About Emory
Emory University's life is rooted in the founding of Emory College at Oxford, Georgia, by the Georgia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (the forerunner of the United Methodist Church) in 1836. Emory College originated from a concern for higher education in a Christian setting; it was named after a young Methodist bishop named John Emory (1789-1835), who had died in a carriage accident shortly before the college was founded. The college first began admitting male students in 1838; women started attending classes at Emory in 1919, with full admission status granted in 1953. Emory became a racially integrated school beginning in 1962. Currently about 6,600 undergraduate and 5,700 graduate students are enrolled in the various programs offered by the university.
Emory College became Emory University through a charter granted by the Superior Court of DeKalb County on January 25, 1915. Although classes on the Atlanta campus were begun in the schools of law and theology as early as 1916, the college did not move to Atlanta until 1919. The intent of the founders is clearly stated in the permanent bylaws of the University: "Emory University was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for the promotion of the broadest intellectual culture.... It is designed to be a profoundly religious institution without being narrowly sectarian. It proposes to encourage freedom of thought as liberal as the limitation of truth." The school's motto (as shown on the seal) is Cor prudentis possidebit scientiam which means "The heart of a prudent person makes knowledge possible."
The university now includes nine schools, most tracing their origins to years before the founding of the university itself. They are Emory and Oxford Colleges (1836), the School of Medicine (1854), the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing (1905), the Candler School of Theology (1914), the School of Law (1916), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Goizueta Business School (1919), and the Rollins School of Public Health (1990). For more than a decade, Emory University has been named as one of the nation's top 25 national universities by U.S. News and World Report. In 2007, Emory was ranked 18th.
In addition, the university enjoys a cooperative relationship with the Carter Center of Emory University, created by President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter in 1986, that studies and enacts public policy strategies in national and international arenas. Other organizations with which the university is affiliated include the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Cancer Society, Children's Health Care of Atlanta, and Wesley Woods Geriatric Center at Emory University.
You will see the name "Woodruff" on several buildings around the Emory campus. This is to honor the family of Robert W. Woodruff who was the chief executive officer of the Coca-Cola Company and who, in 1979 with his brother George, donated an endowment of $105 million to Emory. At that time, it was the largest gift to a single educational institution in the history of American philanthropy.