About the Graduate Center, CUNY
Founded in 1961, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) is devoted primarily to doctoral study and awards most of CUNY’s doctoral degrees. In this nationally unique consortium of over 1950 faculty members, a core faculty of approximately 150 Graduate Center appointments is supplemented by over 1800 additional faculty members drawn from throughout CUNY’s eleven senior colleges and New York City’s leading cultural and scientific institutions. With 4300 doctoral students, they pursue a shared enterprise of expanding the boundaries of knowledge in over thirty doctoral programs and seven master’s programs in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. A wide range of rankings regularly place Graduate Center doctoral programs among the best in the country.
Augmenting this enterprise are about thirty research centers and institutes focused on areas of compelling social, civic, cultural, and scientific concerns. Also affiliated with the institution are four University Center programs: the CUNY Baccalaureate Program through which undergraduates can earn bachelor’s degrees by taking courses at any of the CUNY colleges; the CUNY School of Professional Studies and the associated Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies; the recently established CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers a master’s degree in journalism; and Macaulay’s Honor College. In addition, the Graduate Center extends its intellectual and cultural resources to the general public, offering access to a wide range of events, including lectures, symposia, performances, and workshops.
Since 1999, the Graduate Center’s vibrant campus has been housed in a nine-story landmark building at 365 Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. Formerly home to the B. Altman Department Store, the building has been redesigned as a new, state-of-the-art facility to meet the specific needs of a twenty-first-century institution of advanced learning.
Due to the consortial nature of doctoral study at the Graduate Center, courses take place at the Graduate Center and at CUNY colleges. For the most part, courses in the social sciences, humanities, and mathematics, and courses in the sciences requiring no laboratory work convene at the Graduate Center. Science courses requiring laboratory work, courses for the clinical doctorates, and courses in business, criminal justice, engineering, and social welfare convene on CUNY college campuses.
Since 1965, more than ten thousand students have earned doctorates from the Graduate Center, and they are now among the leaders in our nation’s teaching and research efforts, whether at universities, in the nonprofit sector, in business, or in government. By preparing a group of highly qualified professionals from diverse backgrounds to assume leadership roles in a variety of fields, the Graduate Center, through its faculty members, programs, and research centers, is filling an urgent need in the city, the state, and the nation.
Mission:
The Graduate School and University Center is located in the heart of Manhattan and set within the large and multi-campus City University of New York. It fosters advanced graduate education, original research and scholarship, innovative university-wide programs, and vibrant public events that draw upon and contribute to the complex communities of New York City and beyond. Through a broad range of nationally prominent doctoral programs, the Graduate Center prepares students to be scholars, teachers, experts, and leaders in the academy, the arts and in the private, nonprofit, and government sectors. Committed to CUNY’s historic mission of educating the “children of the whole people,” we work to provide access to doctoral education for diverse groups of highly talented students, including those who have been underrepresented in higher education.
