Drexel University is a private university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The 16th largest private university in the nation, Drexel is made up of nine colleges and four schools, most of which serve both undergraduate and graduate students. It offers 96 undergraduate degree programs, 88 master's programs, and 35 doctoral programs. Drexel was founded as a technical school in 1891 for the "improvement of industrial education as a means of opening better and wider avenues of employment to young men and women." Drexel began awarding undergraduate degrees in 1914, starting with the Bachelor of Science in engineering; before that, Drexel granted certificates or diplomas in the field of enrollment. In 1931, Drexel began offering graduate degrees through the School of Home Economics.
Since its founding the university has graduated over 100,000 alumni. Certificate-earning alumni such as artist Violet Oakley and illustrator Frank Schoonover reflect the early emphasis on art as part of the university's curriculum. With World War II, the university's technical programs swelled, and as a result Drexel graduated alumni such as Paul Baran, one of the founding fathers of the Internet and one of the inventors of the packet switching network, and Norman Joseph Woodland the inventor of barcode technology. In addition to its emphasis on technology Drexel has graduated several notable athletes such as National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball players Michael Anderson and Malik Rose, and several notable business people such as Raj Gupta, former president and chief executive officer of Rohm and Haas, and Nicholas Schorsch, chief executive officer of VEREIT, and Nicholas Howley, founder and chairman of TransDigm Group.
The Drexel University College of Medicine retroactively considers graduates from all of the medical institutes that it has acquired to be alumni of the College of Medicine and Drexel University. This includes MCP Hahnemann University (1993âÂÂ2002), Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (1850âÂÂ1993), and Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia (1848âÂÂ1993).