Trinity College of Arts and Sciences is the undergraduate liberal arts college at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The college is currently one of two undergraduate divisions at Duke, the other being the Edmund T. Pratt School of Engineering.
Arts & Sciences and Trinity College is the collective name of all educational and research programs in the humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences at Duke, inclusive of undergraduate programs and many degree programs in Duke's Graduate School. Arts and Sciences consists of approximately 580 faculty members in 44 academic departments, as well as assorted interdisciplinary units. As of 2003, there were 5,400 undergraduates enrolled in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, the undergraduate degree granting unit. An additional 1000 undergraduates in the Pratt School of Engineering take roughly half their courses in Trinity College, while the Graduate School trains some 1200 doctoral and masters students in the arts and sciences as well as in divinity, engineering, business, and environmental and earth sciences. The division's unusual dual name may reflect the fact that it is responsible for undergraduate education (through Trinity College) and graduate education and research (Arts and Sciences).
Trinity College was the name of the predecessor of Duke University. Tobacco magnate and philanthropist James Buchanan Duke left a $24 million bequest to transform the college into a research university called "Duke University" in honor of his father Washington Duke. In 1930, the institution's original Durham campus became known as the Women's College of Duke University, while Trinity continued as the name of the undergraduate men's college. The West or Gothic campus about a mile from East Campus became home to Trinity College, along with Duke University Hospital and the graduate and professional schools. The two colleges continued as coordinate residential and degree-granting entities for forty years. However, there was always a single faculty of Arts and Sciences responsible for undergraduate and graduate instruction. Trinity College and the Women's College merged in 1972 to form Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the East and West campus became co-educational.
External links
- Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
- Duke University
