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Northern Michigan University is an American four year accredited institution of postsecondary learning located in Marquette, Michigan.
Northern was founded in 1899 as a place to educate future teachers. It was originally called the Northern State Normal School. In the following years it changed names several times as the institution grew, and it finally became Northern Michigan University in 1963.
The NMU campus is located on the south shore of Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Northern provides over 180 degree undergraduate and graduate degree programs grounded in the liberal arts. The most popular undergraduate degree programs at Northern are elementary and secodary education, nursing and art & design.
NMU was the first Michigan public university to implement a campus-wide laptop program in fall 2000 With Northern's Teaching, Learning, and Communication Initiative, each full-time student is equipped with a notebook computer as a part of tuition and fees. In 2006, Intel Corporation named NMU as one of the top 20 "Most Unwired" campuses in the US, with the capacity to simultaneously support over 800 students in one classroom building alone.
Campus structures include over 50 buildings including; the DeVos Art Museum; the Glenn T. Seaborg Center for Teaching and Learning Science and Mathematics; The Berry Events Center; two on-campus radio stations; a public TV station; and the Superior Dome, an 8,000 seat stadium and the largest wooden dome in the world.
Enrollment as of 2005 was 9,422, an all-time high. Northern's main recruitment base is the Upper Peninsula; approximately 60 percent of students were residents of the Upper Peninsula before attending NMU. Eighty percent of NMU's faculty hold doctorates or the highest degrees in their fields. The student-faculty ratio is 20:1. The average class size is 23, the average lab size is 16, and the average seminar size is 10. Ninety-three percent of entry-level courses are taught by career faculty.
Athletics
NMU is home to the only United States Olympic Education Center (USOEC) where athletes can train for the Olympics and attend college at the same program. The school's sports teams are called the Wildcats. They compete in the NCAA's Division II Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in all sports except hockey. The hockey program competes in Division I as a member of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association. One of the school’s rivalries involves Michigan Tech, a school that is also located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Reference
Hilton, Miriam. Northern Michigan University: The First 75 Years. Marquette, Michigan: Northern Michigan University Press, 1975. and Northern's Communications & Marketing director, Cindy Paavola, 2006.
Distinguished Alumni
- Howard Schultz, CEO & Chairman of Starbucks.
- Steve Mariucci, Former Head Coach of Detroit Lions, San Francisco 49ers, and University of California Golden Bears
- Tom Izzo, Head Basketball Coach, Michigan State University
- Lloyd Carr, Head Football Coach, University of Michigan
- Jerry Glanville, Former Head Coach of the Houston Oilers and Atlanta Falcons; current defensive coordinator, University of Hawaii
Recent Alumni
- Susan Owen, Grand Teton National Park, US Fish and Wildlife National Elk Refuge
- Chris Jensen, Correspondence Coordinator, Charter Communications
- Brian Stein, Salesman and Club owner in Indiana
External links
Northern Michigan University | Central Collegiate Hockey Association | Educational institutions established in 1899 | Upper Peninsula of Michigan
"Northern Michigan University"