San Jose State University

From Wikinfo

San Jos� State University, also known as San Jose State and SJSU, is the first university in what became the California State University system.

Campus

The main 154 acre (62 hectare) campus of San Jos� St. is a rectangle in downtown San Jose, California, bordered by San Fernando Street (north), Fourth Street (west), San Salvador Street (south), and Tenth Street (east). The athletic fields, additional student housing and parking are located on the South Campus on Seventh Street, about 1.5 miles south of the main campus.

San Jose State maintains a facility at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport as part of the Aviation Department, and manages the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in Moss Landing, California, on the Monterey Bay, a cooperative research facility of seven CSU campuses.

Organization

The university has eight colleges:

Applied Sciences & Arts
Business
Education
Engineering
Humanities & the Arts
Science
Social Sciences
Social Work

as well as schools of Journalism, Library & Information Science and Music & Dance.

Students

The campus has approximately 30,000 students. It is one of the most ethnically diverse in the state, with large Asian (particularly Filipino and Vietnamese) and Latino enrollments.

The engineering, science and business schools claim to have more graduates in Silicon Valley than any other school in the U.S.

Faculty and research

San Jose State has about 1,600 faculty members, 87 percent of which hold doctorate degrees.

Research collections located at SJSU include the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies and the Martha H. Cox Center for Steinbeck Research.

SJSU research partnerships include the SJSU Metropolitan Technology Center at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, and the Cisco Networking Laboratory.

Noted faculty members

Mark Fruin - expert on Japanese business
Larry Gerston - political commentator, expert on California politics and co-author of Recall: California's Political Earthquake
Rudy Rucker - computer science professor and science fiction author
Randall Stross - author of eBoys, Microsoft Secrets and Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing
Yosh Uchida - head coach, SJSU Judo Team

History

San Jose State was founded in 1857 as Minns' Evening Normal School, in San Francisco, California, and is the oldest public institution of higher learning on the west coast. In 1862, the California legislature took possession of the school, renaming it the California State Normal School. The school moved to San Jose in 1871, becoming San Jose Normal School, and was given Washington Square Park at Fourth and San Carlos Streets to locate their campus, where it remains.

In 1921, the legislature changed the school's name to San Jose Teachers Training College'. In 1935, the name was changed again, this time to San Jose State College. In 1961, SJSC joined the California State College System (later the California State University (CSU) system). In 1972 SJSC was granted university status, and the name was changed to CSU, San Jose. In 1974 the name was changed again, this time to San Jose State University.

The English Department has sponsored the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest since 1982.

In 1999, San Jose St. and the City of San Jose agreed to combine their main libraries to form a joint City/University library located on campus, the first known such library in the world. The new Martin Luther King, Jr. Library opened in 2003.

Sports

The university has participated in athletics since it fielded a baseball team in 1890. SJSU sports teams are known as the Spartans, and compete in the Western Athletic Conference in NCAA Division I (I-A for football).

On December 7, 1941, the football team traveled to the island of Oahu to play the University of Hawaii. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the game was cancelled and the team volunteered for duty with the Honolulu Police instead of returning home.

SJSU alumni have won 18 Olympic medals through the years, dating back to the first gold medal won by Willie Steel in track and field in the 1948 Olympics. Alumni have won medals in track and field, swimming, judo and boxing. The school has achieved an international reputation in judo, having (as of 2003) won 38 national championships in the sport.