Motto | Lux (Latin) |
---|---|
Motto in English
|
"Light" |
Type | Public |
Established | 1876 |
Endowment | $107.3 M |
President | Mark Nook |
Academic staff
|
800 |
Undergraduates | 11,981 |
Postgraduates | 1,933 |
Location | Cedar Falls, Iowa, U.S. |
Campus | Urban, 900 acres (3.6 km2) |
Colors | Purple and Gold |
Athletics | NCAA Division I – MVC |
Sports | 15 varsity teams |
Nickname | Panthers |
Mascot | TC Panther (the man panther) & TK Panther (the woman panther) |
Website | www |
The University of Northern Iowa (UNI) is a university located in Cedar Falls, Iowa, United States. UNI offers more than 90 majors across the colleges of Business Administration, Education, Humanities, Arts, and Sciences, and Social and Behavioral sciences, and graduate college.
UNI has consistently been named one of the "Best in the Midwest" in the Princeton Review Best 351 College Rankings guide, and has ranked second in the category "public regional universities (Midwest)" by U.S. News & World Report for twelve consecutive years. UNI's accounting program has consistently ranked in the top 10 universities in the nation for the pass rate of first-time candidates on the CPA Exam.
Class sizes at UNI average around 32 students; they are mostly taught by faculty, not teaching assistants. Tenured and tenure-track faculty teach 75 percent of UNI's classes. The Fall 2013 enrollment is 12,159. Ninety-two percent of its students are from the State of Iowa, in the United States.
For students interested in studying abroad, UNI is ranked fourth in the nation for the total number of students who study abroad among master's degree institutions, according to Open Doors 2002, the annual report on international education published by the Institute of International Education.
The University of Northern Iowa was founded as a result of two influential forces of the nineteenth century. First, Iowa wanted to care for orphans of its Civil War veterans, and secondly, Iowa needed a public teacher training institution. In 1876, when Iowa no longer needed an orphan home, legislators Edward G. Miller and H. C. Hemenway started the Iowa State Normal School.
The school's first building opened in 1869 and was known as Central Hall. The building contained classrooms, common areas, and a living facility for most of the students. It was also a home to the college's first principal, James Cleland Gilchrist. The building was the heart and soul of the school, allowing students to study courses of two-year, three-year, and four-year degrees. In 1965, a fire destroyed Central Hall, and school faculty and Cedar Falls citizens donated over $5,000 to start building Gilchrist Hall.