Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise nine undergraduate and graduate schools, among which are the School of Foreign Service, School of Business, Medical School, and Law School. Located on a hill above the Potomac River, the school's main campus is identifiable by its flagship Healy Hall, a National Historic Landmark. Georgetown offers degree programs in forty-eight disciplines, enrolling an average of 7,500 undergraduate and 10,000 post-graduate students from more than 130 countries.
History of Georgetown University
In 1987, the University decided to close the School of Dentistry following the class of 1990 for financial reasons, as the number of dental students dropped nationwide. Supplies and equipment from the school were sent to Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, Colombia. In 1994, the School of Languages and Linguistics was folded into the College, and is now the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics. On October 7, 1998, the School of Business was renamed the McDonough School of Business in honor of alumnus Robert Emmett McDonough and in 2009, it moved into the newly constructed Rafik B. Hariri Building. In 1999 the School of Nursing added three other health related majors and appended its name to become the School of Nursing and Health Studies.
John J. DeGioia, Georgetown's first lay president, has led the school since 2001. DeGioia has continued its financial modernization and has sought to "expand opportunities for intercultural and interreligious dialogue." In October 2002, Georgetown University began studying the feasibility of opening a campus of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Qatar, when the non-profit Qatar Foundation first proposed the idea. The School of Foreign Service in Qatar opened in 2005 along with four other U.S. universities in the Education City development. That same year, Georgetown began hosting a two-week workshop at Fudan University's School of International Relations and Public Affairs in Shanghai, China. This later developed into a more formal connection when Georgetown opened a liaison office at Fudan on January 12, 2008 to further collaboration.