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News Release

Last modified: Thursday, March 21, 2013

Fast facts about Indiana University for media covering NCAA tourney games in Dayton, Ohio

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 21, 2013

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- In advance of Friday's game between Indiana University and James Madison University in the men's NCAA basketball tournament, here are some behind-the-scenes facts about the Hoosiers.

If you have any questions or need to reach anyone at IU, contact Mark Land at 812-856-1172 or mdland@iu.edu or Ryan Piurek at 812-855-5393 or rpiurek@iu.edu.

1. Indiana University -- with 110,000 students at eight campuses in the state and more than 570,000 living alumni worldwide -- was founded at Bloomington, Ind., in 1820. IU has the second-largest alumni base of any of the schools in this year's tournament and the third-largest alumni base in the nation. It is the oldest public university west of the Allegheny Mountains. Enrollment this fall at IU Bloomington (42,133) surpassed the 40,000-student mark for the fifth consecutive year.

2. IU Bloomington's 1,937-acre campus in the rolling hills of southern Indiana is considered one of the five most beautiful campuses in the nation, as cited in Thomas Gaines' book, "The Campus as a Work of Art."

3. The IU Bloomington Libraries were recognized by peers as the top university library in the country in 2010 by the Association of College and Research Libraries. The Bloomington campus has 19 libraries, including the Herman B Wells Main Library, named for the university's beloved former president. The libraries house several of the nation's top research collections and specialized libraries, such as the Archives of Traditional Music and the Archives of African American Music and Culture.

4. The university's rare-books collection, the Lilly Library, has holdings totaling about 400,000 books, 100,000 pieces of sheet music and many culturally important items such the Gutenberg Bible and annotated production scripts for "Laugh In," "Star Trek," "Mission Impossible" and other television shows.

5. National rankings are not new for the IU basketball team or for many of IU's academic programs. Last year, U.S. News and World Report ranked IU's School of Public and Environmental Affairs as the No. 2 graduate program overall in the country, ahead of Harvard, Princeton and other major universities, and just last week, the magazine rated the School of Library and Information Sciences eighth-best in the country. The Kelley School of Business, School of Education, Jacobs School of Music, Maurer School of Law and programs in the College of Arts and Sciences also are renowned and have been recognized by Bloomberg Businessweek, the Financial Times, U.S. News and other national publications.

6. IU has launched a new School of Global and International Studies, based in the College of Arts and Sciences in Bloomington, to expand the opportunities for international education for students, including greater foreign language proficiencies, better understanding of how societies are developing worldwide and deeper knowledge of globalization. It also aims to strengthen and expand IU's already formidable reputation in research and scholarship in international studies by marshaling the expertise of more than 350 core and affiliated faculty members from across the university and IU's 11 federally funded Title VI international area studies centers to address the world's most significant economic, political, social, cultural and environmental challenges. Earlier this year, it was announced that former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, the longest-serving senator in Indiana's history and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and longtime Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would join the faculty of the new school as distinguished scholars and professors of practice.

7. The building that will house the new School of Global and International Studies will be funded from part of IU's share of Big Ten Network revenue. The university will break ground on the building this spring.

8. IU was recognized with a school record 12 new fellows earning designation from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012. The distinction from the world's largest general scientific society recognized the faculty members for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science. The 12 new fellows -- 10 from the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington and two from the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis -- bring the total number of AAAS fellows affiliated with IU to 81. Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, taught at IU for four decades.

9. IU physicists and computing specialists received some of the credit when scientists observed the Higgs boson particle last year in Geneva, Switzerland, a discovery that helped explain why fundamental particles have mass. IU physicists designed and built a key component of a detector used in the experiments and information technologists ensured the availability of vast computing resources through the Open Science Grid.

10. IU's School of Informatics and Computing, the first technology program in the country to offer a Ph.D. in informatics, received a school record $18.5 million in grants and awards for research in 2012, a nearly 40 percent jump over the school's previous high.

11. IU is a national leader in high-speed research computing networks, a position that will be strengthened now that it has acquired the fastest university-owned supercomputer in the country. Named Big Red II, the new system will be capable of operating at a peak rate of one petaFLOPS, or one thousand trillion floating-point operations per second -- 25 times faster than the original Big Red first acquired in 2006.

12. In the last year IU launched two new schools of public health. The schools, one in Bloomington and the other in Indianapolis, are the only such schools in the state and are dedicated to improving the health of Indiana's urban and rural residents.

13. Despite its location in a nearly landlocked Midwestern state, the Office of Underwater Science in the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington is an international leader in the creation of underwater parks and museums as a way to protect underwater treasures, such as Capt. Kidd's wrecked ship the Quedagh Merchant and precious corals.

14. IU is the home of the world-famous Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, originally known as the source of the "Kinsey Reports" in the 1950s. Today's research focuses on specific issues in sexual behavior, including how people make sexual decisions, hook-ups and long-term relationships, condom use and errors, and hormonal influences. The research collections include artwork, films and library materials spanning centuries and cultures.

15. Tenor Michael Brandenburg, a student at IU's world-renowned Jacobs School of Music, was recently named one of the five winners at the Metropolitan National Council Auditions at Lincoln Center in New York City, a competition that attracts the best young opera singers in the U.S. His teacher, legendary baritone Timothy Noble, called him "a once-in-a-lifetime voice."

16. IU's Bloomington campus is home to IU Cinema, a state-of-the-art venue in the heart of campus that showcases new art house releases, film classics, foreign language films and special screenings hosted by visiting filmmakers and scholars. One of only a few THX-certified cinemas in the nation, IU Cinema also has access to 82,000-plus reels of film and related materials through the university's archives, including collections from filmmakers John Ford and Orson Welles and the Kinsey Institute.

17. Well-known IU Bloomington alumni include Ryan Murphy, the creator of the popular television programs "Glee" and "Nip/Tuck"; Michael Higgins, Ireland's ninth president; Mark Cuban, a successful business magnate and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks; Will Shortz, crossword puzzle editor for The New York Times; Michael Uslan, executive producer of the Batman movies; Suzanne Collins, author of the "Hunger Games" books; Meg Cabot, author of "The Princess Diaries"; Sage Steele, ESPN sports anchor; Dick Enberg, legendary sports broadcaster; Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia; Hoagy Carmichael, composer of such American pop standards as "Star Dust" and "Georgia on My Mind"; Ernie Pyle, legendary war correspondent; journalists Tavis Smiley, Anthony DeCurtis, Sherri Sylvester and Jane Pauley; actors Kevin Kline and Sarah Clarke; and Grammy winners Sylvia McNair, Booker T. Jones and Joshua Bell.

18. IU alumni who have distinguished themselves on the basketball court and in other sports include Steve Alford, a member of IU's 1987 national championship team and coach at the University of New Mexico; Keith Smart, also a member of the 1987 championship team and coach of the Sacramento Kings; Jim Crews, coach at the University of St. Louis and member of the 1976 national championship team, the last undefeated national champion; Mike Woodson, who led IU to the 1979 NIT Championship, earned Big Ten Most Valuable Player honors in leading the Hoosiers to the 1980 Big Ten title and is coach of the New York Knicks; Randy Wittman, a member of IU's 1981 championship team and coach of the Washington Wizards; Isiah Thomas, the Final Four MVP when IU won the championship in 1981 and a former member of the Detroit Pistons, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and former coach of the Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks; Walt Bellamy, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, 1960 Olympic Gold Medalist, the NBA first overall pick in 1961 and Rookie of the Year in 1962; Mark Spitz, an Olympic gold medalist in 1968 and 1972; and Trent Green, former quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs.

19. IU put the Big Red in the red, white and blue at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, with seven Hoosiers representing six countries in six sports. Through their participation in the Games, where IU athletes won the 87th and 88th Olympic medals in IU history, they added to IU's rich tradition of athletic excellence here in the U.S. and abroad.

20. IU is the only university in the country to place two players on the Capital One Academic All-America basketball team this season. Cody Zeller, of Washington, Ind., the Hoosiers' leading scorer and rebounder, made the first team, and guard Jordan Hulls, of Bloomington, was named to the third team. Both are also well ahead of the normal degree progression pace. Zeller, a business major at the highly regarded IU Kelley School of Business, is on pace to graduate in under three years, while Hulls is already in graduate school in his fourth year on the team. Victor Oladipo, recently named national Player of the Year by the Sporting News, will graduate this May after three years.

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