Harvey Mudd College

Harvey Mudd College is a highly selective, private college of science, engineering, and mathematics, located in Claremont, California. It is one of the institutions of the Claremont Colleges. The school is informally known as Harvey Mudd as well as just Mudd. Students at Mudd are known as Mudders.

The college is named after Harvey Seeley Mudd, one of the initial investors in the Cyprus Mines Corporation. Although involved in the planning of the new institution, Mudd died before it opened. Harvey Mudd College was funded by Mudd's friends and family, and named in his honor.

Harvey Mudd College is contiguous to the other Claremont Colleges, and students at these colleges may take classes at any of them, though classes in the student's major are normally taken at their own college.

Academics

Harvey Mudd College's mission is to educate scientists, engineers, and mathematicians well-versed in the social sciences and humanities so that they better understand the impact of their work on society. The college offers four-year degrees in chemistry, mathematics, physics, computer science, biology, and engineering, as well as interdisciplinary degrees in mathematical biology, and a joint major in either computer science and mathematics, or biology and chemistry. Students may also elect to complete an Independent Program of Study (IPS) made up of courses of their own choosing. Usually between two and five students graduate with an IPS degree each year. Finally, students may choose an off-campus major offered by any of the other Claremont Colleges, provided they also complete a minor in one of the technical fields that Mudd offers majors.

Because of its mission statement, Harvey Mudd places an unusually strong emphasis on general science education outside one's major, with a full one-third of courses in this area, known as the "common core." Students are required to take another one-third of their courses in the humanities, keeping with the school's tradition of science with a conscience. The final one-third is composed of courses in the student's major. The integration of research and education is an important component of the educational experience at Harvey Mudd; by the time they graduate, every student has had some kind of research experience, in the form of a senior thesis or a Clinic Program experience. The undergraduate focus of HMC means that, unlike many other science and engineering institutions, undergraduates at HMC get unique access to research positions over the summer and during the school year.

A unique aspect of an HMC education is the Clinic Program, in which teams of students work for a year on a project supplied by a company, make regular reports to the company, and, at the end of the year, deliver a product. There are Clinic projects in engineering, computer science, mathematics, physics, and other majors. This kind of real-world experience gives students a first-hand look at a particular industry, and gives the company an inexpensive team of four students, many of whom they recruit after graduation.

Reputation

The college is one of the most selective in the nation; the median entering SAT score is about 770 (out of 800) in mathematics, and 1470 (out of 1600) overall. A third of the student body are National Merit Scholars, and about 40 percent of graduates go on to earn a Ph.D.—the highest rate of any college or university in the nation.

As of 2006, it is ranked eighteenth among liberal arts colleges in the United States.

Student life

Harvey Mudd College dormitories

The official names for the dormitories are (listed in order of construction):

Mildred E. Mudd Hall ("East")
West Hall ("West")
North Hall ("North")
Marks Residence Hall ("South")
J. L. Atwood Residence Hall ("Atwood")
Case Residence Hall ("Case")
Ronald and Maxine Linde Residence Hall ("Linde")
Frederick and Susan Sontag Residence Hall ("Sontag")

Atwood and Case were occasionally referred to as New Dorm and New Dorm II up until the addition of Linde and Sontag; Mildred E. Mudd Hall and Marks Hall are almost invariably referred to as East and South.

When Case was being built some students decided as a prank to move all of the survey stakes exactly six inches to the north. They did such a precise job that the construction crew didn't notice until after they had laid the foundation, but California earthquake law forced them to reinspect the new location at some significant expense. Furthermore, the plumbing has never worked quite right. Case is also very occasionally known as Seventh dorm (despite being the sixth dorm built) or as the Pink Dorm due to the fact that the cinder blocks used in its construction are rather shrimp-colored.

It is notable that South Dorm is in the northwest corner of the quad. "East" was the first dorm, but it wasn't until West was built to the west of it that it was actually referred to as East. Then North was built, north of East. When the fourth dorm (Marks) was built, there was one corner of the quad available (the northwest) and one directional name (South) left. It got both, and to this day South is more 'north' on the compass than North dorm is.

The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth dorms are Atwood, Case, Linde, and Sontag, respectively. They were collectively referred to as "the Colonies" by some students, a reference to the fact that they are newer and are at the far end of the campus, a full two blocks away from the academic buildings; these dorms are now more commonly referred to as "the Outer Dorms." The college purchased an apartment building adjacent to the newer dorms to house additional students, but it was demolished to make room for the newest dorm, Sontag.

Due to the fact that students from all four classes can live in each of the dormitories, several of the dorms have accumulated long-standing traditions and even 'personalities.' Two examples of these traditions are the parties Long Tall Glasses (a formal affair thrown by North) and TQ Nite (a tequila-centered party thrown by West). However, the personalities of the dorms morph over time as Mudd alumni are apt to find out upon visiting their alma mater years after they've graduated.

Athletics

Athletics teams from Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, and Scripps College compete as one team. Male athletic teams are called the Stags, and women's teams are called the Athenas. The teams participate in the NCAA's Division III and in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

The HMC honor code

HMC students developed, live by and self-enforce an Honor Code. The Honor Code states:

The Honor Code is so well followed that the college entrusts the students to 24-hour per day access to all buildings including labs and timed take-home closed-book exams. (See external links below for more information.)

Architecture

The original buildings of campus were designed by Edward Durell Stone. Most are covered with thousands of square concrete features, called "warts" by the students, which would be perfectly suited to buildering except that, while some are set into the wall, others are simply glued on. In addition, these warts have the unusual usefulness of being great 'shelves' for unicycles and skateboards. One can walk towards Galileo Hall and see the warts (especially those near the entrances of buildings) being used as racks for unicycles and skateboards. Interestingly enough, the unofficial mascot of Harvey Mudd (featured on many college handbooks and other publications) is one of these concrete blocks with a face, arms, and legs, named "Wally the Wart."

Most of the computer labs and many classrooms are located in the basements (called the Libra Complex) of the concrete-block buildings. All of the buildings that make up the Libra Complex are interconnected via a series of underground tunnels, enabling convenient inter-building access (such as during times of rainy weather or by people averse to sunlight).

Transportation on campus

In the early 1970s the first unicycles appeared on campus. By 1972 there were four of them. The notion caught on, and for a time there were dozens on campus. For many students it was a "rite of passage" to learn to ride. The unicycling club, known as Gonzo Unicycle Madness, was formed and to this day organizes an annual eight mile plus ride (each way) known as "The Foster's Run," to "The Donut Man" donut shop in Glendora (originally known as "Foster's Donuts" hence the name of the event) for strawberry donuts. Upon return to the campus, the ritual of the "shakedown" takes place (dismounting and then repeatedly jumping up and down in the dormitory courtyard); a necessary procedure after a unicycle ride of nearly twenty miles, especially for those riders of the masculine gender. At irregular intervals club members also meet to play unicycle hockey. In the early 1990s though the ridership of unicycles waned at the college. Currently there is a very small number of Mudders who continue to ride unicycles. However, despite this drop in popularity, unicycling continues to be an integral part of the Mudd mythos.

Other than walking, the leading form of transportation among Mudders is skateboarding. Because the paths of Mudd are smooth and the route to the academic building on one side of campus from the dorms is so straightforward, skateboarding to class is very popular—and Mudders as a whole skate more than the students of any of the nearby Claremont Colleges.

Pranks

Pranks at Harvey Mudd are known for being clever, amusing, technically precise, and reversible (by policy, pranksters must leave contact information, and reverse the prank within 24 hours if told to do so).

One student returned from a long weekend away to discover his room filled from floor to ceiling with inflated plastic garbage bags. The pranksters had used high-powered fans to inflate them.
In 1993, the new Dean of Faculty discovered that some Mudders had moved everything in his office to the other side of campus, inside the lounge of the newly opened Linde Dorm. Everything in his office was perfectly organized and functional—even his telephone and Internet connection worked. The Dean and his staff spent the day working in Linde, and students moved his office back that night. (This prank was also featured in the film Toy Soldiers.)
Students took sod left over from the construction of Linde Dorm and (after laying down plastic sheeting) placed it inside the office of the Dean of Students.
Another prank involved removing everything from a student's room, lining the walls with plastic, filling it two feet deep with water, and adding about 200 goldfish.
One Harvey Mudd student returned from a trip to find that his bed had been converted into a steamboat, with steam stacks filled with dry ice for added effect.
After expressing his hatred for spikey balls -- the tiny, spikey objects that caused him to fall off of his skateboard -- a Harvey Mudd student found his room filled with the little spikey things. They were in his drawers, in his pants' pockets, in his guitar case, and were even rigged to fall on his head when he opened the door.
While a West Dorm student was out of town, students unbolted his room's outer wall from the cinder blocks and parked his car inside the room, then reattached the wall. Then they had Campus Security give him a parking ticket.

Rivalry with Caltech

There is a long-standing rivalry between Harvey Mudd and the nearby Caltech; this rivalry is basically unacknowledged by Caltech. For example, in one prank, students from Mudd stole a memorial cannon from Fleming House at Caltech (originally from the National Guard) by dressing as maintenance people and carting it off on a flatbed truck for "cleaning." Harvey Mudd eventually returned the cannon after the Caltech President threatened to take legal action. (In 2006, MIT replicated the prank and moved the same cannon to their campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

Another Mudd prank involved slight modifications to a freeway sign. By placing parentheses around "Pasadena City College", an instiution much less prestigious than Caltech, Mudd students changed the sign to read:

California Institute of Technology

(Pasadena City College)

Next Exit

Notable alumni

Gael Squibb, 1961, former director of NASA/JPL's Telecommunications and Mission Operations Directorate, and veteran leader of numerous unmanned NASA missions.
Michael G. Wilson, 1963, producer of the James Bond series of films.
Rick Sontag, 1964, founder and former owner of Unison Industries, a leading manufacturer of airplane parts.
Don Chamberlin, 1966, co-inventor of SQL (database query language) and IBM representative to the working group developing the XML query language.
Robert Kelley, 1967, Nuclear physicist and one of 2,200 members of the Secretariat of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2005.
Donald Murphy, 1968, head of the Applied Materials Research Department at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his research on a variety of electronic materials.
Walt Foley, 1969, founder of Accel Technologies, Inc.
Richard Jones, 1972, former US Ambassador to Lebanon, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, and Chief Policy Officer and Deputy Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.
George "Pinky" Nelson, 1972, astronaut, flew on three Space Shuttle program missions, and was the first American to walk in space without a tether to a spacecraft.
Joseph Costello, 1974, chairman and CEO of think3, and former president and CEO of Cadence Design Systems.
Bruce Nelson, 1974, inventor of the remote procedure call for computer communications.
Eric B. Kim, 1976, Chief Marketing Officer of Intel, former CMO of Samsung Electronics.
Susan Lewallen, 1976, a member of the British Columbia Centre for Epidemiologic and International Ophthalmology and ophthalmologist for Third-World countries.
Ned Freed, 1982, co-author of the MIME email standard (RFCs 2045-2049).
Jonathan Gay, 1989, creator of Flash software.
Stan Love, 1989, astronaut, currently a "capcom" or communications officer with the International Space Station.
Scott Stokdyk, 1991, winner of the 2005 Academy Award for visual effects for Spider-Man 2, and nominee for Hollow Man and Spider-Man.
Michael Elkins, 1993, computer scientist, creator of the Mutt e-mail client.
Sage Weil, 2000, inventor of the webring concept.
Karl Mahlburg, 2001, a mathematician who proved Freeman Dyson's "crank conjecture" about certain congruences involving partition functions.

Trivia

In 1997, Harvey Mudd College became the sole American undergraduate-only institution ever to win 1st place in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. No American school has won the world competition since then.

References

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Harvey Mudd College