Pride points
MU Has Top-Flight Students
In fall 2009, MU welcomed a record 31,314 students representing every county in Missouri, every state in the nation and more than 100 countries. This is the eighth year in a row that MU has broken numerous enrollment records. With 23,869 undergraduates, Mizzou is the No. 1 college choice for Missouri high school seniors. Enrollment numbers for graduate students, transfer students, African American students and Hispanic students also have reached historically high levels.
The 2009 freshmen class boasts an average ACT score of 25.6, compared with the national average of 21.1 and the state average of 21.5. Twenty-five percent of MU freshmen come from the top 10 percent of their high school classes.
MU attracts more valedictorians and Curators Scholars than any other college or university in Missouri and almost twice as many of the state’s Bright Flight scholars.
MU graduate students perform many of the hands-on aspects of research and go on to top-level work throughout society. Mizzou’s 6,939 graduate and professional students make up 23 percent of the university’s enrollment.
Sixty Missouri School of Journalism students were among a select group of 300 students from around the world to serve as Olympic News Service interns during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.
Students Laura Merritt and Jennifer Kimball were named Truman Scholars in 2008 for their dedication to leadership and public service. The highly selective $30,000 Truman Scholarship for graduate school is given to only 65 U.S. college students each year. MU is one of only 10 schools with two Truman Scholars. Glamour magazine also recognized Merritt as one of 2008’s top 10 college women.
MU has three Goldwater Scholars, outstanding students recognized for their work in mathematics, science or engineering. Seniors Dan Tappmeyer, Tyler Faust and Kevin Karsch were among 321 students chosen nationwide.
Zach Kinne, a senior majoring in agricultural economics, was selected as the 2008 president of the National FFA Organization.
MU has more than 500 student athletes involved in 20 sports, in which they compete at the highest level nationally.
MU's football team won the 2008 Cotton Bowl game against Arkansas, received a No. 1 regular season national ranking (the first since 1960) and won the Big 12 North Division Title for the first time ever.
MU is the No. 1 public Bowl Championship Series institution in the nation in academic performance of student athletes and ranks 25th among all schools, public and private. Mizzou also leads the Big 12 in eligibility, retention and graduation rates of student athletes. These rankings are based on the NCAA's 2008 Academic Progress Rate, which measures the academic progress and performance of athletic programs.
MU Offers an Excellent, One-of-a-Kind Education
As Missouri's flagship university, MU has 19 schools and colleges and more than 270 degree programs — including 40 online options — to help students reach their career and personal goals.
MU is highly ranked in quality and value by U.S. News & World Report, The Fiske Guide to Colleges, Barron's Best Buys in College Education and numerous other college guides.
MU’s Campus Writing Program and learning communities were listed in U.S. News & World Report's 2009 "America’s Best Colleges" issue as excellent programs leading to student success.
The National Science Foundation has recognized MU as one of the top 10 universities in the country for successfully integrating research into undergraduate education.
The Center for the Literary Arts reinforces MU's reputation as a "writing university" by uniting renowned programs in creative writing and theater and maintaining connections with journalism and other fields to offer students an interdisciplinary approach to writing.
MU offers more than 100 Freshman Interest Groups, in which students with shared academic interests live in the same residence halls and attend classes together. These communities, which are models for other institutions around the country, provide a strong academic and social foundation for freshmen and higher retention and graduation rates.
Mizzou offers students opportunities to perform at national venues through two programs: Mizzou on Tour at Carnegie Hall and Mizzou on Broadway at the York Theatre in New York.
In MU's School of Journalism, newspaper, magazine and photojournalism students gain hands-on experience as they produce print and online publications, including three magazines and a daily newspaper. Broadcast students train at radio, TV and online outlets. Strategic-communication students create advertising, public relations and marketing strategies for local and national clients.
The MU Office of Service Learning formally integrates community service into student instruction and learning. During the 2006-07 academic year, 2,896 undergraduates enrolled in more than 100 service-learning courses and provided 116,700 hours of service through more than 200 agencies.
Mizzou is home to an Honors College – one of the oldest in the country – that offers the atmosphere of a small private college in the setting of a major research university.
MU’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) was honored in 2008 as the top unit of its size in the western United States, according to the U.S. Army Cadet Command Organization. Battalions selected for awards are considered the most successful in training and commissioning Army lieutenants each year.
MU Provides a Rich Learning Environment
More than 5,400 trees and 650 varieties of plants accent the campus with colorful and fragrant flowers in the spring and brilliant leaves in the fall, transforming Mizzou into a botanic garden. The campus also features 18 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, 600-year-old Chinese stone lions, Thomas Jefferson's original tombstone and the Joy of Discovery, a four-story-tall suspended sculpture in the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center.
The collection of the MU Libraries is the largest in the state. Ellis, Engineering, Geology, Health Sciences, Journalism, Law, Mathematical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine have more than 3 million volumes, almost 7 million microforms, 1.6 million government documents and more than 33,000 journal subscriptions.
MU has $595 million of campus improvement projects in design or construction. The latest projects include the Brady Commons expansion, the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (completed September 2008) and Thomas and Nell Lafferre Hall.
MU's Museum of Art and Archaeology possesses the third-most-extensive art collection in Missouri, and the campus's Museum of Anthropology is the only anthropology museum in the state.
In 2008, MU celebrates the centennial of the world’s first and finest School of Journalism and the new Reynolds Journalism Institute, which will serve as journalism’s advanced-studies center.
In 1969 Arvarh E. Strickland made history at Mizzou as the first African American to join the faculty. His legacy as a professor and nationally known scholar was set in stone in fall 2007 with the naming of the General Classroom Building in his honor.
Cornell Hall recently became home to the newly renamed Robert J. Trulaske Sr. College of Business in recognition of a series of generous gifts from Robert and Geraldine Trulaske.
The Mizzou Student Recreation Complex is one of the 10 largest facilities of its kind in the country. MU students voted to increase their fees to pay for the $50 million complex.
National magazines and newspapers consistently list Columbia, Mo., among the top cities in the nation for its excellent quality of life. For example, Money magazine included Columbia in a 2006 “Top 100 Best Places to Live” study that analyzed factors such as housing, student test scores, air quality and commute time. Also in 2006, Forbes listed Columbia as the 16th “Best Small Metro for Business and Careers,” the seventh year in a row Columbia has ranked in the top 60. In 2007 Forbes listed Columbia as one of the top 20 American cities to educate children.
MU Is an Economic Engine for Missouri
Thanks to the generous support of alumni and friends, the For All We Call Mizzou campaign is close to reaching the university's $1 billion goal. MU will celebrate meeting the goal in spring 2009.
Research at MU prepares students to succeed in a knowledge-based economy, solves problems and improves lives, leads to innovations and new companies, attracts new money to the state and helps make Missouri and the U.S. more competitive.
Based on the most recent data from the National Science Foundation, MU ranks No. 2 among all institutions in the Association of American Universities in growth of federal research funding from 1995 to 2005.
MU attracts 71.3 percent of the federal research dollars flowing to Missouri's public universities.
Every week, Missouri's economy benefits as MU brings in an average of $2.4 million in private donations, spends $9.7 million in payroll and wins $3.7 million in outside funds for research.
MU spent $248 million for research and development last year, creating 40 jobs with every $1 million in external funding.
Since 2000, MU faculty and staff have launched 30 start-up companies, taking their research from lab to market. MU filed 45 U.S. patent applications in 2007.
In fiscal year 2007, 1.1 million visitors spent $18.8 million at MU athletic events, generating just under $1.4 million in state sales tax revenue.
University of Missouri Extension’s business development programs assisted more than 3,500 Missouri business people through individual-specific counseling, educational sessions and conferences. The economic impact included $172.5 million in increased sales, 6,057 new jobs, more than $74 million in new investments in client businesses and more than $186 million in government contracts.
From 1997 to 2007, MU scientists spent more than $2 billion in research funds, most of which came to Missouri from outside the state. It takes MU's high-quality faculty and infrastructure capacity to attract multi-million dollar federal research grants. The state has built this capacity, or “critical mass,” at MU.
MU Is a Nationally Competitive, Global University
MU is one of only six public universities in the country with medicine, veterinary medicine, law, engineering and agriculture all on one campus.
MU is one of only 34 public U.S. universities, and the only public institution in Missouri, to be selected for membership in the Association of American Universities and designated “Research University/Very High” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This year marks the centennial of MU's AAU membership, which recognizes excellence in teaching and research endeavors and includes only the nation's top-tier institutions.
MU provides all the benefits of two universities in one; it's a major land-grant institution and Missouri's largest public research university. Many states support two, such as Michigan and Michigan State and Iowa and Iowa State.
MU sends more students to study overseas than any other college or university in Missouri. Currently, MU offers more than 400 study-abroad programs in 60 countries. Last year, approximately 1,100 MU students participated in the programs.
Working with 12 schools and colleges, MU Direct reached adult learners in 49 states and many international locations, totaling 7,109 enrollments and 534 courses and providing 20,168 semester credit hours of continuing education.
Innovation at Mizzou
More than 1,000 faculty life scientists at MU are working to improve human and animal health, food and the environment. Areas of strength include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, animal and human reproductive biology, aging, plant genomics and biotechnology, geo-spatial informatics, bioengineering, rural economic development policy, math education, nanoscience and nanotechnology, cognitive and neurodevelopmental sciences, exercise physiology, autism, nuclear medicine and comparative medicine.
MU is a national leader in comparative medicine, in which researchers collaborate by sharing discoveries, innovations and treatments for humans and animals. For example, Jimmy Cook discovered how to encourage the meniscus in knees to repair itself by implanting a scaffold in dog knees. Currently, this process is in stage II of FDA human clinical trials.
A national leader in plant genomics research, MU is 7th in the nation in plant sciences funding from the National Science Foundation.
MU boasts some of the world's top scientists in wheat, corn and soybean research and is 14th in the nation in life sciences funding from the National Science Foundation.
MU is home to the world's most powerful university research reactor and is the largest U.S. producer of radioisotopes for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
MU and its biochemistry researchers have a new $2.3 million high-powered nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer (NMR), only the second of its generation in the U.S. and the only one in Missouri. Scientists use the NMR to see molecules in three dimensions and view their interactions. Understanding these interactions is crucial to understanding health and disease.MU is one of only 15 sites in the United States where the National Cancer Institute provides funding for clinical trials on animals. Veterinary medicine and human medicine oncologists developed Quadramet for bone cancer pain, one of many MU discoveries based on collaborative research.
Interdisciplinary research is the hallmark of the university’s Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. Mizzou scientists from such fields as biochemistry, biological engineering, electrical engineering, medicine, physiology and veterinary medicine come together and apply their particular expertise to health problems like hypertension, cancer, cystic fibrosis and heart disease.
Mizzou is home to some of the world’s best nanoscientists, who work with particles at the nearly unimaginable scale of one billionth of a meter. The new $10 million International Institute for Nano and Molecular Medicine will house scientists fighting cancer and other diseases.
MU Is a Green Campus
Campus space has grown substantially since 1990, but energy use has been reduced by 12 percent per square foot due to conservation efforts. These efforts have decreased energy costs by $4.3 million annually, and carbon dioxide emissions have been reduced by 104,000 tons.
MU uses renewable fuels, such as corncobs, tires, waste wood chips and switchgrass, to provide clean alternatives for energy production. For example, the campus power plant began replacing up to 5 percent of its coal supply with wood chips in 2007, saving more than 7,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions in a single year.
MU recycles 25 percent of its waste (1,869 tons per year) through such efforts as the annual Tiger Treasures sale of items donated by students as they leave campus. More than 17 tons of items were diverted from the landfill in 2008.
Sustain Mizzou is an MU student group involved in coordinating such projects as Tiger Tailgate Recycling, Local Food for Local People and the Hinkson Stream Team. Last year the group helped recycle more than 24 tons of aluminum, plastic and glass containers at home football games.
MU’s Printing Services now uses recycled paper for all campus copying and digital printing. That’s 22 million sheets of bond paper per year.
MU’s Campus Dining Services department strives to be more environmentally friendly by buying local foods, selling reusable drink and coffee mugs, provising waste oil to a recycling company for reuse and offering more organic foods.
More than 100 MU faculty from 40 different departments teach courses related to the environment and sustainability. For example, students in the Landscape Ecology and Geographic Information Systems course regularly work with the Missouri Stream Team on mapping and analyzing the watersheds of Boone County to address habitat fragmentation and water quality. A new pollution-prevention internship program trains engineering students to provide on-site environmental assessments for Missouri business and industry.
MU Is a Unifying Force for Missouri
As Missouri's land grant institution and largest public research university, MU has a statewide mission to improve the public welfare. Every year, more than one million Missourians turn to MU and its extension programs to help them continue their education, solve problems and make informed decisions.
MU's academic medical center has more than 6,000 professionals who care for patients from every county in Missouri.
More Missouri physicians receive medical training from MU than from any other university. Three-fourths of Missouri veterinarians earned their veterinary degrees at MU, and MU law school alumni practice in every Missouri county.
MU Health Care provides rural patients with better access to high-quality health care through its nationally recognized Missouri Telehealth Network, which has 140 sites in 43 Missouri counties.
More than 100,000 youth from across the state participate in University of Missouri Extension 4-H clubs or 4-H school enrichment programs each year.
The Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs, the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute and the Rural Policy Research Institute make objective contributions to state and national public policy. MU's Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis is the major Missouri source for demographic and economic data analysis used in the development and evaluation of economic policy.
MU's Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory conducts more than 300,000 diagnostic tests annually to help determine the cause of death and disease in animals.
University Extension brings lifelong learning opportunities to Missourians in all walks of life. Annually, more than 100,000 people — including teachers, health care professionals, lawyers, firefighters and police officers — gain the latest knowledge in their professions while participating in continuing education opportunities offered through Extension and MU's schools and colleges.
