Columbia University was founded in 1754 as King’s College, and it is the oldest institution of higher learning in New York state and the fifth oldest in the country. The undergraduate schools – Columbia College, Engineering or General Studies – had 8,274 students enrolled for fall 2012 while the entire university total was 28,824. Established in 1947, Columbia’s Nevis Laboratories is the center for high-energy experiments and planetary observations. The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is in Palisades, New York and is the largest research unit of the Earth Institute, headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. This center is used to study global climate change, geological hazards, the effects of nonrenewable resources and the earth’s environment. Since 1901, Columbia University alumni, faculty, researchers and administrators have won 82 Nobel Prizes. Two of those recipients are former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and President Barack Obama in 2009. Columbia’s Global Centers in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Mumbai, Nairobi, Paris, and Santiago facilitate international collaborations, research projects, and study abroad. During “Primal Scream,” which takes place at midnight on the Sunday before the last week of final exams each semester, students open their windows and howl for up to five minutes to release their stress. It competes in NCAA Division I athletics, and the school mascot is the Lion. The president of the university is Lee C. Bollinger
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