Grand Valley State University (commonly referred to as GVSU, GV, or Grand Valley) is a public liberal arts university located in Allendale, Michigan, United States. The university was established in 1960, and its main campus is situated on 1,270 acres (5.1 km2) approximately 12 miles (19 km) west of Grand Rapids. Classes are also offered at the university's growing Pew Campus in Downtown Grand Rapids, Meijer Campus in Holland, and through centers at Muskegon and Traverse City established in cooperation with local community colleges.
GVSU is a comprehensive coeducational university serving more than 24,654 students as of fall 2012, from all 83 Michigan counties and dozens of other states and foreign countries. It is one of America's 100 largest universities in terms of enrollment and employs more than 2,000 people with about 864 regular full-time faculty and 1,170 support staff. The university currently has alumni residing in all 50 U.S. states, Canada, and 25 countries around the world. For the 2010-2011 academic year, GVSU was recognized as a top producer of Fulbright Scholars for Master's institutions by the Chronicle of Higher Education. GVSU has also been noted for its sustainability efforts, ranking as high as 16th in the world for environment-friendly university management by GreenMetric World University Ranking in 2011.
GVSU's NCAA Division II sports teams are called the Lakers. They compete in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) in all 19 intercollegiate varsity sports and have won the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Directors' Cup for NCAA Division II every year from 2004 to 2011 after finishing second in 2002 and 2003.
Read more about Grand Valley State University: History, Campuses, University Libraries, Athletics, Student Life, Community Outreach, Notable People, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words grand, valley, state and/or university:
“The most refined skills of color printing, the intricate techniques of wide-angle photography, provide us pictures of trivia bigger and more real than life. We forget that we see trivia and notice only that the reproduction is so good. Man fulfils his dream and by photographic magic produces a precise image of the Grand Canyon. The result is not that he adores nature or beauty the more. Instead he adores his camera—and himself.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“In time the scouring of wind and rain will wear down the ranges and plane off the region until it has the drab monotony of the older deserts. In the meantime—a two-million-year meantime—travelers may enjoy the cruel beauties of a desert in its youth,....”
—For the State of California, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)