During the presidency of Dr. George Rupp, Columbia University consolidated its place among the world's top universities, making significant strides on every front: recruiting top senior and junior faculty, launching new education and research programs, increasing student applications and selectivity, expanding both the University's international dimensions and its links to New York City, enhancing student and faculty services, and revitalizing its historic McKim, Mead and White campus in Morningside Heights. For example:

Student Quality and Undergraduate Life -- Columbia College became one of the most selective schools in the country, ranking just behind Harvard and Princeton in the Ivy League. The SAT scores of both Columbia College applicants and matriculants have been increasing an average of 20 points per year. Applications for admission to the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science are at all-time highs, and the number of students applying to the School of General Studies has increased substantially. Nearly every graduate and professional school has had a dramatic increase in applications, and Columbia College has set records for applications for seven consecutive years.

The University has significantly upgraded student services. Major improvements have been implemented in dining services and residence hall life. Columbia created a new, more flexible, lower-cost student loan program in which banks treat students as preferred customers, and the University revitalized its job placement service.

Faculty Quality -- One hundred and fifty-nine new named professorships were established, and top senior and junior faculty were recruited. New faculty include such academic notables as Horst Stormer, the 1998 Nobel Laureate in physics, from Lucent Labs; Simon Schama, the renowned art historian from Harvard; and Jon Elster, the distinguished political theorist, from the University of Chicago.

Within the last few months, Gerald Fischbach, the distinguished neurobiologist from Harvard and the National Institutes of Health, became vice president for health and biomedical sciences; G. Michael Purdy, renowned geophysicist from the National Science Foundation, became director of Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; and Barry Osmond, world-class plant biologist and fellow of The Royal Academy of Science of London, was named president of Biosphere 2, Columbia's western campus in Oracle, Arizona.

Research -- Dr. Rupp has refocused Columbia's teaching and research to emphasize multidisciplinary efforts, drawing together scholars from different departments, schools and even outside institutions to develop new ways to organize the search for knowledge. These new centers include The Earth Institute, The Columbia Genome Center, The Center for Biomedical Engineering, The International Research Institute for Climate Prediction, and The Center for New Media Teaching and Learning.

Path-breaking research projects have included uncovering the DNA sequencing of Kaposi's sarcoma, devising a luminous marker to study DNA in living cells, finding that estrogen can reduce Alzheimer's risk in women, discovering that the Earth's core is spinning faster than the planet itself, uncovering steps in human evolution linked directly to changes in climate, and participating in the development of MPEG-2, a data compression technology used in new computers, digital television and other devices.

Construction and Renovation -- Columbia, beginning in the 1994-95 fiscal year, has implemented consecutive capital spending plans amounting to more than $1.5 billion over 10 years. Twenty-five buildings were either constructed or renovated. Projects include the new $28-million Audubon Research Building and a second $66-million research facility in Audubon Park; the new $85-million Alfred Lerner Hall Student Center; the $50-million undergraduate residence hall on Broadway; and the 10-year, $74-million renovation of Butler Library.

Fund-raising -- In December 2000 Columbia completed one of the largest fund-raising campaigns in the history of higher education, a $2.844 billion campaign (including $261.4 million for Presbyterian Hospital) that exceeded its goal by more than $500 million. In the last year of the campaign, the University raised $440 million in cash and pledges or an average of about $9 million a week.

The city and community -- Columbia helped develop the proposal for the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), provided ongoing technical support to the UMEZ and opened the first biomedical research and development park in New York City. The University also established a program that hires and helps train community residents, and Columbia offers "forgivable" loans to employees as an incentive for home-buying within the Empowerment Zone. The University also administers academic, professional and service programs that assist thousands of Upper Manhattan residents, school children and businesses. Recently, the University, under Dr. Rupp's guidance, increased its efforts to foster economic growth in the communities surrounding the University.

International programs -- A number of new academic programs were created with institutions abroad including the Law School's faculty exchange program with Tokyo University and its four-year double-degree program with the University of Paris; the first American undergraduate program with the Free University of Berlin; and the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation's programs with universities in Brazil, Indonesia and Belize.