jose. In 1974 the name was changed again, this time to San Jose State University.
In 1999, San Jose St. and the City of San Jose agreed to combine their main libraries to form a joint City/University library located on campus, the first known such library in the world. The new Martin Luther King, Jr. Library opened in 2003.
Noted San Jose State alumni
- Bernd Behr - artist
- Ben Nighthorse Campbell - U.S. Senator from Colorado
- Christopher Darden - prosecuter of O. J. Simpson
- Jeff Garcia - American football player
- Jessica McClintock - fashon designer
- Gordon Moore - cofounder of Intel
- Gaylord Nelson - U.S. Senator and Governor of Wisconsin
- The Smothers Brothers, Tom and Dick Smothers, comedians
- Amy Tan - novelist
- Peter Ueberroth - head of 1984 Summer Olympics, Time 1984 Man of the Year and commissioner (1984-1989) of Major League Baseball
- Dick Vermeil - American football coach
- Bill Walsh - American football coach
- David Willman - reporter, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize.
Noted San Jose State faculty
- Rudy Rucker - computer science
- Yosh Uchida - judo coach