Indiana University (IU) is located in the Midwest of America in the region of the Great Lakes. Its two main campuses are Bloomington and Indianapolis, with an additional six regional sites in Kokomo, Fort Wayne, Gary, New Albany, Richmond and South Bend.
Founded in 1820, it is a public university that has more than 200 research centres and institutes. Many of the university’s leading schools are internationally recognised. For example, the Jacobs School of Music, located on the Bloomington campus, has had its musical arts centre compared to the New York Metropolitan Opera House. The School of Medicine, located on the Indianapolis campus, is the largest of its kind in the United States.
With over 110,000 students spanning all levels from undergraduate through to doctoral research and practice, the university has nearly 8,000 acres of land including on- and off-campus. It maintains its size and stature by virtue of an annual budget of around $3.5 billion, and an endowment of nearly $2 billion.
With over 100 online degrees and academic certificate programmes, the university has a growing online learning scheme that it offers to current and non-enrolled students.
IU also has a broad base of sports teams known collectively as the Hoosiers, the name for natives of Indiana, that don the university colours of crimson and cream. Its American football team play in the Memorial Stadium, which can seat over 50,000 spectators.
After a fire in 1854 devastated its first college building, the university’s society of alumni was founded, followed by the alumni association in 1913. It now has a global network of over 600,000 people.
In 1867, IU enrolled its first woman, Sarah Parke Morrison, making it the fourth public university in the US to admit women on an equal basis to men. Morrison went on to become the first female professor at the university in 1873.
