Long Island University

Long Island University (LIU) is a private university with two main campuses, LIU Post in Brookville, New York, on Long Island, and LIU Brooklyn in Brooklyn, New York City. The university offers over 500 academic programs at its main campuses, online, and at multiple non-residential locations. LIU has an NCAA Division I athletics programs and hosts and sponsors the annual George Polk Awards in journalism.

History

20th century

LIU was chartered in 1926 in Brooklyn, by the New York State Education Department to provide "effective and moderately priced education" to people from "all walks of life." LIU Brooklyn is located in Downtown Brooklyn, at the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues. The main building adjoins the 1920s movie house, Paramount Theatre (now called the Schwartz Gymnasium), the building retains much of the original decorative detail and a fully operational Wurlitzer organ that rises from beneath the basketball court floorboards. The campus consists of nine academic buildings; a recreation and athletic complex that includes Division I regulation athletic fields; one on-campus and two nearby residential buildings; and an adjoining parking facility.

The campus is home to the university's oldest school, the Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, founded in 1891 as the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy, and LIU Global, a four-year bachelor's degree program that allows students to live and study internationally in eight countries across eight semesters.

LIU Brooklyn's athletic team, the Blackbirds, compete at the NCAA Division I level The university sponsors the George Polk Awards for excellence in journalism, and hosts and manages the Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts.

In 1951, in response to the growing number of families moving to the suburbs, LIU purchased an 177-acre (72 ha) estate known as Hillwood from cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her third husband Joseph E. Davies. Located in Brookville on Long Island's Gold Coast, the original home, Warburton Hall, was built by William A. Prime and was extensively renovated by Marjorie and her second husband Edward F. Hutton. Rhree years later, the campus was renamed C. W. Post, in honor of Marjorie Post's father C. W. Post, a pioneering food entrepreneur.

21st century

In 2012, the university renamed all campuses. C. W. Post is now LIU Post, the university's largest campus, at 307 acres (125 hectares) of historic 1920s mansions, gardens, athletic fields, art studios and performing arts space, broadcast television and radio stations, an on-campus sustainable energy facility, and the only on-campus equestrian facility on Long Island. LIU Post was home to the NCAA Division II LIU Post Pioneers and is the site of the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts. The school introduced its first online degree plan in 2004.

In March 2013, LIU named Kimberly R. Cline the university's tenth president. She is the first woman to lead the private, six-campus institution.

2016-2017 lockout

Cline outsourced the work of two groups of previously unionized workers on campus, and oversaw the lockout of 400 faculty on the day prior to the beginning of the 2016–17 school year.

On September 1, 2016, three days after the union's contract expired and five days before the union was due to vote on the new contract, the university cut off the affected staff's email accounts and health insurance, and told them they would be replaced. This is the first time that a college or university in the United States has used a lockout against its faculty members, according to William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions.

Following the lockout, the American Association of University Professors released a statement that it "deplores this action and supports the right of the LIU Brooklyn faculty to collectively bargain in good faith with its administration," and urged the LIU administration to resume negotiations. In the first week of the autumn term, some students at LIU Brooklyn staged a walkout in support of the locked-out teaching staff.

With the 236 full-time faculty members and 450 adjuncts locked out, classes were taught by university administrators and temporary staff, and students reported inadequate instruction. The lockout ended on September 14 with an agreement to continue the expired contract until May 31, 2017, and resume negotiations with a mediator.

COVID-19 pandemic

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Long Island University moved all classes to online instruction for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester. Following a stay-at-home order from then-Governor Andrew Cuomo directing all non-essential businesses to work remotely, administrative and academic offices began operating virtually and LIU fired or furloughed employees whose work was perceived as non-amenable to working remotely, including 84 of 98 unionized employees.

Instruction in Summer 2020 was conducted on-line and LIU began offering in-person instruction again beginning September 8, 2020, with on-line options for people unable to attend lectures. Following the Thanksgiving recess, all instruction became online, with LIU resuming in-person instruction starting on February 1, 2021, at the start of the spring semester.

Organization

LIU is administered by a president and a 27-member board of trustees who elect the president.

Campuses

LIU Brooklyn

LIU Brooklyn includes:

LIU Post

LIU Post includes:

College of Veterinary Medicine

The Vet School's inaugural class began instruction in fall 2020. At the time of its founding, there were only 30 vet colleges in the United States. For over 150 years, the only vet school in the state was the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. However, political pressure grew for a second school in the New York City area. In May 2018, New York State granted $12 million to LIU to develop a vet school. Pre-clinical instruction is based in Brentwood, NY. Instead of developing its own veterinary hospital, LIU's clinical programs are taught at existing veterinary hospitals and practices. The LIU Vet School has received a provisional accreditation and will award its first DVM degrees in 2024.

Other LIU locations

LIU Brentwood offers undergraduate and/or graduate programs in education, special education, literacy, mental health counseling, school counseling, psychology, criminal justice, and nursing.

LIU Hudson offers graduate and advanced certificate programs in business, public administration, pharmaceutics, education (early childhood, childhood, literacy, special education, and TESOL), educational leadership, school counseling, school psychology, mental health counseling, and marriage and family therapy.

LIU Riverhead is home to the Homeland Security Management Institute, which offers homeland security training. The institute has been designated a "Homeland Security Center of Excellence" by the United States Congress. Programs are also available in education, special education, literacy, communication studies, new media, cyber security, applied behavior analysis, and TESOL.

Ranking

In 2023, U.S. News & World Report ranked LIU 369th among National Universities.

Athletics

Unification

On October 3, 2018, Long Island University announced that it was unifying the athletic programs of its two campuses into one Division I program, effective with the 2019–20 academic year. The unified LIU program will continue to sponsor all varsity sports that either campus sponsored before the merger. The new program's nickname of Sharks was announced on May 15, 2019. The Sharks retain the Brooklyn campus's affiliation in the Northeast Conference.

The Sharks added two completely new women's sports effective in 2019–20. Shortly before the athletic merger was announced, LIU Brooklyn announced that it would add women's ice hockey; that sport will carry over to the unified program. Shortly after the merger announcement, LIU announced it would add women's water polo, placing that sport in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

Media

LIU Public Radio, WCWP, broadcasts on 88.1.

LIU Brooklyn's student newspaper is Seawanhaka, and LIU Post's student newspaper is The Tide.

Notable alumni

• Alex the Astronaut, Australian singer and songwriter
• Shmuel Avishar, former Israeli basketball player
• Paul Broadie II, president, Santa Fe College
• Vinnette Justine Carroll, former playwright, actress, and theatre director
• Robert L. Caslen, U.S. Army general, 59th Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, and 29th president of the University of South Carolina
• Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Turkish politician, Grand National Assembly of Turkey member, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey
• Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, investor, and philanthropist
• Joe Gatto, comedian and actor
• Vin Lananna, Team USA Olympic coach, USA Track & Field president, former CEO of TrackTown USA, and the university's athletic director
• Barry Leibowitz, American-Israeli basketball player
• Ivan Leshinsky, American-Israeli basketball player
• Shawn Liao, basketball player and opera patron
• Dov Markus, Israeli-American soccer player
• Charles F. Masterson, special assistant to President Eisenhower
• Dina Meyer, actress
• Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, Member of Parliament in Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament of India
• Peter Nilsson, Swedish soccer player
• Neil Raymond Ricco, poet and writer
• Brenden Rodney, professional Canadian track and field athlete
• Ossie Schectman, basketball player who scored the first basket in NBA history
• Tinga Seisay, Sierra Leonean diplomat and pro-democracy activist
• Denise Vasi, actress

Notable faculty

• Ivan Lee, women's fencing team head coach and Olympic saber fencer

See also

• List of Long Island University people

References

External links

• Official website