President Bollinger stated in his fall term update that while the surges of the pandemic continue, we “must drastically scale back the number of students we can accommodate in residence on campus.” Columbia has not always been a residential college and, in fact, one of Bollinger’s predecessors believed strongly in students staying at home. […]
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The Malleable Academic Calendar: Then and Now
The 2020-2021 academic calendar includes some changes adopted to address the COVID-19 outbreak. This is not the first time that Columbia’s class schedules have yielded to health and national emergencies. […]
The First Summer Session in 1900
Since the 1870s, the School of Mines had regularly offered summer instruction in geodesy, geology, mining and metallurgy. But on July 2, 1900, the University opened its doors for a new term, the Summer Session, with courses in a wide range of disciplines — botany, education, English, geography, history, etc. — and taught by Columbia […]
A Low Library What If
In the #WeMissLow series, we’ve talked about the Low Library building as a library, the home of the administration, a ceremonial gathering place, a film location, and even an athletics training facility. In this post, we offer a Low Library reimagined. […]
The Second Life of the Low Library Furniture
After the opening of South Hall (now known as Butler Library), Low Library was no longer the main library on campus. The reading room in the Rotunda was dismantled and the space was transformed into ceremonial space or used as a lecture hall, a function it serves to this day. But what happened to the […]