The University of Minnesota Duluth
A great University on a Great Lake. For more than 100 years, the modest teachers college that has grown and evolved into the University of Minnesota Duluth has been offering students of all ages, and all interests, a window into the opportunities that come with knowledge.
The University of Minnesota system (which today has campuses in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Morris and Crookston, as well as Duluth) was started by an act of the Territorial Legislature in 1851, seven years before Minnesota achieved statehood. It took another 44 years before public higher education came to the north woods with the opening of the Duluth Normal School in 1895. Renamed Duluth State Teacher's College in 1921, the school became a coordinate campus of the University of Minnesota 28 years later.
The modern-day UMD has a campus community of close to 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students pursuing bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees in 75 majors and close to 20 graduate programs. A unique combination of quality and value, UMD consistently ranks among the top midwestern, regional universities in U.S. News & World Report's "America's best Colleges" issue and was also recently the recipient of a "best education buy" rating from Money magazine.
Complimented by a full- and part-time staff, UMD's students come to Duluth and call it their home during their college careers and beyond. Unlike the sprawling commuter schools of the Midwest's metropolitan area's, where parking spaces out-number library periodicals, UMD is a community where almost half of the undergraduate population resides in the many on-campus housing options available, or in the historic neighborhoods surrounding the campus.
Comprised of more than 50 buildings and set on 250 acres of residential land with views of Lake Superior, the UMD campus is a city unto itself, with housing, dining facilities, a theater, a planetarium, research laboratories, athletic facilities, parks, wilderness areas, radio and television studios, a newspaper, the latest computer technology, medical facilities, shopping, entertainment, and a new library which merges the print and digital worlds, providing students with the region's most advanced gateway to information. Dedicated in August 2000, the UMD library is a $25 million project that provides the campus with nearly 168,000 square feet of new space and room for more than 200 laptop and desktop computers.
Among the recently-completed building endeavors on campus is the $13.1 million Sports and Health Center expansion project, which includes an 8,5000-square foot state-of-the-are weight/strength training area for intercollegiate athletics.
In a community like Duluth-Superior, with its metro population of nearly 180,000 and its amazingly diverse economy, opportunities for internships, employment and on-the-job education abound, giving countless UMD graduates a much-desired chance to make their permanent home and start their careers in the area.