California Institute of Technology

California Institute of Technology
Caltech Seal
Latin: '
Motto The truth shall make you free.
Established 1891
Type Private
Endowment US$1.4 billion
Staff 386
Rector  
Chancellor  
President  David Baltimore (departing)
Principal  
Vice-Chancellor  
Dean  
 
Faculty  
Students
Undergraduates  896
Postgraduates  1,275
Doctoral students  
Location Pasadena, CA USA
Campus setting Urban, 124 acres (0.5 km²)
Colours
Mascot Beaver
Nickname
Affiliations
Website www.caltech.edu

The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. One of the world's premier research universities, Caltech maintains a strong emphasis on the natural sciences and engineering. Caltech also owns and manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), an autonomous-space-flight complex that oversees the design and operation of most of NASA's space-probes.

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History

Modern Caltech grew from a vocational school founded in Pasadena in 1891 by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop. The school was known successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute, and Throop College of Technology, before acquiring its current name in 1920. Caltech and Polytechnic School were part of the same institution till 1907. Polytechnic School is now a private college preparatory school across the street from Caltech.

The driving force behind the transformation of Caltech from a school of arts and crafts to a world-class scientific center was the vision of astronomer George Ellery Hale. Hale had joined Throop's board of trustees after coming to Pasadena in 1907 as the first director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, Hale saw an opportunity to create in Pasadena an institution for serious research and education in engineering and the natural sciences. Hale succeeded in attracting private gifts of land and money that allowed him to endow the school with well-equipped, modern laboratory facilities. He then convinced two of the leading American scientists of the time, physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes and experimental physicist Robert Andrews Millikan, to join Caltech's faculty and contribute to the project of establishing it as a center for science and technology.

In 1917 Hale hired architect Bertram Goodhue to produce a master plan for the 22 acre (89,000 m²) campus. Goodhue conceived of the overall layout of the campus and designed the Physics Building, Dabney Hall, and several other structures, in which he sought to be consistent with the local climate, the character of the school, and Hale's educational philosophy. Goodhue's designs for Caltech were also influenced by the traditional Spanish mission architecture of Southern California.

Millikan Library, the tallest building on campus

Under the leadership of Hale, Noyes, and Millikan (and aided by the booming economy of Southern California), Caltech grew very significantly in prestige in the 1920s. In 1923, Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. In 1925 the school established a department of geology and hired William Bennett Munro, then chairman of the division of History, Government, and Economics at Harvard University, to create a division of humanities and social sciences at Caltech. In 1928 a division of biology was established under the leadership of Thomas Hunt Morgan, the most distinguished biologist in the United States and a discoverer of the role of genes and the chromosome in heredity. In 1926 a graduate school of aeronautics was created which eventually attracted Theodore von Kármán, who later contributed to the creation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and who established Caltech as one of the foremost centers for rocket-science. In 1928 construction began on the Palomar Observatory.

Millikan served as "chairman of the executive council" (effectively Caltech's president) from 1921 to 1945, and his influence was such that the Institute was occasionally referred to as "Millikan's School." In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Caltech was known as the home of arguably the two greatest theoretical particle physicists working at the time: Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman. Both Gell-Mann and Feynman received Nobel Prizes for their work, which was central to the establishment of the so-called "Standard Model" of particle physics. Feynman was also widely known outside the physics community as an exceptional teacher and a colorful, unconventional character.

Caltech remains, to this day, a relatively small university, with approximately 900 undergraduates, 1300 graduate students, and 900 faculty members (including 378 professors, 54 permanent research faculty, and 545 postdoctoral researchers.) It is a private institution, governed by its Board of Trustees.

As of 2005, Caltech claims 31 Nobel laureates to its name. This figure includes 17 alumni, 14 non-alumni professors, and 4 professors who were also alumni (Carl D. Anderson, Linus Pauling, William A. Fowler, and Edward B. Lewis). The number of awards is 32, because Pauling received the prize in both chemistry and peace. With fewer than 25,000 alumni in total, nearly one in a thousand Techers have received the Nobel Prize — a ratio unmatched by any other university. Five faculty and alumni have received a Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, while 47 have been awarded the U.S. National Medal of Science, and 10 have received the National Medal of Technology [1]. Other distinguished researchers have been affiliated with Caltech as postdoctoral scholars (e.g., Barbara McClintock, James D. Watson, and Sheldon Glashow) or visiting professors (e.g. Albert Einstein and Edward Witten).

The movie comedy Real Genius and the CBS crime drama Numb3rs are loosely based on events at Caltech. [2]

Caltech is ranked the seventh best university in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, and is tied for this spot with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Spitzer Science Center (SSC), located on the Caltech campus, is the data analysis and community support center for NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The SSC is part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) and works in collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

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Academics

Academics at Caltech are famously hard, and the analogy of drinking water from a firehose is often applied. Life is sometimes described by the aphorism, "Work, sleep, social life: pick two," pointing to the great amount of academic work. While Caltech is most famous for its physics department, it has strived particularly to improve its facilities in the life sciences. Caltech is also known for interdisciplinary programs such as the Computation and Neural Systems (CNS) program.

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Academic departments

Caltech is divided into six divisions, each of which offer several degree programs, as well as a number of interdisciplinary programs.

Not all of these are offered for both undergraduate and graduate students.

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Undergraduate program

Caltech is on the quarter system, meaning that students have one quarter before winter break and two quarters after. Thus, the college starts relatively late, in late September, and ends in early June rather than May like most colleges. Also, Caltech is unusual in that students normally take five classes every term rather than four as at most colleges. Instead of majors Caltech has "options" while offering only one minor in Control and Dynamical Systems (CDS). Approximately 10% of students double-major in two options. This is achievable since the humanities and social sciences majors have been designed to be done in conjunction with a science major. Although double-majoring in two options in the same division is technically discouraged, it is still possible although those who seek to do so usually need to be exceptionally bright. The double major of math and physics is generally thought to be so hard that it is comically referred to as the plan of naive freshmen who do not yet understand the difficulty of Caltech academics.

Caltech is known for a rigorous math and science core curriculum. Students are expected to take five quarters of core math, including differential equations and probability and statistics, five quarters of core physics including quantum mechanics, special relativity, and statistical mechanics, two quarters of chemistry, and a quarter of biology, as well as two quarters of laboratory classes.

Despite the high pressure of academics, few students fail classes or fail out of the school as a whole, although the option of transferring out is a running joke. This is due to several cushions that help students survive. First of all, the first two quarters during freshman year are on a pass/fail grading scheme, easing the transition to college. During the second quarter, "shadow grades" are given, but during the first, there are no grades at all. Second, there is little competition and collaboration on homework is encouraged (and often necessary for success) in almost every class. This allows even students who are not doing as well as others to learn the material and not get behind in their studies. In addition, students often request extensions on homework due dates and use many other strategies to help learn the material and handle the stress of Caltech life.

Caltech usually has the lowest four-year graduation rate among the leading US universities. This is despite the fact that entering students have consistently higher average test scores (SAT 1 and 2) than any other school in the major college rankings. Reasons for this include the fact that Caltech does not believe in grade inflation and has a smaller percentage of students who graduate with honors than in the Ivy League. So, Caltech does not rush students through and try to inflate student egos in hopes of greater alumni donations down the road. And of course, its Core is required for all majors. Consequently, Caltech's graduation rates are comparatively low. Of greater note, in 2005, Princeton Review rated Caltech #1 for Worst Teaching. This statistic comes from polls of students in universities across the nation. While this rating was distressing to the administration, it was not particularly surprising to undergraduates who often feel abandoned in the classroom in favor of the professor's research. Caltech students do encounter good classes with wonderful professors. The required courses are often taught by distinguished researchers who are not necessarily good teachers. However, the situation has improved greatly over the last few decades and many more students now graduate (>85% yield) than in previous years (when a third of the entering freshmen either transferred or flunked out).

Undergraduates at Caltech are also encouraged to participate in research. Most students do research through the annual Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program at least once during their stay, and many continue it during the school year. Students write and submit SURF proposals for research projects in collaboration with professors, and about 70% of applicants are awarded SURFs. The program is open to both Caltech and non-Caltech undergraduate students. It serves as good preparation for graduate school and helps to explain why Caltech has the highest percentage of alumni who go on to receive a Phd of all the major universities.

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Student life

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House system

See main article: House System at Caltech

During the early 20th century, a Caltech committee visited several universities and decided to transform the undergraduate housing system from regular fraternities to a House System, similar to the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge. Four south houses (or hovses, so named for the inscription on the gates thereof) were built: Blacker House, Dabney House, Fleming House, and Ricketts House. In the 1960s, three north houses were built: Lloyd House, Page House, and Ruddock House. During the 1990s, an additional house, Avery House, was built to accommodate those who feel the original seven houses were not suitable for them. Some students jocularly refer to the Undergraduate Computer Science Laboratory as another house, as a few spend most of their time there. The four south houses will be closed for renovation from 2005 to 2007.

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Traditions

Beckman Auditorium

There are many annual traditions at Caltech, demonstrating the weird and wonderful creativity of its inhabitants. Every Halloween Dabney House stages a pumpkin drop from the top of the Millikan Library, the highest point on campus. According to tradition, a claim was once made that the shattering of a pumpkin frozen in liquid nitrogen and dropped from a sufficient height would produce a spark. This yearly leads onlookers to try to spot the elusive spark.

There is also the annual Ditch Day, for which seniors ditch school, leaving behind elaborately designed tasks and traps at the doors of their rooms to prevent underclassmen from entering. This has evolved to the point where many seniors spend months designing mechanical, electrical, and software obstacles in order to confound the underclassmen. Each group of seniors designs a "stack" to be solved by handful of underclassmen. A series of clues, which leads to the solution of the puzzle, is left around campus to lead the students to their final reward, which lies within the sealed room. The faculty has been drawn into the event as well, and cancel all classes on Ditch Day so that the underclassmen can participate in what has become a highlight of the year.

Another tradition is the playing of the Ride of the Valkyries at 7 AM each morning during finals week with the largest, loudest speakers available. The playing of that piece is not allowed at any other time, and any offender is dragged into the showers to be drenched in cold water fully dressed. The playing of the Ride is such a strong tradition that when the music was used during Apollo 17 to awaken Astronaut Harrison Schmitt, the only astronaut-scientist to explore the moon, he became extremely stressed in the same manner as a student during finals week.

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Pranks

Caltech Hollywood sign prank
Caltech Hollywood sign prank

Caltech students have been known for the many pranks (also known as RF's) they have pulled off in the area. The two most famous are the changing of the Hollywood sign to read Caltech, by judiciously covering up certain parts of the letters, and the changing of the Rose Bowl scoreboard to an imaginary game where Caltech soundly trounced MIT. During the 1961 Rose Bowl Game, Caltech students altered the flip-cards that were raised by the stadium attendees to display "Caltech".

Recently, a group of Caltech students, during the admitted students program at MIT in 2005, pulled a string of pranks, including covering up the word Massachusetts in the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" engraving on the main building façade with a banner so that it read "That Other Institute of Technology". A group of MIT hackers retaliated by altering the banner so that the inscription read "The Only Institute of Technology".

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Honor Code

Life in the Caltech community is governed by the Honor Code, which states simply: "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community." This is enforced by a Board of Control, which consists of undergraduate students[3], and by a similar body at the graduate level, called the Graduate Review Board [4]. The Honor Code, and the atmosphere of respect and trust that it promotes, allows Caltech students to enjoy privileges that make for a more relaxed atmosphere. For example, the Honor Code allows the professors to trust students sufficiently to give them take-home tests. Almost all Caltech tests are take-home, allowing students to take them on their own schedule and in their preferred environment.

The only exception to the Honor Code, implemented in 1990s in response to changes in federal regulations, concerns Sexual Harrassment Policy.

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Presidents of Caltech

Since Throop College of Technology became Caltech in 1920, it has been led by the following individuals:

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See also

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External links


   Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference   
Caltech | CLU | CMC | Harvey Mudd | Scripps
ULV | Oxy | Pomona | Pitzer | Redlands | Whittier 		Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference


   Association of Independent Technological Universities   
Caltech | Carnegie Mellon | Case Western Reserve | Clarkson | Cooper Union | Drexel | Embry-Riddle | Olin | Harvey Mudd | IIT | Kettering University | MIT
Milwaukee School of Engineering | Polytechnic University | Rensselaer | Rochester Institute of Technology | Rose-Hulman | Stevens | Webb Institute | Worcester Polytechnic Institute