Campus

A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. A modern campus is a collection of buildings that belong to a given institution, either academic or non-academic. Usually a campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls, student centers or dining halls, and park-like settings.

Etymology

The word derives from a Latin word for "field" and was first used to describe the grounds of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1774. Some other American colleges later adopted the word to describe individual fields at their own institutions, but "campus" did not yet describe the whole university property. A school might have one space called a campus, one called a field, and another called a yard.

History

The tradition of a campus began with the medieval European universities where the students and teachers lived and worked together in a cloistered environment. The notion of the importance of the setting to academic life later migrated to America, and early colonial educational institutions were based on the Scottish and English collegiate system.