Reputation and Campus Culture
The university established a program in civil discourse, including the journal Reason and Respect, which brought in speakers such as Salman Rushdie, David Gergen, First Minister and Nobel Prize–winner David Trimble, Khaled Hosseini, author of Kite Runner, Bob Geldof of Live Aid, and others to campus. The university has established campuses in London and Florence; collaborates with sister institutions in France, Brazil, Vietnam, and Hong Kong; features a broad portfolio of study-abroad opportunities encompassing over 30 countries; and is home to a Center for Macro Projects and Diplomacy, which brings together engineering, architecture, technology, economic development, and international relations for a common purpose. Furthermore, it was recently recognized as a non-governmental member of the United Nations.
Enrollment is currently at an all-time high. In addition, RWU was recently ranked for the first time as one of the top ten Comprehensive Colleges in the Northern U.S. by U.S. News & World Report. It was ranked ninth in 2007, up one spot from the previous year.
In January 2009, a group of Communication majors worked to create a catalog of video vignettes on sustainability issues; a portion of that work appeared on the PBS special Planet Forward. One of those students, Kyle Toomey, also appeared on the Planet Forward special, which aired on April 15, 2009.
In 2010, according to The Hawk's Herald, "As of Aug. 31, RWU owed over $146 million in bonds outstanding. This figure reflects a slight decrease in university debt compared to the previous year's figure of over $150 million in bonds owed."
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Famous quotes containing the words reputation and, reputation and/or culture:
“Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self- collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behaviour.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Men will not give up their privilege of helplessness without a struggle. The average man has a carefully cultivated ignorance about household matters—from what to do with the crumbs to the grocer’s telephone number—a sort of cheerful inefficiency which protects him better than the reputation for having a violent temper.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)