City: Louisville, KY

Category: Education

Telephone: (502) 852-5555

Address: 2301 South Third St.

Description: The University of Louisville is a state-supported research university located south of the downtown area on the outskirts of the Old Louisville neighborhood. When founded in 1798, it was among the first universities chartered west of the Allegheny Mountains, and it was the very first city-owned public university in the United States. It was a municipally supported public institution for many decades prior to joining the state university system in 1970, and the university has three campuses today: the main 287-acre Belknap Campus, home to 7 of the university’s 11 colleges and schools; the Health Sciences Center, situated in downtown Louisville’s medical complex, which houses the university’s health-related programs and the University of Louisville Hospital; and the 243-acre Shelby Campus, located in eastern Jefferson County.With a student body of some 20,000, U of L enrolls students from practically every Kentucky county, in addition to all 50 states and 116 countries from around the world; almost 6,000 individuals comprise the faculty and staff. The University of Louisville offers bachelor’s degrees in 70 fields of study, master’s degrees in 78 fields, and doctoral degrees in 22 areas of concentration. U.S. News & World Report considers the school’s admission standards among the “more selective” of American colleges and universities.Among its accomplishments as a center for medical research, the University of Louisville participated in the development of a highly effective vaccine against cervical cancer in 2006 and was instrumental in the development of the Pap smear test. It also carried out the first fully self-contained artificial heart transplant surgery and the first successful hand transplantation ever. In addition to having one of the first blood banks in this country, U of L is also credited with the first civilian ambulance and the nation’s first accident services, now known as an emergency room.In addition to medicine, U of L has achieved a good reputation in other areas as well. Their program in English rhetoric and composition is ranked among the best in the nation, and Success magazine has named it one of the top 25 schools for entrepreneurs. The Speed Scientific School, the university’s school of engineering, enjoys an excellent reputation across the country and offers a number of degrees, including those in civil engineering, computer science, and engineering mathematics.Kentucky’s oldest, and the fifth-oldest law school in continuous operation in the United States, the U of L School of Law was established in 1848. It is the repository for the papers of former Supreme Court justices John Marshall Harlan and Louis Brandeis. In 1990 the law school became one of the first in the country to make pro bono, or donated, service a mandatory part of each law student’s legal education.