California Institute of Technology
1. The California Institute of Technology is a private university in Pasadena, California. The most famous name of this university is Caltech.
The Institute is organized into six primary academic divisions:
Biology and Biological Engineering (BBE)
Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (CCE)
Engineering and Applied Science (EAS)
Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)
Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Computing + Mathematical Sciences
The Computing + Mathematical Sciences (CMS) Department is nestled in the heart of Pasadena on the beautiful Caltech campus. CMS is home to outstanding students and researchers who share a passion for science and engineering, as well as a drive to investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in computation and information.
Mission
The mission of Computing + Mathematical Sciences (CMS) at Caltech is to address the most challenging and fundamental problems in the science and technology of computation and information, while providing a first-rate education for future scientists and engineers.
To this end, they work to:
understand information and computation as intrinsic components of a broad array of natural and engineered systems
tackle challenging and fundamental problems with the potential for long-term and real-world impact
develop underlying theory
nurture collaboration between traditionally separate disciplines
educate a generation of scientists capable of making deep contributions in diverse fields.
Learning features
1. Caltech uses an academic calendar based on trimesters called academic terms.
2. Classes begin in late September and end in June.
3. Options in Caltech are not divided into majors and minors. Students can specialize in one or two subjects, but always from different departments. Specializing in physics and mathematics at the same time is officially forbidden, an exception is usually made for students who can handle this combination.
4. Caltech has a wide program of compulsory courses in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) subjects. All students are required to complete five trimesters of mathematics, two trimesters of chemistry, and a trimester of biology, two trimesters of any laboratories, as well as twelve trimesters of humanities and social sciences
5. In the beginning of studying, Caltech uses pass/fail grading system to facilitate the transition from school to university. Students are given with “shadow marks” that show them what marks they would receive if they were considered.
6. Students do not compete with each other, and in almost all classes collaboration on homework is allowed and encouraged
2. The history of the foundation of California institute of Technology.
Caltech’s beginnings are rooted in a modest little college founded in Pasadena in 1891 by Chicago politician Amos Throop. Initially named Throop University, the school changed its name to Throop Polytechnic Institute in 1893. In its first fifteen years, Throop served the local community, teaching a great variety of subjects, from arts and crafts to zoology.
By 1906, Throop needed a fresh sense of purpose. The American astronomer George Ellery Hale, the first director of the nearby Mount Wilson Observatory and a newcomer to Pasadena, would provide it.
A scientist bubbling over with educational, architectural, and civic ideas, Hale was elected to the school’s board of trustees in 1907 and promptly set about to transform it. The third member of Hale’s scientific troika was the physicist Robert A. Millikan who began, in 1917, to spend several months a year at Throop as director of physical research.
In the early 1920s, Caltech was essentially an undergraduate and graduate school in the physical sciences. Indeed, until 1925, the institution offered graduate work leading to the doctorate only in physics, chemistry, and engineering. Geology joined the list of graduate studies in 1925, aeronautics in 1926; biology and mathematics in 1928. Physics was king from the very beginning. Millikan initiated a visiting-scholars program shortly after his arrival in Pasadena. Albert Einstein‘s visits to the campus in 1931, 1932, and 1933 capped Millikan’s plans to put physics on the map in southern California. If nothing else, Einstein’s visits showed dramatically that the Caltech that Hale, Millikan, and Noyes had set out to build in the twenties had come of age in the thirties.
Caltech’s history is divided into two distinct eras. The first Caltech era was created by Hale, Millikan, and Noyes. Thirty years later, after World War II, the physicists Lee Alvin DuBridge and Robert Bacher did the job all over again. DuBridge, the head of MIT’s wartime radar project, became Caltech’s new president in 1946. Bacher, the leader of the Los Alamos atomic bomb project’s “G” Division (the “G” stood for gadgets), arrived in 1949 to head up the division of physics, mathematics, and astronomy and later became the Institute’s first provost.
Since 2000, the Einstein Papers Project has been located at Caltech. The project was established in 1986 to assemble, preserve, translate, and publish papers selected from the literary estate of Albert Einstein and from other collections.
In fall 2008, the freshman class was 42% female, a record for Caltech's undergraduate enrollment. In the same year, the Institute concluded a six-year-long fund-raising campaign. The campaign raised more than $1.4 billion from about 16,000 donors. Nearly half of the funds went into the support of Caltech programs and projects
Jean-Lou Chameau, the eighth president, announced on February 19, 2013, that he would be stepping down to accept the presidency at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Thomas F. Rosenbaum was announced to be the ninth president of Caltech on October 24, 2013 for our days.
3. Interesting facts
1. Сaltech is on the 7th place in the Academic Ranking of World Universities.
2. 58 Caltech faculty and alumni have received a National Medal of Science.
3. Computer science is Caltech`s most popular major.
4. Every year Caltech celebrates the Ditch day. It is the day when fourth grade students are developing comic devices and puzzles for younger students that block the way to classrooms, campuses and etc. These jokes are carefully planned for months or even years in advance in order to occupy the underclassmen throughout the day.
5. On television, Caltech plays a prominent role and is the workplace of all four male lead characters and one female lead character in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
6 725
8 566 
