Georgia institute of technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or Tech, was founded on October 13, 1885 as the Georgia School of Technology. The creation of the educational institution was part of the plans of Georgia leadership to reconstruct and revitalize the state's economy following the Civil War. Eighty-four candidates took the first entrance examination on October 3, 1888 and the school formally opened on October 5, 1888. Over the next several decades the school evolved from trade school to a recognized research institute with increased focus on scientific and technological studies. The school's name was changed from the Georgia School of Technology to the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1948 to reflect this development. In order to provide procedural, behavioral, and academic guidance to its faculty, instructors, and students, the school began publishing its rules and regulations annually in booklet format.

The Georgia School of Technology was founded by an act of the state Congress in October 1885, as a branch of the state university in Georgia. Instruction began in October 1888, in buildings constructed on a site bounded by North Avenue on the south and Cherry Street on the west, an area then known as Peters Park. The campus gradually grew in acreage, number of buildings, and size of the student body and faculty throughout the twentieth century. Particularly strong growth occurred during the postwar years of the late 1940s and 1950s, which prompted a name change to the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1948. In 2008, Georgia Tech occupies 400 acres, has a student body of more than 18,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the Colleges of Architecture, Engineering, Sciences, Computing, Management, and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Georgia Tech originally operated on a semester system, but changed in 1946 to quarters. Following a recommendation of the Board of Regents, Georgia Tech reverted to semesters in 1999.

The Institutional Self-Study Steering Committee at Georgia Tech coordinated the campus-wide self-study that was conducted within individual departments and schools.

After twenty-five years of planning and fundraising, ground was broken for a Georgia Tech student center in 1967. The Fred B. Wenn Student Center opened in 1970.

The fourth institution nationwide to adopt the cooperative program, Georgia Tech has provided cooperative education for its students since 1912. In the early days of the program, engineering students could elect to enroll in the five-year program, in which they would alternate periods of school and work in industries related to their course of study. At first, students in Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering could participate in the program; Textile Engineering was added by 1920, Civil and Chemical Engineering were added by 1928, Aerospace Engineering was added in 1942, and shortly after World War II Industrial Engineering became part of the program. In the 1960s, Chemistry, Engineering Mechanics, Physics, and Industrial Management became additional disciplines in the cooperative program. Ceramic Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Computer Science, Management, and Mathematics were all added by the early 1980s. By the mid-1980s, over 2,000 students were enrolled in the program; by the early 1990s, a total of 23 disciplines offered cooperative program options. Cooperative programs have been available for graduate students since 1983.

When Georgia Tech opened in the fall of 1888, the shops occupied a two-story building with a tower that resembled the academic building. The shops were run for the first several years as contract job shops that were largely independent from the academic departments. A fire destroyed the shop building in 1892, and the commercial shop ended a few years later, in 1896, with a decision by the Board of Trustees to change Tech to a purely educational institution.

The most famous of the pieces of music written in honor of Georgia Tech is the "Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech" by Frank Roman. The lyrics to this song first appeared in the 1908 Blueprint, the Georgia Tech yearbook. Roman is also credited with two other famous Tech songs dating from the 1920s, the "Alma Mater" (published in 1923) and "Up with the White and Gold" (published in 1929). Iver Granath composed another Tech song titled "Yellow Jacket Gal" while he was a student. Another song of a similar title by another Tech graduate, Nicholas Chotas (1932, Architecture), was also written in about 1929.

Georgia Tech offered its first doctor of philosophy degree in 1950.

Each year, Georgia Tech's faculty, staff and administrators send Christmas cards to members of the local community and campus.

The first major celebration of an anniversary at Georgia Tech was the twenty-fifth anniversary in 1913. The fiftieth anniversary celebrations took place on October 7 and 8, 1938 with a series of commemoration exercises. The seventy-fifth anniversary celebration, in 1963, included a lecture series and other celebrations. Georgia Tech celebrated its centennial in 1985, the anniversary of the legislation in the Georgia congress that marked the founding of the school. Tech celebrated its centennial with a capital campaign, an exhibition entitled "China: 7,000 Years of Discovery," publications (including Images and Memories and Engineering the New South), and several other events.

Georgia Tech opened its doors in 1888 with 129 students. By 1905, the enrollment had increased to 500, due to the recruiting efforts of the administration, which created numerous advertisements and brochures to boost the student population.

Sponsored by the Greater Atlanta Georgia Tech Club, the Georgia Tech Athletic Hall of Fame was founded in 1956 to honor former students' outstanding performance in sports at Tech. George C. Griffin, former Dean of Students, served as Chairman of the Hall of Fame from the mid 1960s until the early 1980s.