PENNSYLVANIA, UNIVERSITY OF, an American institution
of higher learning, in Philadelphia, occupying about 60 acres, near the west bank of the Schuylkill river, north-east of the Philadelphia Hospital, east of 39th Street, south-east of Woodland Avenue, and south of Chestnut Street. In this irregular area are all the buildings except the Flower Astronomical Observatory (1896), which is 2 m. beyond the city limits on the West Chester Pike. The northernmost
of these buildings is the law school, between Chestnut
and Sansom Streets, on 34th Street. In a great triangular
block bounded by Woodland Avenue, Spruce Street, and 34th
Street are: the university library, which had in 1909 about
275,000 bound volumes and 50,000 pamphlets, including the
Biddle Memorial law library (1886) of 40,000 volumes, the
Colwell and Henry C. Carey collections in finance and economics, the Francis C. Macauley library of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese authors, with an excellent Dante collection, the classical library of Ernst von Leutsch of Göttingen, the philological library of F. A. Pott of Halle, the Germanic library of R. Bechstein of Rostock, the Semitic library of C. P. Caspari of Copenhagen, the (Hebrew and Rabbinical) Marcus Jastrow Memorial library, the ethnological library of D. G. Brinton, and several special medical collections; College Hall, with the university offices; Howard Houston Hall (1896) the students' club; Logan Hall; the Robert Hare chemical laboratory; and (across 36th Street) the Wistar institute of anatomy and biology. Immediately east of this triangular block are: Bennett House; the Randal Morgan laboratory of physics; the engineering building (1906); the laboratory of hygiene (1892); dental hall; and the John Harrison laboratory of chemistry. Farther east are the gymnasium, training quarters and Franklin (athletic) field, with brick grand-stands. South of Spruce Street are: the free museum of science and art (1899), the north-western part of a projected group, with particularly valuable American, Egyptian, Semitic and Cretan collections, the last two being the results in part of university excavations at Nippur (1888-1902) and at Gournia (1901-1904); between 34th and 36th Streets the large and well-equipped university hospital (1874); large dormitories, consisting in 1909, of 29 distinct but connected houses; medical laboratories; a biological hall and vivarium; and across Woodland Avenue, a veterinary hall and hospital.
The university contains various departments, including the
college (giving degrees in arts, science, biology, music, architecture, &c.), the graduate school (1882), a department of law (founded in 1790 and re-established in 1850) and a department of medicine (first professor, 1756; first degrees granted, 1768), the oldest and probably the most famous medical school in America. Graduation from the school of arts in the college is dependent on the successful completion of 60 units of work (the unit is one hour's work a week for a year in lectures or recitations or two hours' work a week for a year in laboratory courses); this may be done in three, four or five years; of the 60 counts: 22 must be required in studies (chemistry, 2 units; English, 6; foreign languages, 6; history, logic and ethics, mathematics, and physics, 2 each); 18 must be equally distributed in two or three “groups” the 19 groups include astronomy, botany, chemistry, economics, English, fine arts, French, geology, German, Greek, history, Latin, mathematics, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, sociology and zoology; and in the remaining 20 units the student's election is practically free. Special work in the senior year of the college counts 8 units for the first year's work in the department of medicine. College scholarships are largely local, two being in the gift of the governor of the state, fifty being for graduates of the public schools of the city of Philadelphia, and five being for graduates of Pennsylvania public schools outside Philadelphia; in 1909 there were twenty-eight scholarships in the college not local. In the graduate school there are five fellowships for research, each with an annual stipend of $800, twenty-one fellowships valued at $500 each, for men only, and five fellowships for women, besides special fellowships and 39 scholarships.