Metropolitan State College of Denver
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| Metropolitan State College of Denver | |
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| Established: | 1965 |
| Type: | Public |
| President: | Stephen M. Jordan, Ph.D. |
| Faculty: | 299 (fulltime) |
| Undergraduates: | 20,761[1] |
| Location: | Denver, Colorado, USA |
| Campus: | Urban |
| Colors: | Berry and Navy |
| Mascot: | Roadrunners |
| Website: | www.mscd.edu |
The Metropolitan State College of Denver (also known as Metro State, or informally as Metro or MSCD) is a four-year college located in Denver, Colorado, USA. Metro State is one of the largest four-year colleges in the country and has the second largest enrollment of undergraduates in Colorado. With fifty majors and eighty minors, the college is noted for a wide array of Liberal Arts and Sciences programs as well as its Teacher Education, Business, Aviation, and Criminal Justice programs.[2] Metro State is recognized nationally for graduating a high number of Chicano students and has a well established Chicano Studies program. The college is noted for its fine athletics programs: Metro State's Women's Soccer team won the Division II National Championship in 2004 and 2006; the Men's Basketball team won the Division II National Championship in 2000 and 2002. Metro State is located on the Auraria Campus, along with the University of Colorado at Denver and the Community College of Denver, in downtown Denver. Metro State has an enrollment of over 21,000 students.[3]
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[edit] History and geography
Metro State is located in one of the older areas in Denver. The campus is located at the former townsite of Auraria, which was founded in November 1858. Denver was founded three weeks later across Cherry Creek. Denver would overtake Auraria, yet to the present day, there is still an Auraria neighborhood in Denver. The boundaries of the neighborhood are Colfax Avenue on the south, the South Platte River on the northwest and Cherry Creek on the northeast. The Auraria Campus now dominates this area.
Auraria had a mix of residential areas and industrial areas through the mid-20th century. When the campus was built, many Aurarians, a majority of them Hispanic, were displaced and the school promised to serve the community. Tivoli Brewery brewed beer in Denver until it closed. The Tivoli now serves as a Student Union to all three schools on the campus. Two churches are still on the campus, St. Elizabeth's Church and St. Cajetan's. The Emmanuel Gallery, which is the oldest synagogue structure in Denver, is on the campus as well.
The Metropolitan State College of Denver was founded in 1965 as an opportunity school. The concept was that people from all walks of life could have a chance at a college education. By design, Metro State is required to be accessible to all, which is why it consistently has some of the lowest tuitions of four year Colorado colleges and universities. The college also admits all students over the age of 20 that have a GED or High School Diploma regardless of their prior academic record, according to the 2004-2005 Metro State College Catalog.
The college mascot is the Roadrunner, which came into being because of the very nature of the campus. Before becoming centralized on the downtown campus, Metro's classes were spread across Denver. Students would only have fifteen minutes to go from class to class and would often run across busy streets in Denver, dodging traffic, to make it to class on time. Hence students were referred to as roadrunners and a mascot was born.
[edit] Academics
[edit] Metro State Aviation Programs
Metro State has an extensive aviation-related facility known as the "Seventh Street Building" (due to its location on Seventh Street). This facility contains the "World Indoor Airport", an extensive array of flight simulators designed to train students in single-, multi- and turboprop-engine aircraft flight. An ex-United Airlines DC-10 non-moving simulator is also employed. A project is under way to integrate air traffic control services and training into flight simulation training.
In addition, the Metro State Precision Flight Team is a member of NIFA (National Intercollegiate Flying Association) which is an association allowing university flight teams the opportunity to compete nationally in various flying categories of piloting. The Metro State Flight Team traditionally does well against competitors, despite being handicapped by the fact that Metro State, unlike other college aviation programs, do not possess their own fleet of aircraft and must rent aircraft from various local flying clubs at the expense of the teams members. NIFA consists of 80 college teams and only 3 of the colleges do not provide their teams with aircraft, Metro being one. Regardless, these pilots are highly motivated and take pride in the team; not only do they dedicate many hours to the team by organizing and running fund raising events, attending practices every week, recruiting, and traveling to competitions but they also attend Metro and pay for addition training (Private, IFR, Comm, CFI ratings) required to graduate as Aviation Technology Majors.
Current majors offered at Metro State's aviation and aerospace department include professional pilot studies and aviation airport management studies.
The department has a promotional video which can be seen here. [1]
[edit] Metro State Journalism
Metropolitan State College of Denver offers an award winning journalism department offering classes for photojournalism, print journalism and broadcast journalism. The Metropolitan and other publications and broadcasts published by the Office of Student Media are part of Metro State's journalism department.
The department has alumni that have won many awards, mostly in the photojournalism area. These awards include College Photographer of the Year from the Atlanta Photojournalism Conference in 2005 won by Evan Semon who was a member of the National Association for Hispanic Journalists and used his accomplishments to obtain a full time staff position at the Rocky Mountain News. The awards also include multiple Pulitzer Prize nominations. The nominations went to Hyoung Chang and Andy Cross. Chang did his work in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq while Cross did his work in Somalia. Both of these students worked under former chair of the department and current photojournalism instructor Kenn Bisio. Other award winning photojournalists are Olga Chilian who won a four year scholarship as well as three paid internships for her work on the Hayman fire of 2002 and Patrick Andrade who won first place in the World Press for his photos of the war in Afghanistan.
The journalism department also offers the most internship opportunities available from Metro State. Marilyn Hetzel heads the intern department and can be contacted through the school. The current head of the journalism department is Deb Hurley.
[edit] Events and Special Programs
[edit] Metro State Debate
Metro State hosted the NPDA National Tournament in 2001 and 2002, the first school to host the tournament in consecutive years. In 2001 the tournament was the largest debate-only forensics tournmanet ever held in the United States. That record was broken in 2002. The tournament host for both events was Scott Gratson, the Director of Forensics at Metro State. Despite the prominence resulting from hosting two large national tournaments, Metro State ceased to compete in intercollegiate debate following the 2002 season.
[edit] Metro State Blogs Project
The Metropolitan State College of Denver Metro Blogs project pilot began in May, 2006, as a way to articulate to future students what it is to be a student at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Metro Bloggers are real students who have agreed to document a semester-long (or more) experience, sharing their week-to-week thoughts and experiences both at the College and in their personal lives away from their studies.
This pilot project is a joint effort between the of College Communications and the Office of Enrollment Services. The Metro Blogs project pilot is scheduled to run throughout the summer and fall semesters of 2006.
[edit] Alumni
Individuals of note who have attended Metro State include:
- Michael J. Varhola, American author and publisher, who has publicly attributed much of his success to the encouragement he received from his MSCD professors.
- Candi Kubeck - Captain of ValuJet Flight 592, which crashed into the Florida Everglades on May 11, 1996.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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