University of Connecticut

On December 15, 1880, the brothers Charles Storrs and Augustus Storrs publicly offered 170 acres of land with its buildings and $5,000 in cash to start an agricultural school; the offer was announced at the Farmer’s Convention of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture in New Britain, held December 15–17. A three-person committee reviewed the offer and gave a favorable report, and a legislative commission also urged acceptance. Advocates of agricultural training included the Board of Agriculture, the state Grange and Theodore Sedgwick Gold, who later sat on the school’s first board of trustees.⁠[1][2]

The Storrs brothers were sixth-generation descendants of Samuel Storrs, who settled the family farm in Mansfield, Connecticut, in 1698; much of UConn’s main campus now sits on that land. Both brothers became businessmen in Brooklyn, New York. Charles Storrs died there in 1884, and Augustus Storrs died at the Mansfield farm in 1892. In 1876, after the Connecticut Civil War orphanage closed, Augustus Storrs bought its former property.⁠[1]

On April 21, 1881, the Connecticut General Assembly accepted the Storrs brothers’ gift and passed an act creating the Storrs Agricultural School, a two-year vocational school that later became the University of Connecticut. Governor Hobart B. Bigelow signed the legislation, and the first Board of Trustees met for the first time on April 22, 1881, in Hartford. The 1881 act aimed to educate boys whose parents were citizens of Connecticut in scientific knowledge so as to improve their farming.⁠[2][1]

UConn’s own accounts of the gift differ: the university’s history page lists a former orphanage, 170 acres of farmland, $6,000 and a few barns, while a 1997 article from the UConn Advance gives 170 acres of land with buildings and $5,000 in cash.⁠[3][1]

The Storrs Agricultural School opened on September 28, 1881, and held a public opening ceremony on October 7, 1881. Sources differ on the first enrollment: the 1997 UConn Advance article gives 12 students, while UConn’s history page gives three faculty members and 13 male students.⁠[1][3]

The school’s chief administrator was first titled Principal. Solomon Mead, a New Haven farmer, was appointed principal in 1881 and retired in 1882; the Office of the President notes that he never formally held the title of president. Henry P. Armsby was acting principal in 1882 and Benjamin F. Koons acting principal in 1882–1883, after which Koons led the school from 1883 to 1898.⁠[4]

UConn’s history page states that Nellie Wilson, Louise Rosebrooks and Anna Snow became the first women to take classes, three years before the school formally admitted women in 1893; the historian Bruce M. Stave writes on ConnecticutHistory.org that women first attended classes as commuters in 1891 and that Oak Grove Cottage, the first women’s dormitory, was built in 1896.⁠[3][5]

On April 21, 1893, the school became Storrs Agricultural College and first admitted women, and Benjamin F. Koons’s title changed from principal to president, making him its first president. The same act made it Connecticut’s land-grant college, a designation that Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry had held since 1862.⁠[2][4][5]

A 2019 overview of past presidents in The Daily Campus, the student newspaper, credits Koons with helping make the school coeducational.⁠[6]

George W. Flint was president from 1898 to 1901 and Rufus W. Stimson from 1901 to 1908, with Edwin O. Smith acting president from April to September 1908. The Daily Campus overview writes that Flint’s push to move the agricultural college toward a more classical education was controversial and that he was forced to resign, and that Stimson was known for the “Project Method,” which gave agricultural students more hands-on work such as projects on home farms.⁠[4][6]

Storrs Hall, built in 1905, was named for the Storrs brothers; Stimson described it as honoring “the founder and first benefactor of our institution.”⁠[2]

On June 14, 1899, the school was renamed Connecticut Agricultural College; the class photograph shown on the university’s history page for that year has 14 men and five women. Gold Hall, named for Theodore Sedgwick Gold, was built in 1899 and burned in 1914.⁠[2][3]

In 1907 Alfred F. Blakeslee became the school’s first true geneticist; studying Datura (jimson weed), he found that plant chromosomes do not always follow the same rules as animal chromosomes. In 1913 he offered one of the first college genetics courses in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, and in 1914 the school made the course required for juniors; Blakeslee photographed 175 male students arranged by height, producing a classic normal distribution. From 1916 to 1928 Edmund Ware Sinnott taught genetics at the Connecticut Agriculture Station and studied cucurbit plants; in the 1920s Leslie Clarence Dunn joined the Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station, worked with chickens and campaigned against eugenics, and his research assistant, Walter Landauer, later headed the Department of Animal Genetics.⁠[7]

Charles L. Beach was president from 1908 to 1928. The Daily Campus overview writes that he started the first four-year program and awarded the first bachelor’s degree in 1914; UConn’s history page dates the first four-year Bachelor of Science degrees to 1915 and the first master’s degree to 1920. In 1923 the college joined the New England Conference on Intercollegiate Athletics.⁠[4][6][3][5]

In 1925 the General Assembly capped enrollment at 500 students a year; the cap was ignored in the 1930s and repealed in 1937, when enrollment exceeded 800. In 1928 Nathan Gatchell, editor-in-chief of the Connecticut Campus, campaigned to remove “agricultural” from the college’s name, and Bertram Wright continued the push as editor in 1929; in a 1931 student poll, 393 of 407 voters preferred the name “University of Connecticut.”⁠[8]

After Wilbur Cross became governor in 1930, a committee led by Ernest W. Butterfield recommended the name “Connecticut State College,” and Cross signed the change on February 25, 1933; Connecticut College for Women objected, but legislators rejected its claim. The college began awarding Bachelor of Arts degrees in 1933. In these years George A. Works was president in 1929–1930 (with Charles B. Gentry acting in 1928–1929) and Charles McCracken in 1930–1935; the Daily Campus overview writes that McCracken grew the school during the Great Depression.⁠[8][2][3][4][6]

Albert N. Jorgensen was president from 1935 to 1962 (Charles B. Gentry was acting president from May to October 1935). Bruce M. Stave writes that Jorgensen began a multi-year building program during the Great Depression, with almost $3 million in construction and improvements underway by the end of the 1930s, including the Wilbur Cross Library, an engineering building, a home economics building, and Wood and Whitney halls. The Daily Campus overview writes that in 1938 he presented a plan for physical development asking for $23 million to build a library (which became the Wilbur Cross Library), dormitories and more, and that he opened branches in Hartford, Waterbury and Fort Trumbull (now New London); the North Campus dormitories opened in 1950 and the Student Union in 1953.⁠[4][5][6]

UConn’s history page records that in 1934 the husky was chosen as mascot through a survey in the student newspaper The Connecticut Campus, and a student contest named it Jonathan, after Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut’s governor during the Revolutionary War; in 1938 the college received full accreditation from the Association of American Universities.⁠[3]

Opposition to a state university had a long history: a letter to the New York Herald on April 11, 1897, warned against a state university in Connecticut. In 1937 Representative Edward D. Seger of Colchester proposed a bill to establish a university calling for a $5 million appropriation to buy land; it was tabled and reintroduced in 1939. The college’s response, presumed to have been written by its 39-year-old president, Albert N. Jorgensen, stated: “The State College is in fact a State University, and therefore should be a university in name.”⁠[8]

The bill passed both houses without dissent; Governor Raymond Baldwin signed it on May 26, 1939, and the college formally became the University of Connecticut on July 1, 1939. The state’s investment in the college at that time was said to total $3,125,000.⁠[8]

Less than a year after the change of name, in 1939, a University Extension Center opened in Hartford on Bellevue Street; it moved to Woodland Street in 1943.⁠[9]

Bruce M. Stave writes that during World War II the military trained on campus and male students left to serve; for the duration of the war women students took the lead in campus organizations, tended farms through the Connecticut Women’s Land Army and worked late shifts at the Cheney Silk Mills in Manchester so that they could attend class. Four women joined 22 men in a second-year pilot training course run with the Civil Aeronautics Authority, and a small group of Japanese American (Nisei) students enrolled rather than go to internment camps.⁠[5]

The UConn School of Law began as the private Hartford College of Law, founded in 1921 by George William Lillard and Caroline Eiermann Lillard to provide a legal education for employees of Hartford-based insurance companies, with night classes downtown; J. Agnes Burns, of its first graduating class, was the first of its graduates admitted to the Connecticut Bar and the first female attorney to appear before the Connecticut Supreme Court. In September 1933 the college was approved by the American Bar Association.⁠[10]

UConn’s history page records that in 1943 the university acquired the Hartford Colleges of Law and Insurance, establishing the UConn School of Law, and that the Graduate School began doctoral-level coursework that year. The law school’s history page puts it this way: on June 1, 1943, the college’s trustees leased the school to the University of Connecticut for five years, and full title passed to the university on September 1, 1948, when it became the UConn School of Law.⁠[3][10]

The law school occupied eight sites in 85 years: in 1964 it moved to 1800 Asylum Avenue in West Hartford, and in 1984 to 55 Elizabeth Street, the former Hartford Seminary campus, for which Governor Ella Grasso signed legislation in June 1978 authorizing the expenditure of $6 million; that campus consists of six collegiate Gothic buildings designed by Allen and Collens and built in 1922–1926. In the 1930s tuition was $100 a year, and the student body grew to 100 part-time night students taught by three full-time instructors; enrollment reached 373 in 1964–65.⁠[10]

Encyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry records that the Hartford and Waterbury branches opened in 1946 and that the Stamford campus was founded in 1951. The Hartford branch opened in the spring of 1946 at Henry Barnard Junior High School on North Main Street with 30 instructors and 330 students; it moved to Hartford Public High School on Broad Street in 1951, when enrollment was 778, had more than 1,200 full- and part-time students in 1953, and moved to the Goodwin Estate at 1280 Asylum Avenue in 1954.⁠[11][9]

Bruce M. Stave writes that veterans flooded the campus after the war and that from 1946 to 1950 the university ran a special veterans’ campus at Fort Trumbull; also in 1946 it joined the Yankee Conference.⁠[5]

In 1949 UConn awarded its first doctoral degrees, two in chemistry and one in genetics; that year the trustees barred organizations that discriminate on the basis of race, religion or national origin.⁠[3]

Bruce M. Stave writes that during the McCarthy era four professors with alleged “red” connections were forced off campus, and that in 1956 the trustees and administration pledged to oppose “big-time” athletics.⁠[5]

In 1955 Provost Albert Waugh started the High School Cooperative Program, today UConn Early College Experience, which the university describes as the first concurrent enrollment program in the country; it now reaches more than 20,000 high school students a year.⁠[3]

In 1961 Connecticut legislation authorized a state medical school and a dental school; the governor who signed it was later honored in the name of John Dempsey Hospital. In 1962 a farm and orchard of more than 100 acres in Farmington was chosen as the site; in 1963 Lyman Maynard Stowe was appointed the first dean of the medical school, and after his unexpected death John Patterson became medical dean and executive director in 1965. In 1964 the trustees approved the UConn Health Center, a 106-acre, seven-building medicine and dentistry complex, and ground was broken that year; the School of Medicine describes it as Connecticut’s only public academic medical center and the only one in the nation with a medical school founded alongside a dental school.⁠[12][3]

The first medical class arrived in 1968 and met in temporary buildings while a building of about 1.2 million square feet was under construction; in 1972 the first 29 physicians received their medical degrees. John Dempsey Hospital opened in Farmington in 1975 and admitted its first inpatient, Raymond Vail; the phased construction of the UConn Health Center was completed in 1978 and dedicated by Governor Ella Grasso. Bruce M. Stave’s article gives the opening dates as 1961 for the medical school and 1968 for the dental school.⁠[12][3][5]

Homer Babbidge Jr. was president from 1962 to 1972, with Edward V. Gant acting president from July to October 1969. Bruce M. Stave writes that Babbidge shifted the university’s focus toward the liberal arts and humanities. The Daily Campus overview writes that during his presidency the library’s collection passed one million volumes and the university budget quadrupled, that he helped create the Whetten Graduate Center and graduate student residences, which roughly tripled the number of Ph.D. students, and that during Vietnam War protests the university granted amnesty to participants and Babbidge had hot chocolate served to protesters.⁠[4][5][6]

On October 10, 1962, the trustees approved a new Hartford campus in West Hartford; on September 7, 1970, the Hartford branch moved to 1800 Asylum Avenue in West Hartford, and classes began a week later.⁠[9]

Encyclopædia Britannica records that the Torrington campus was founded in 1965 and the Avery Point campus in 1967. Avery Point was the Branford House estate, built in 1903 for about $3 million by the railroad, steamship and hotel magnate Morton Plant; it passed to the State of ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry in the 1930s, and in 1942 the U.S. Coast Guard leased it for a school for non-commissioned officers. In 1967 UConn opened its Southeastern Branch there under Director William O’Hara, with five full-time and nine part-time faculty and 136 students; classes began on September 19, 1967.⁠[11][13]

Avery Point later received its first Sea Grant award from NOAA in 1972 and Project Oceanology joined the campus in 1973; the Marine Sciences Building opened on September 19, 2001, and on January 24, 2014, the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation (CIRCA) moved to the campus.⁠[13]

Glenn W. Ferguson was president from 1973 to 1978, John A. DiBiaggio from 1979 to 1985 and John T. Casteen III from 1985 to 1990; Edward V. Gant was acting president in 1972–1973 and 1978–1979. The Daily Campus overview writes that under Ferguson growth was limited by a recession and a tuition increase for in-state students, and that he helped build the School of Fine Arts and Psychology buildings, the Institute of Materials Science and Physics buildings and the library now named the Homer Babbidge Library; that DiBiaggio established the Tuition Fund and the Second Century Capital Campaign, the university’s first major fundraising campaign, while Avery Point opened for undersea research and the Board of Governors voted to close the Torrington Branch; and that Casteen aimed to reform undergraduate education around a common core, expand graduate programs and opened the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.⁠[4][6]

In 1979 UConn joined the Big East Conference; in 1985 and 1986 it hired Geno Auriemma to coach women’s basketball and Jim Calhoun to coach men’s basketball.⁠[5]

In 1981 UConn celebrated its centennial with a gala at Bushnell Memorial Hall in Hartford, and President John DiBiaggio and Harriet Jorgensen planted trees outside Jorgensen Auditorium; that year women’s field hockey won the first NCAA championship for a UConn women’s team sport.⁠[2][3]

In 1985 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching designated UConn a Research I institution.⁠[3]

Harry J. Hartley was president from 1990 to 1996, having been acting president in July 1987 and from July to December 1990. The Daily Campus overview writes that he worked to put together UCONN 2000 and oversaw the creation of the Asian-American Cultural Center, the Asian-American Studies Institute and the Puerto Rican and Latino Studies major.⁠[4][6]

In 1995 the state adopted UCONN 2000, a 10-year, $1 billion rebuilding plan, and the women’s basketball team won its first NCAA Division I championship, which the history page’s entry for that year calls the first of nine under Geno Auriemma.⁠[3]

Philip E. Austin was president from 1996 to 2007 (1996–2008 in Bruce M. Stave’s article) and was acting president again from June 2010 to May 2011. The Daily Campus overview writes that he oversaw the $1 billion UCONN 2000 program, which let the university issue bonds and address energy plant problems on its campus, and led the $1.3 billion 21st Century UConn program. UConn’s history page records that the legislature passed 21st Century UConn in 2002; Stave writes that UCONN 2000 was funded in 1995 and 21st Century UConn in 2003, together $2.3 billion in state bonding. In 2003 Rentschler Field, a 40,000-seat football stadium in East Hartford, opened.⁠[4][5][6][3]

In 1999 alumnus Raymond Neag gave $21 million to the School of Education and $2 million to the UConn Health Center, then the largest single gift in the university’s history. That year the school was designated the Neag School of Education, the first UConn school or college named for a philanthropic alumnus, based on a gift from Raymond Neag and Carole Neag.⁠[3][14]

In 1999 the men’s basketball team beat Duke University 77–74 to win its first NCAA Division I title.⁠[3]

Amy, a Holstein calf, was born at UConn in June 1999; her genetic donor was a cow named Aspen. UConn describes Amy as the first cloned farm animal in the United States, and Yang’s later clones helped show that cloned animals were safe to eat. The work was done by the team of the animal science professor Xiangzhong “Jerry” Yang.⁠[15][7]

Michael J. Hogan was president from 2007 to 2010. The Daily Campus overview writes that his was the shortest tenure of any UConn president, that he produced a $362 million plan to renovate and expand the UConn Health Center, and that about $170,000 was spent on fireworks for his inauguration. Susan Herbst followed; Bruce M. Stave writes that she became UConn’s first woman president in 2011. The Office of the President lists her term as 2011–2019, while the UConn Today article announcing Maric as 17th president gives 2010–2019.⁠[4][6][5][16]

In 2011 the state announced Bioscience Connecticut, an $864 million initiative with UConn Health at its center, and its groundbreaking took place on June 11, 2012, with Governor Dannel P. Malloy. In 2012 Malloy announced an agreement to launch the Jackson Laboratory’s $1.1 billion genomic medicine laboratory in Farmington; in 2014 the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine (JAX-GM) and UConn Health formed a research partnership, and JAX-GM opened a new building on the campus.⁠[12][3]

In 2013 Malloy signed Next Generation Connecticut, committing $1.7 billion over a decade to infrastructure, faculty, enrollment and STEM programs, including the plan to relocate the Hartford campus downtown. In 2014 a new 20-year master plan began to guide development of the Storrs campus. The Daily Campus overview writes that Herbst implemented the Bioscience Connecticut and Next Generation Connecticut state investments, opened the downtown Hartford campus, recommended eliminating student fees including course- and major-specific fees and helped start a $100 million student recreation facility, and that her tenure was controversial among students because tuition rose and the Torrington Campus and the UConn Co-op closed.⁠[3][9][6]

UConn’s history page states that in 2011 U.S. News & World Report ranked UConn among the top 20 public universities.⁠[3]

In the 2013–2014 season UConn’s field hockey team and both its men’s and women’s basketball teams won NCAA Division I national titles. The university states that it is the only school whose men’s and women’s basketball teams have both won in the same year, and that it has done so twice, the first time in 2004.⁠[3]

In 2016 the Peter J. Werth Residence Tower opened, the first new student residence in 13 years; the eight-story building houses 727 students in eight Living/Learning Communities and was the first Next Generation Connecticut project completed. In 2017 the women’s basketball team recorded its 111th consecutive win, a Division I record; the first permanent student housing outside Storrs opened in Stamford; and the UConn Hartford campus opened in the historic Hartford Times building.⁠[3]

After a six-month national search, UConn’s Board of Trustees unanimously confirmed Thomas C. Katsouleas as the 16th president at a special meeting, with his term beginning on August 1, 2019; Susan Herbst left when her contract ended that summer after eight years in the post. Katsouleas had been executive vice president and provost of the University of Virginia since 2015 and earlier dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering for seven years and professor of electrical and computer engineering; his field is plasma science, and he had authored or co-authored more than 250 publications.⁠[17]

Also in 2019, Wanjiku (Wawa) Gatheru was selected as UConn’s first Rhodes Scholar. Katsouleas stepped down in July 2021, after which Andrew Agwunobi served as interim president.⁠[3][16]

UConn’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to appoint Radenka Maric interim president from February 1, 2022, succeeding Interim President Andrew Agwunobi, who helped with the transition before leaving later that month for a position in private industry. Maric was born and raised in the former Yugoslavia, earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Belgrade and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in materials science and energy from Kyoto University in Japan, and worked in Japan for about a decade; she moved to Atlanta in 2001 to work for a fuel cell research company, became a group leader and program manager at the Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation in Canada in 2004, and joined UConn’s faculty in 2010 in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, serving the previous five years as vice president for research, innovation and entrepreneurship.⁠[18][16]

The announcement of her interim appointment states that under her leadership the university’s research enterprise had attracted a record of more than $375 million in external funding the previous year, and that she held multiple patents, had published hundreds of scholarly works, had received more than $40 million in research grants, and was an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.⁠[18]

On September 28, 2022, UConn’s Board of Trustees unanimously confirmed Radenka Maric as the 17th president, with a five-year term beginning immediately. The university states that more than 150 people applied or were nominated, that she was the first internal candidate selected since Harry Hartley in 1990, and that she is UConn’s second female president after Susan Herbst. The announcement adds that she speaks Croatian, English, German and Japanese and has a working knowledge of Italian.⁠[16][19]

In 2023 the men’s basketball team won its fifth NCAA Division I title, beating San Diego State 76–59; in 2024 it beat Purdue UniversityPurdue UniversityPurdue University is a public research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and Indiana’s land-grant university. Established and named by the Indiana legislature in 1869, it began classes in 1874. Today the Purdue system comprises main campuses in West Lafayette and Indianapolis, regional campuses and an online university.Open the full entry 75–60 and became the first NCAA men’s program in 17 years to win back-to-back titles.⁠[3]

UConn announced a $40 million gift to the School of Nursing from Elisabeth DeLuca, a 1969 graduate of the school, describing it as the largest gift in the university’s history for any purpose; it supports scholarships, nursing education programs and a new School of Nursing building in Storrs. DeLuca worked as a nurse at Bridgeport Hospital, where she was promoted to head nurse of intensive services, later joined her husband in running his business, and is president of the Elisabeth C. DeLuca Foundation and the Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation. The new building was also funded by $30 million in state bond authorizations approved in the 2023 legislative session; the Board of Trustees approved planning on June 28, 2023, and the university aimed to grow nursing enrollment from about 175 students to at least 250.⁠[20]

On the afternoon of September 29, 2023, UConn inaugurated Radenka Maric as its 17th president at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, in a ceremony also livestreamed and presided over by Provost Anne D’Alleva. Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz formally invested her with the office; Governor Ned LamontNed LamontNed Lamont is an American Democratic politician and businessman who has served as the 89th governor of Connecticut since 2019, after founding Campus Televideo, a provider of cable and satellite services to college campuses. In November 2026 he won a third term as governor.Open the full entry, in a video greeting, praised her as “an energizer”; Board of Trustees Chairman Dan Toscano (class of 1987, business) spoke; and Justin Roller (Ph.D. 2013), her former doctoral student and now Semiconductor Global Strategic Account Manager at Thermo Fisher ScientificThermo Fisher ScientificThermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is an American provider of life sciences tools, analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics and biopharma services, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.Open the full entry, spoke about her mentorship. Former presidents Philip Austin, Susan Herbst and Thomas Katsouleas attended. In her address Maric pledged to put students first and said that “UConn’s future depends on all of us working together.”⁠[19]

In December 2023 the Board of Trustees adopted a ten-year strategic plan; it took effect in 2024, built on student success, research impact and helping Connecticut thrive.⁠[3]

In 2025 the women’s basketball team beat South Carolina 82–59 for its twelfth national title and its first since 2016.⁠[3]

In April 2025 the UConn Foundation publicly launched the Because of UConn campaign with a goal of $1.5 billion, which it calls the most ambitious fundraising effort in the university’s 144-year history, with related targets of raising the six-year graduation rate to 90% and growing the endowment to $1 billion; on November 26, 2025, the total passed $800 million, more than halfway to the goal. As of the announcement of December 10, 2025, the priorities had raised more than $320 million for scholarships and fellowships under student success, more than $337 million for academic and innovation excellence (including 125 endowed faculty positions), more than $83 million for UConn Health and the university’s net zero goals, and more than $184 million for athletics, alumni engagement and the regional campuses.⁠[21]

In September 2025 UConn announced plans to name its School of Nursing the Elisabeth DeLuca School of Nursing: the Institutional Advancement Committee of the Board of Trustees had endorsed the proposal and sent it to the full board for a vote at its September 17 meeting, making it the second UConn school or college named for a philanthropic alumnus. The university gives DeLuca’s total gift as $50 million, the largest in its history for any purpose, of which about $20 million goes to building construction, about $5 million to equipment and $25 million to student scholarships and programming. The 92,000-square-foot School of Nursing building on Bolton Road, to be named DeLuca Hall, began construction in the fall of 2024 and was expected to open in the fall of 2026, with a further $30 million in state funds; its first-floor lecture hall is to be named Adomat Hall, for DeLuca’s mother. UConn’s Fact Sheet 2026 lists Elisabeth DeLuca Nursing among its 14 schools and colleges.⁠[14][22]

UConn’s Fact Sheet 2026 gives the following figures for fall 2025: total enrollment of 34,424, comprising 26,191 undergraduates (21,042 at the main campus and 5,149 at the regional campuses) and 8,233 graduate and professional students (6,867 in master’s and doctoral programs, 312 of them at UConn Health; 567 in law, 133 Pharm.D., 461 in medicine and 205 in dental medicine). The main campus enrolled 4,663 first-year students, 49% of whom were in the top 10% of their high school class; 68% of undergraduates were Connecticut residents, drawn from 169 Connecticut towns and 46 of the 50 states, and 6% of undergraduates and 19% of graduate and professional students were international, representing 116 countries. About 14,000 students live in 107 residence halls.⁠[22]

In 2024–25 UConn awarded 8,971 degrees, including 5,693 bachelor’s, 1,827 master’s and 408 doctoral degrees. At the main campus first-year retention was 92%, the four-year graduation rate 75% and the six-year rate 84%. In fall 2025 UConn had 11,431 faculty and staff; full-time faculty numbered 1,672 at the main and regional campuses (67% tenured or tenure-track) and 519 at UConn Health, and a further 697 adjunct lecturers taught at Storrs and the regional campuses. It has 299,631 alumni worldwide, 163,263 of them living in Connecticut.⁠[22]

For 2025–26, in-state undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board totaled $36,110 and out-of-state $58,778; total financial aid in fiscal 2025 was $733.7 million, with nearly 26,400 students at the main and regional campuses receiving financial aid packages. The total current funds budget for fiscal 2026 is $3.6 billion, with revenue of $1,778.2 million at the main and regional campuses (including $268.2 million in state appropriation and $1,004.4 million in tuition and fees) and $1,809.5 million at UConn Health (including $1,169.3 million in net patient care). Private giving in fiscal 2025 totaled $144.2 million, and the endowment stood at $668.6 million at the end of fiscal 2025, including more than $281 million for scholarships. External sponsored awards for research, training and public service totaled $314.1 million in fiscal 2025, 78.1% of it federal. Since fiscal 1996, $4.9 billion in state general obligation bonds have been authorized for the UConn 2000 capital program and $4.0 billion spent.⁠[22]

Further figures in the Fact Sheet 2026: the fall 2025 main-campus first-year class included 85 valedictorians and 74 salutatorians, and 3,710 valedictorians and salutatorians have enrolled across all campuses since 1995; and first-year underrepresented enrollment was up 259% since fall 2012; the average SAT (critical reading and math) of entering first-years who submitted scores was 1325, against a national high school average of 1029 and a Connecticut average of 989. Women made up 54% and minority students 47% of undergraduates, and 56% and 28% of graduate and professional students; main-campus students who graduate within six years take an average of 4.1 years. Of 2024–25 degree recipients, 55% were female and 35% minority. Of fiscal 2025 private giving, alumni and students gave $92.7 million, parents and other individuals $23.2 million and corporations and organizations $28.3 million; of external awards, the main and regional campuses received $224 million (71%) and UConn Health $90 million (29%). Collective bargaining agreements cover 92% of employees at the main and regional campuses and 86.5% at UConn Health. The fact sheet also lists UConn among the top-ranked public universities in U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges (2026).⁠[22]

On June 9, 2026, the Because of UConn campaign passed $900 million, more than 60% of its $1.5 billion goal. UConn calls fiscal 2026, the first full fiscal year of the public campaign, the biggest fundraising year in its history, with $171 million raised, 143% more than in fiscal 2019, the year before the campaign began; 69,655 donors made 276,868 gifts, 89% of them under $1,000, and the article gives the endowment’s value as $715.26 million. Major gifts that year included $15 million for UConn Athletics from Robert Skinner (class of 1993) and Stefanie Skinner, including a $10 million planned gift for an endowed fund supporting the men’s and women’s basketball head coaches, and $10.45 million from the Elisabeth C. DeLuca Foundation for nursing and STEM career pathways for Waterbury students.⁠[23]

UConn describes itself as Connecticut’s public research university and the state’s flagship public university. Its Fact Sheet 2026 lists 14 schools and colleges: Agriculture, Health & Natural Resources; Business; Dental Medicine; Neag Education; Engineering; Fine Arts; the Graduate School; Law; Liberal Arts & Sciences; Medicine; Elisabeth DeLuca Nursing; Pharmacy; Ratcliffe Hicks Agriculture; and Social Work. It offers eight undergraduate degrees in 128 majors, 17 graduate degrees in 100 fields, and six professional degrees (JD, LLM, MD, DMD, Pharm.D. and SJD).⁠[24][22]

The main campus is at Storrs, with four regional campuses at Avery Point, Hartford, Stamford and Waterbury. UConn Health in Farmington comprises the Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine, graduate programs, clinics and UConn John Dempsey Hospital, with clinical sites across the state. Storrs and the regional campuses cover about 3,938 acres and UConn Health about 210 acres. The university handbook describes Avery Point as a center for marine and maritime studies that hosts Connecticut’s sea grant program, and notes that the School of Law campus in Hartford is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.⁠[22][25]

UConn’s Board of Trustees has 21 members: 12 appointed by the governor, two elected by students, two elected by alumni and five ex officio. The board appoints the president, sets general policy, approves new schools and colleges, manages investments and directs spending. The president is the chief executive responsible for carrying out the board’s policies; the provost is the chief academic officer overseeing the schools, colleges, institutes and regional campuses; the vice presidents form the president’s cabinet; and the University Senate is a 91-member legislative body of faculty, professional staff, administrators and student representatives.⁠[25]

The Office of the President lists Benjamin F. Koons, Charles L. Beach, Albert N. Jorgensen, Harry J. Hartley and Philip E. Austin as presidents emeritus.⁠[4]

UConn observes April 21 as Founders’ Day. In a 1966 memo Clark Bailey, special assistant to President Homer D. Babbidge, recommended an annual observance; the first official observance came in 1976, when the General Assembly passed a resolution and Governor Ella Grasso issued a proclamation. Anniversary celebrations in 1916 and 1931 were moved from April to June to coincide with commencement. On the question of who the founders were, the UConn Today article discusses the Storrs brothers, the legislators and Governor Bigelow, the first trustees, and Theodore Sedgwick Gold, whose earlier work with the Cream Hill School and a soldiers’ orphanage preceded his service on the trustees’ subcommittee that organized the new school.⁠[2]

Encyclopædia Britannica lists among UConn’s notable alumni Chris Murphy, Tansu Çiller, Ann Beattie, Rebecca Lobo and Franklin Chang-Díaz.⁠[11]

Raina JainRaina JainRaina Jain is an American entrepreneur and inventor, the founder and chief executive of the wellness-shot company Queen Bee. While in high school she co-invented with her teacher HiveGuard, a beehive entrance that uses thymol against the Varroa mites that infest honeybee colonies, for which a U.S. patent was granted, and in 2022 she was selected for the Thiel Fellowship.Open the full entry, from Greenwich, Connecticut, founded HiveGuard, which uses thymol to kill Varroa mites, while in high school. UConn Today described her in early 2021 as a first-year UConn student in the inaugural cohort of Freshman Female Founders at the Peter J. Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and in September 2021 as a sophomore engineering major (class of 2024). On January 6, 2022, the Thiel Foundation announced her selection for the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry. The Greenwich Free Press wrote in 2025 that she received a full-ride scholarship to UConn and dropped out of college just two weeks in; the website of her company, Queen Bee, says that she left two weeks in to accept a Thiel Fellowship and build full time.⁠[26][27][28][29][30]

Among UConn faculty, Joseph J. Helble, the 15th president of Lehigh UniversityLehigh UniversityLehigh University is a university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States, founded in 1865 with a gift from Asa Packer.Open the full entry, was professor and chair of chemical engineering at UConn before moving to Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private institution of higher education in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded by Eleazar Wheelock, it received a royal charter on December 13, 1769. The 1819 Supreme Court ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward preserved its private status. Alongside undergraduate liberal arts education, Dartmouth includes the Geisel, Thayer, Tuck and Guarini schools. It enrolled 7,273 students in fall 2025 and held a $9 billion endowment at June 30, 2025. Sian Leah Beilock, in office since June 2023, remained president as of October 2026.Open the full entry, and Domenico Grasso headed UConn’s civil and environmental engineering department when Smith CollegeSmith CollegeSmith College is a liberal arts college for women in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. Chartered in 1871 under the bequest of Sophia Smith and opened in 1875, it is one of the Seven Sisters schools.Open the full entry announced his appointment to lead its engineering program in September 1999. The animal science professor Xiangzhong “Jerry” Yang was born and raised on a farm in the Chinese village of Dongcun, about 300 miles south of Beijing (his hometown is in Hebei Province), came to the United States in 1983 on a national fellowship and earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is a private research university in Ithaca, New York, and a member of the Ivy League. It is New York State's federal land-grant university, a distinction unique within the Ivy League. Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White founded the university in 1865, and it opened in 1868. In addition to its Ithaca campus, Cornell operates Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City and a medical college in Qatar. It enrolled 26,793 students in fall 2024. Its president is Michael I. Kotlikoff.Open the full entry; he was diagnosed with salivary gland cancer in 1999, two years after arriving at UConn, and died on February 5, 2009, after a ten-year battle with the disease. UConn’s Board of Trustees approved naming the road from Route 195 to the UConn Dairy Bar Jerry Yang Road.⁠[31][32][15]

University of Connecticut: Official website: https://uconn.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

UConn School of Law: Official website: https://law.uconn.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

UConn School of Medicine: Official website: https://medicine.uconn.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

UConn Foundation: Official website: https://www.foundation.uconn.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

X: Public account: https://x.com/uconn (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/school/university-of-connecticut/ (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/uconn (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/uconn/ (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/UConn (opens in a new window).⁠[33]

TikTok: Public account: https://www.tiktok.com/@uconn (opens in a new window).⁠[33]