The University of Pittsburgh (also known as Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the university's central administration and around 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The 132-acre Pittsburgh campus includes various historic buildings that are part of the Schenley Farms Historic District, most notably its 42-story Gothic revival centerpiece, the Cathedral of Learning. Pitt is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".[7] It is the second-largest non-government employer in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.
Pitt traces its roots to the Pittsburgh Academy founded by Hugh Henry Brackenridge in 1787. While the city was still on the edge of the American frontier at the time, Pittsburgh's rapid growth meant that a proper university was soon needed, and Pitt's charter was altered in 1819 to confer university status on it as the Western University of Pennsylvania. After surviving two devastating fires and several relocations, the university moved to its current location in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood, and by act of the state legislature was renamed the University of Pittsburgh in 1908. Pitt was a private institution until 1966, when it became part of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education.
The campus is situated adjacent to the flagship medical facilities of its closely affiliated University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and its flagship hospital, UPMC Presbyterian, as well as the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Schenley Park, and Carnegie Mellon University. The university also operates four undergraduate branch campuses in Western Pennsylvania, located in Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown, and Titusville.
Alumni, faculty, and staff include 8 Rhodes Scholars, 10 Marshall Scholars, and 297 Fulbright Scholars.[8] Past and present faculty and alumni at Pitt include six Nobel laureates, three Pulitzer Prize winners, three Academy Award winners, members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, seven United States senators, three United States cabinet officials, and five U.S. state governors.
In athletics, Pitt competes in Division I of the NCAA as the Pittsburgh Panthers, primarily as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Pitt athletes have received a total of five Olympic medals.
Founded by Hugh Henry Brackenridge as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787, the University of Pittsburgh is one of the few universities and colleges established in the 18th century in the United States. It is the oldest continuously chartered institution of learning in the U.S. west of the Allegheny Mountains.[9] The school began as a preparatory school, presumably in a log cabin, possibly as early as 1770[10] in Western Pennsylvania, then a frontier.[11] Brackenridge obtained a charter for the school from the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on February 28, 1787, just ten weeks before the opening of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.[12][13] A brick building was erected in 1790 on the south side of Third Street and Cherry Alley for the Pittsburgh Academy.[14][15] The small two-story brick building, with a gable facing the alley, contained three rooms: one below and two above.[16]