Wright State University

History

Wright State University began in 1964 as a branch campus of Miami University and Ohio State University, occupying only a single building. That building, Allyn Hall, was named for one of the university's founders and former president of National Cash Register Stanley Allyn. Much of the land the campus is situated on was donated by the United States Air Force from excess acreage of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Groundwork on forming the institution began in 1961 during a time when the region lacked a public university for higher education. Dayton was emerging economically as a center for innovative technologies which demanded an increasingly educated work force. A community-wide fundraising effort was conducted in 1962 to establish the university, and the campaign raised the $3 million needed in seed money.

The Ohio General Assembly passed legislation in 1965 that transformed the Dayton campus into the Wright State Campus with its own Advisory Committee on November 5, 1965. It was anticipated the campus would achieve independent status by 1967 with its rapidly increasing enrollment of full-time students, projected to reach 5,000 within two years. On October 1, 1967, the campus officially became Wright State University following a decision by the Ohio Board of Regents. The name honors the Wright brothers, well-known Dayton residents who are credited with inventing the world's first successful airplane.

Curtis L. McCray is the current interim president, holding the position following David R. Hopkins' early retirement on March 17, 2017. Cheryl B. Schrader has been named the next university president, beginning July 1, 2017. Schrader will be Wright State's seventh president, and first female president. Previous university presidents: Brage Golding (1966–1973), Robert J. Kegerreis (1973–1985), Paige E. Mulhollan (1985–1994), Harley E. Flack (1994–1998), Kim Goldenberg (1998–2006), and David R. Hopkins (2007–2017).

In 2017, Wright State University celebrates its 50th anniversary. Coinciding with the historic event, Wright State created a 50th anniversary website to highlight important milestones and events throughout the university's history.

Colleges and schools

Wright State is divided into eight colleges and three schools. The colleges are:

The schools, which award graduate and professional degrees, are:

Accreditation

The university is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools at the doctoral degree-granting level.

School of Medicine

The Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine uses the main campus for pre-clinical training and seven area hospitals for clinical and residency training. In 2005, the school changed its name to the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in recognition of the Oscar Boonshoft family, which gave Wright State's largest philanthropic gift to the medical school.

Admission to Wright State University's School of Medicine is competitive among the many students who apply; in 2012, 3,666 students applied for admission to the school, and 103 were accepted. The average undergraduate GPA is 3.62; average MCAT score 29.6. View more School of Medicine facts.

The Boonshoft School of Medicine is accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). The school's charter class began studies in 1976 and graduated in 1980. Since then, more than 2,821 M.D.'s have graduated from the School of Medicine. Wright State alumni are practicing in every state in the nation.

In 2009, the school became the first medical school in the United States to debut its own medical student produced radio program, dubbed Radio Rounds.

Student & Greek life

Wright State University currently hosts five North-American Interfraternity Conference fraternities, one Local Fraternity, five National Panhellenic Conference sororities, and eight of the nine members of National Pan-Hellenic Council fraternities and sororities.

IFC fraternities

1. Delta Tau Delta
2. Phi Kappa Tau
3. Phi Sigma Phi
4. Sigma Phi Delta
5. Sigma Phi Epsilon
6. Alpha Sigma Phi
7. Phi Mu Alpha

Local fraternities

1. Beta Phi Omega

NPC sororities

1. Delta Zeta
2. Alpha Xi Delta
3. Kappa Delta
4. Theta Phi Alpha
5. Zeta Tau Alpha
6. Phi Sigma Rho
7. Alpha Omicron Pi

Undergraduate programs

Wright State offers 91 baccalaureate degrees in the following colleges: the Raj Soin College of Business, the College of Education and Human Services, the College of Engineering and Computer Sciences, the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Nursing and Health, and the College of Science and Mathematics. The Lake Campus also offers a limited number of complete bachelor's and master's degrees, as well as 13 associate degrees.

Graduate programs

Wright State offers 139 graduate, doctoral, and professional programs, certificates, licensures, and endorsements through the Wright State University Graduate School, the Boonshoft School of Medicine, and the School of Professional Psychology. The Lake Campus also offers a limited number of graduate programs.

ROTC

Wright State University offers Air Force ROTC and Army ROTC programs on campus, known as Detachment 643 and the Raider Battalion, respectively. The Air Force ROTC program contains the cross town schools of the University of Dayton, Cedarville University, and Sinclair Community College and is the largest AFROTC detachment in the Northeast Region.

Athletics

The Wright State Raiders are the athletics teams of Wright State University. The school participates in fifteen sports at the Division I level of the NCAA, and are members of the Horizon League. The school's mascot is a wolf.

Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-Enabled Computing (Kno.e.sis)

Kno.e.sis center was founded in 2007. In 2009, the Ohio Higher Ed (Department of Higher Education) established more than 50 Centers of Excellence representing key industrial areas with potential future growth. Kno.e.sis at the Wright State University was one of the selections in the area of Bio-Health Innovations. Research at the center focuses on multidisciplinary areas such as Web 3.0 (Semantic Web, Semantic Sensor Web), Network Science, Social Data Analysis, Machine Learning, Data Mining, Bioinformatics, Natural Language Processing, Visualization, Cloud Computing, High Performance Computing.

In recent years, Kno.e.sis has had near 80–100 researchers including 15 faculty and over 60 funded graduate (primarily PhD) students. Kno.e.sis researchers overtime have contributions in the areas related to Computer Science with focus on topics in World Wide Web, including Semantic web, Social Data Analysis, Semantic Sensor Web, and Linked Open Data. Furthermore, they have been a part of developing technical specifications and guidelines for W3C, until 2013.

CELIA designated an Ohio Center of Excellence

In the fall of 2009, Wright State University's three departments of Art, Music, and Theatre, Dance & Motion Pictures inaugurated a new initiative of collaborative artistic and educational endeavor, called CELIA (Collaboration, Education, Leadership and Innovation in the Arts), dedicated to enhancing "ongoing collaborations as well as nurture new partnerships." Projects accepted for the CELIA designation demonstrate high-quality, innovative collaborations, and the ability to further strengthen the reputation of the arts at Wright State.

One of the first of these projects was the Academy Award-nominated half-hour documentary The Last Truck, produced for HBO and broadcast on Labor Day, 2008. The film documented the closing of a major GM truck plant in Moraine, Ohio, in 2008. More recently, the Department of Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures co-produced the regional and university premiere production of August: Osage County in the fall of 2010, with the region's professional theatre, The Human Race Theatre Company. In May 2011, the departments of Music and Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures collaborated with the Dayton Philharmonic a full-stage production of the Mass by Leonard Bernstein at the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center in Dayton.

On October 20, 2011, CELIA was designated an Ohio Center of Excellence by Jim Petro, Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents at a press conference on the campus of Wright State University, in which Tom Hanks congratulated the Wright State University arts programs via a video message.

2008 presidential campaign

During the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Republican nominee John McCain announced his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate and choice for vice president on August 29, 2008 at Wright State. Palin was a relatively unknown figure at the time and the current Governor of Alaska, but soon became a major figure in modern American politics. Eventual winner Barack Obama, who became the first African-American president in American history, held a major rally at Wright State during the campaign as well.

2016 presidential campaign

On September 23, 2015, the Commission on Presidential Debates named Wright State the host for the first 2016 United States presidential debate, which was scheduled for September 26, 2016 at the Nutter Center. On July 19, 2016 Wright State University backed out of the debate, citing inability to cover the cost of security.

Notable alumni

Notable faculty