LIU Brooklyn

LIU Brooklyn

Motto	Urbi et Orbi
Type	Private
Established	1926
President	Kimberly R. Cline
Provost	Gale Stevens Haynes
Students	11,200
Location	Brooklyn (NYC), NY, United States
Campus	Urban
Athletics	NCAA Division I – NEC
Nickname	Blackbirds
Affiliations	Long Island University
Sports	18 varsity teams
Mascot	Blackbird
Website	http://liu.edu/Brooklyn.aspx

LIU Brooklyn is a private institution of higher education located in Brooklyn, New York City, United States. It is the original unit and first of two main campuses of the private Long Island University system.

Mission statement

Established in 1926, Long Island University's mission is "to open the doors of the city and the world to men and women of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, who wish to achieve the satisfaction of the educated life and to serve the public good and to awaken, enlighten and expand the minds of its students." The campus is recognized by the New York Times as being one of the most diverse in the U.S.^[1] LIU Brooklyn was also recognized by the Daily Beast as the third-safest college campus in the United States.^[2]

Campus

Conolly Residence Hall

LIU Brooklyn is located at the intersection of Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues (across the street from Junior's restaurant and City Point). The campus is served by the convergence of several services along seven New York City Subway lines at DeKalb Avenue (B, ​D, ​N, ​Q, ​R, and ​W trains), Nevins Street (2, ​3, ​4, and ​5 trains), and Jay Street – MetroTech (A, ​C​, F​, N, R, and ​W trains). The Long Island Rail Road's Atlantic Branch is also nearby, as the Atlantic Terminal is located three blocks from campus.

The former Brooklyn Paramount Theater was the world’s first theater built specifically for talking pictures.^[3] The theater, which abuts the original core campus, was bought in 1960 by LIU and converted into a gymnasium in 1963.

History

Student union building

The first class at the campus’ original site, located at 300 Pearl Street, had 312 students from the surrounding neighborhoods. The majority of students were immigrants or the children of immigrants, many of which were the first in their families to ever attend college or school in general.^[4]

In 1929, the university affiliated itself with the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy, now known as LIU Pharmacy (the Arnold and Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences). In the late 1960s, plans were proposed by several trustees to sell the Brooklyn Campus in order to finance a new graduate campus on Long Island. Students and faculty held demonstrations protesting those plans. In 1972, administrators and faculty members negotiated the first collectively bargained faculty agreement at a private university in the United States.^[5] In the fall of 2016, the university locked out its faculty union and assigned administrators and replacement hires to teach classes.^[6] The lockout resulted in a student walk out and protest and the loss of two weeks of semester time.^[7] The LIU faculty responded by voting for ouster of the president, Kimberly Cline.^[8]

Athletics

LIU Brooklyn is the only unit of the LIU system to compete in Division I athletics and has 18 varsity teams. The school mascot is the Blackbirds.

The men's basketball team won the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in 1939 and 1941 under the guidance of coach Clair Bee. However, in 1951, the Blackbirds basketball players were involved in the CCNY Point Shaving Scandal that resulted in five players receiving a suspended sentence and one player a one-year prison sentence.^[9] The basketball team was suspended for six years from 1951-1957.^[10] Games were played at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater until recently.^[11]

In 1997, The Blackbirds were seeded 13th in the East Region of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. They lost in the first round to Villanova, 101–91. In 2011, LIU Brooklyn won both the Northeast Conference regular-season and tournament championship, winning 13 in a row at the end of the season. The Blackbirds were seeded 15th in the East Region of the 2011 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament losing in the first round to 2nd-seeded University of North Carolina.

Academics

• LIU Pharmacy (the Arnold and Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences), founded in 1886
• The Harriet Rothkopf Heilbrunn School of Nursing
• The Richard L. Conolly College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• The School of Business, Public Administration, and Information Sciences
• School of Education
• School of Health Professions
• School of Continuing Education
• LIU Global, the only global studies program in the U.S. integrating a series of yearlong cultural immersions around the world into a four-year bachelor's degree
• Honors College
• The TV Writer's Studio: a 2-year MFA in Writing and Producing for Television,^[12] helmed by Norman Steinberg, cowriter of the film Blazing Saddles.

Notable alumni

• Ossie Schectman (1919–2013), basketball player who scored the first basket in National Basketball Association history

References

Coordinates: 40°41′28″N 73°58′51″W / 40.6911°N 73.9808°W / 40.6911; -73.9808