Celebrating 180 Years of Greatness

David Perkins Page is named the chief officer, as principal, of the New York State Normal School. In 1847, he publishes Theory and Practice of Teaching, which becomes the most widely used textbook in American teacher education.

The Normal School Company E, composed of approximately 100 faculty and students, is formed to fight in the Civil War. Led by Professor of Mathematics Capt. Albert N. Husted ’45 and Capt. Rodney Kimball, the company engages in 17 battles, including Gettysburg. Husted Hall is later named for him.

Evelena Williams becomes the first known African American graduate of the Normal School.

Delta Omega Sorority, the institution’s first recorded Greek-lettered society, is founded.

The inaugural college baseball team plays its first game in Castleton, losing by the score of 5 to 2.

The Normal College becomes the New York State College for Teachers, a formal recognition of its growth into a liberal arts college for teachers.

The Alumni Association introduces the first Torch Light Ceremony and Procession to initiate graduating seniors into its ranks. The Torch Ceremony is a tradition that continues to this day.

Marcia Brown graduates. She will become the first three-time winner of the Caldecott Medal, the American Library Association’s highest award for illustrators of children’s picture books.

Pedguin, a penguin-like figure, is selected as school mascot in a contest. Paul Kirsch, ’51, who submitted the winning selection, later states he initially called the mascot a pedwin, a nod to the College’s mission to educate future teachers.

The college’s first Homecoming is held. Today, thousands of Alumni return each year to watch the football team and reconnect with friends, faculty and mentors.

The Graduate School of Public Affairs was transferred to the State University of New York at Albany. Originally known as the Albany Graduate Program in Public Administration, it was established in 1947 as a joint effort between New York University and Syracuse University to meet the need for academic training in public administration. It was named the Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy in 2001.

After a student contest, the Great Dane is chosen as the University’s new mascot. The winning entry is submitted by Kathy Earle ‘67.

The Educational Opportunities Program (EOP) is founded. Since then, more than 5,000 students have proudly graduated from the program, which has also become a model for successful student support programs across the campus and beyond.

An era of protest and activism, including boycotts of dining halls, protests over tuition increases and budget cuts to higher education, support for civil and women’s rights and environmentalism, and protests over the Vietnam War.

Five Quad Volunteer Ambulance Service, staffed by students, responds to its first emergency, and answers 18 calls in its first month of service. By the 2022-23 academic year, Five Quad was responding to about 800 calls annually.

With construction of the Uptown Campus complete, the Downtown Campus is officially re-named as such and rededicated with the restoration of Draper and Richardson halls. The schools of Criminal Justice, Library and Information Science, and Social Welfare become the first degree-granting departments housed on the Downtown Campus since the 1960s.

Author Toni Morrison is named the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities at UAlbany. While at UAlbany, Morrison writes parts of Beloved, a landmark novel of 20th century literature. Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

The Collins Fellow is established. Named for former President Evan Collins, it honors faculty who exhibit extraordinary devotion to the University over a sustained period. The first recipients are Frank Carrino of Hispanic & Italian Studies and Helen Horowitz of Economics.

The School of Public Health Sciences opens offering master's and doctoral programs in biomedical sciences and environmental health and toxicology. Now known simply as the School of Public Health, SPH was founded as a nationally unique collaboration between the University and the New York State Department of Health and its world-renowned Wadsworth Center —a close relationship that remains to this day with many of the faculty holding appointments at both institutions.

The University is named a Center for Advanced Thin Film Technology by New York for its work in the emerging field of nanotechnology. UAlbany becomes a worldwide leader in this science, establishing a school and then the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

The SUNY Board of Trustees officially appoints Karen R. Hitchcock UAlbany’s 16th president to succeed President Swygert, making Hitchcock the first woman to lead the University. She would serve until 2004.

The Science Library, the first new academic space on the UAlbany campus in 35 years, opens, initiating a 20-year period of physical growth.

The University is designated a Research 1 University by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, signifying the highest level of research and doctoral activity.

The 194,000-square-foot Life Sciences Research Building opens to foster research and development in the biosciences and eventually house UAlbany’s world-renowned RNA Institute.

The new School of Business building opens. Two years later it is named the Massry Center for Business after a $5.25 million gift from the Massry family to support the School of Business and key University-wide initiatives. It is now known as the Massry School of Business.

Women’s field hockey advances to the NCAA tournament semifinals, the first trip to a Division I Final Four in school history.

In Schuylerville, the University completes the first installation of a New York State Mesonet site. The Mesonet will eventually grow to 127 weather stations across New York, as well as a series of advanced subnetworks, providing best-in-class early warning weather detection in the country.

Down by as many as 16 points and with their star player fouling out with 6:18 remaining, UAlbany rallied to stun No. 5 Florida 61-59 in an NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament first-round game at the Carrier Dome.

United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaks to a capacity crowd of 4,500 in what was then known as the SEFCU Arena in a conversation with NYSWI Director Paul Grondahl.

Men’s lacrosse is ranked as the No. 1 team in the nation — a first for any UAlbany Division I team and any Division I program in the SUNY system. In May, the Great Danes advance to the NCAA Final Four.

Marking the University’s 175th anniversary, UAlbany opened the 50-year-old time capsule buried beneath Dutch Quad when the Uptown Campus was built. The capsule included a letter from students relating what it was like to be among the first living on the new campus. The capsule would not be reinterred for three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the COVID-19 pandemic paralyzes the global economy, UAlbany’s world-renowned RNA Institute develops a full-scale, in-house saliva testing program for students, faculty and staff, allowing UAlbany to safely re-open for in-person instruction during the Fall 2020 semester while contributing to the global understanding of the novel Sars-CoV-2 virus. At the same time, faculty from UAlbany’s School of Public Health are deeply involved in some of the earliest COVID-19 research on the spread of the disease, vaccine efficacy, its impact on health care workers, health messaging and other crucial topics.

The University converts the SEFCU Arena into a medical clinic as it begins mass-vaccinations of students, faculty and staff against COVID-19. The massive effort requires assistance from across campus and marked a hopeful step toward campus life returning to normal. The first POD was held a month earlier in the PAC.

The state-of-the-art ETEC building, designed to bring together scientists and entrepreneurs from across disciplines to collaboratively find solutions to society’s most complex challenges, opens. The $180 million facility, certified Platinum LEED in 2023, is the epicenter of many of the University’s signature research strengths, including climate science, emergency preparedness and cybersecurity.

The University receives $75 million in state funding to complete the transformation of the former Albany High School into a state-of-the-art engineering college and fund the construction of a new AI supercomputer, significantly expanding UAlbany’s capacity in this major emerging field.

More than 1,500 students participate in the first UAlbany Showcase, with more than 900 presentations, exhibits and performances spread across UAlbany's Uptown Campus — demonstrating the many ways UAlbany students Unleash Greatness.

The University Council votes to rename Indian Pond to Parker Pond in honor of the three Tonawanda Seneca siblings – Caroline (Ga:hahno), Nicholson (Gye-wah-go-wa) and Isaac Newton (Gane-yo-squa-ga-oh) Parker – who were among the first nine Indigenous students to enroll at UAlbany.

New national rankings published by U.S. News and World Report and the Wall Street Journal list UAlbany within the top tier of public institutions in the nation. U.S. News also lists UAlbany as a top performer in social mobility for the fifth consecutive year, within the top 10 percent of all ranked institutions.

The Great Danes claim their first CAA football title, sharing it with Villanova and Richmond, and are awarded the NCAA's No. 5 seed in the playoffs, the highest the team has ever been ranked. In the quarterfinals, UAlbany takes down No. 4 Idaho before falling in the semifinals to No. 1 South Dakota State.

Gov. Hochul announces the creation of the New York State Weather Risk Communication Center, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between university researchers and state emergency managers. The SWRCC was announced on a TODAY Show segment with Al Roker.