About OSU
Founded in 1868, Oregon State University is a Land Grant campus - one of the "people's colleges," as Abraham Lincoln famously described them -- and over the past 40 years has added Sea Grant, Space Grant and Sun Grant designations. Ivy League stalwart Cornell is the only other U.S. university so recognized.
OSU is the only Oregon institution to hold both the Carnegie Foundation's top ranking for research universities, a recognition of the depth and quality of OSU's graduate education and research programs, and the Carnegie Foundation's "Community Engagement" designation, which speaks to the depth and breadth of the university's service to its many communities. OSU is Oregon's largest non-health sciences university, earning most of the federal research dollars awarded to Oregon colleges and universities and bringing in more than $275 million in fiscal year 2010 in scientific grants and contracts.
Through its centers, institutes, Extension offices and Experiment Stations, OSU has a presence in every one of Oregon's 36 counties, including its main campus in Corvallis, the Hatfield Marine Sciences Center in Newport, OSU Cascades in Bend and multiple locations in Portland, including the OSU Portland Center.
OSU's academic programs are increasingly recognized as among the best in the nation. Conservation biology, agricultural sciences, nuclear engineering, forestry, fisheries and wildlife management, community health, pharmacy and zoology are ranked in the nation's top 10 for their respective disciplines. They are among the 81 undergraduate and 100 graduate degree programs offered through OSU's 12 colleges.
Those programs enroll nearly 24,000 students from every county in Oregon, every state in the country and more than 90 nations. OSU also attracts a greater share of high-achieving students from Oregon than any other institution, particularly from the Portland Metro area.
OSU's main 400-acre campus in Corvallis includes a Historic District, making OSU one of only a handful of U.S. university campuses to be so included on the National Register of Historic Places. The district includes 83 buildings and outdoor spaces, all arranged around a campus plan created in 1909 by famed architect John C. Olmsted of the Boston-based Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm. The Olmsted's are known for their design of such iconic outdoor spaces as New York's Central Park and Yosemite National Park.
