Yale's roots can be traced back to the 1640s, when colonial clergymen led an effort to establish a college in New Haven to preserve the tradition of European liberal education in the New World. This vision was fulfilled in 1701, when the charter was granted. … In 1718 the school was renamed “Yale College” in gratitude to the Welsh merchant Elihu Yale, who had donated the proceeds from the sale of nine bales of goods together with 417 books and a portrait of King George I.

Yale College survived the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) intact and, by the end of its first hundred years, had grown rapidly. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought the establishment of the graduate and professional schools that would make Yale a true university. The Yale School of Medicine was chartered in 1810, followed by the Divinity School in 1822, the Law School in 1824, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847 (which, in 1861, awarded the first Ph.D. in the United States), followed by the schools of Art in 1869, Music in 1894, Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, Nursing in 1923, Drama in 1955, Architecture in 1972, and Management in 1974.

International students have made their way to Yale since the 1830s, when the first Latin American student enrolled. The first Chinese citizen to earn a degree at a Western college or university came to Yale in 1850. Today, international students make up nearly 9 percent of the undergraduate student body, and 16 percent of all students at the University. Yale’s distinguished faculty includes many who have been trained or educated abroad and many whose fields of research have a global emphasis; and international studies and exchanges play an increasingly important role in the Yale College curriculum. The University began admitting women students at the graduate level in 1869, and as undergraduates in 1969.

Yale College was transformed, beginning in the early 1930s, by the establishment of residential colleges. Taking medieval English universities such as Oxford and Cambridge as its model, this distinctive system divides the undergraduate population into twelve separate communities of approximately 450 members each, thereby enabling Yale to offer its students both the intimacy of a small college environment and the vast resources of a major research university. Each college surrounds a courtyard and occupies up to a full city block, providing a congenial community where residents live, eat, socialize, and pursue a variety of academic and extracurricular activities. Each college has a master and dean, as well as a number of resident faculty members known as fellows, and each has its own dining hall, library, seminar rooms, recreation lounges, and other facilities. Today, Yale’s 11,000 students come from all fifty American states and from 108 countries. The 3,200-member faculty is a richly diverse group of men and women who are leaders in their respective fields.

Yale has a tripartite mission: to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge. Yale aims to carry out each part of its mission at the highest level of excellence, on par with the best institutions in the world. Yale seeks to attract a diverse group of exceptionally talented men and women from across the nation and around the world and to educate them for leadership in scholarship, the professions, and society. Teaching and research at Yale University are organized through the schools, departments, and programs. The undergraduate school, Yale College, is the heart of the University. More than 2,000 undergraduate courses in the liberal arts and sciences are offered each year by over sixty-five departments and programs.

Building on its historical strength, Yale is a leader in research and teaching in contemporary Political Science. The Department is home to around 45 faculty, whose scholarship and teaching span across the subfields of Political Science and the countries of the world. The undergraduate major is among the largest on campus, and the graduate program produces Ph.D. students who have taken leadership positions in the discipline.

Many Political Science faculty also play active roles in related programs at Yale, such as the Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics; Directed Studies; the Institution for Social And Policy Studies; and the MacMillian Center. The Department also sponsors numerous seminars, lectures, and conferences that are open to all members of the Yale community. Yale’s Political Science department offers both an undergraduate (BA) degree in Political Science and a graduate (PhD) in Political Science.

The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale is the University’s focal point for encouraging and coordinating teaching and research on international affairs, societies, and cultures around the world. The MacMillan Center seeks to make understanding the world and the role of the United States in the world, an integral part of liberal education and professional training at the University. It provides seven undergraduate majors, including six focused on world regions: African, East Asian, Latin American, Modern Middle East Studies, Russian and East European Studies, and South Asian Studies. The seventh is focused on Global Affairs. At the graduate level, the MacMillan Center provides four master’s degree programs. Three are regionally focused on African, East Asian, and European and Russian Studies, and one is focused on Global Affairs. The MacMillan Center also sponsors seven graduate certificates of concentration: African Studies, European Studies, Global Health, International Development Studies, International Security Studies, Latin American and Iberian Studies, and Modern Middle East Studies. In total, 250–300 students are enrolled in these degree programs in any given year.

The MacMillan Center has numerous interdisciplinary faculty councils, centers, committees, and programs. These provide opportunities for scholarly research and intellectual innovation and encourage faculty and student interchange for undergraduates as well as graduate and professional students. The home of one of the oldest interdisciplinary programs in International Relations, the MacMillan Center is a founding member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), along with Columbia, Georgetown, Princeton, Tufts, and other institutions.

On the University of South Carolina

The Palmetto State established South Carolina College on December 19, 1801, as part of an effort to unite South Carolinians in the wake of the American Revolution, promoting “the good order and harmony” of the state. The founding of South Carolina’s state college was also part of the Southern public college movement spurred by Thomas Jefferson. Within 20 years of one another, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia established state-supported colleges.

In the antebellum era, the Palmetto State generously supported South Carolina College. Its faculty included noted European scholars such as Francis Lieber and Thomas Cooper, as well as renowned American scholars John and Joseph LeConte. Offering a classical curriculum, South Carolina College became one of the South’s most influential colleges, earning a reputation as the training ground for South Carolina’s antebellum elite.

But South Carolina’s secession from the Union unleashed the devastation of the American Civil War, and the state and South Carolina College paid dearly. The institution closed for want of students, and in the ensuing decades it struggled to regain its former status.

As Reconstruction from the Civil War proceeded, the state’s General Assembly chose the first African-Americans to serve on the University’s Board of Trustees in 1868, and in 1873 the first black students enrolled. While politically controversial, this development was an extraordinary opportunity at a time when opportunities for higher education were rare. The University of South Carolina became the only Southern state university to admit and grant degrees to African-American students during Reconstruction. Following the end of Reconstruction in 1877, South Carolina’s conservative leaders closed the University. They reopened it in 1880 as an all-white agricultural college, and during the next 25 years the institution became enmeshed in the state’s political upheaval.

In 1906, the institution was re-chartered for the final time as the University of South Carolina. In 1917 it became South Carolina’s first state-supported college or university to earn regional accreditation, and the 1920s brought the introduction of new colleges and degree programs, including the doctorate.

The outbreak of World War II launched an era that transformed the University. Carolina hosted naval training programs during the war, and enrollment more than doubled in the postwar era as veterans took advantage of the G.I. Bill. In the 1950s, the University began recruiting national-caliber faculty members and extended its presence with the establishment of campuses across South Carolina.

In 1963 the University of South Carolina became the university of all the people of the state. As the result of a federal court order, Henrie D. Monteith, Robert Anderson, and James Solomon became the first African-American students to enroll at the University in the 20th century. Minority enrolment would continue to grow in their wake and was complemented by a substantial international student population in subsequent decades. At the same time, enrollment was 5,660 in 1960, but nearly quadrupled 20 years later. That increase in the student body was accompanied by the introduction of many new programs, including three that would prove to be momentous.

University 101 became a national model for cultivating freshman-year success; the accompanying National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition is based at the University. The international master’s in business administration program, also launched in the 1970s, has consistently ranked among the country’s top three such programs. The honors program blossomed into the South Carolina Honors College and is now hailed among the nation’s finest.

As the result of concerted efforts to expand its research capabilities, the University in 2006 was designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a research institution of “very high research activity,” the foundation’s highest classification. The University is South Carolina’s only institution to have earned that distinction.

University of South Carolina, Department of Political Science

Founded in 1937, the Department of Political Science is home to active scholars who span the major fields of the discipline, drawing on a range of methodological approaches, and whose research has appeared in the leading journals. One of the largest departments in the College of Arts & Sciences with more than 800 undergraduate students, the Department of Political Science offers two bachelor’s degrees – one in political science, the other in international studies – as well as the Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.), the Master of Arts in International Studies (M.A.I.S.), and the Ph.D. Programs include American Politics, International Politics, Comparative Politics, Public Administration, Political Theory, and Methodology.

The MPA Program is the leading program in the state and among the best in the Southeast. Begun in 1968, it was South Carolina’s first fully accredited autonomous profes-sional public administration program. The program has graduated hundreds of professional administrators and public leaders. The MAIS Program is designed for students interested in a professionally-oriented program geared toward service in governmental, nonprofit, or private sectors – both domestic and international. The doctoral program, designed to produce leading scholars in the discipline, has produced many distinguished academics and numerous public leaders, both nationally and abroad.

The department is home to a diverse and distinguished faculty. Faculty members play prominent roles in many professional organizations and on numerous Editorial Boards, serve as resources for the news media and community organizations, and participate in and direct major University initiatives. More at: <http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/poli/>.