全新版大学英语book3教案.doc

PAGE  PAGE 32 Book3 Unit 1 Changes in the Way We Live Background Information 1. Ivy League: The Ivy League is an athletics association, founded in 1954, of eight universities HYPERLINK /wiki/University \o University  located in the eastern  HYPERLINK /wiki/United_States \o United States United States. The term has connotations of academic excellence, as well as a certain amount of elitism. All of the Ivy League universities share some general characteristics: They are among the most prestigious and selective universities in the U.S.; they consistently place close to the top of college and university rankings; they rank within the top one percent of the worlds universities in terms of financial endowment; they attract top-tier students and faculty (although many undergraduate classes are taught by graduate students or adjunct faculty—the extent of this practice varies greatly, for example, Brown University and Columbia University require all their professors to teach undergraduates as part of their university-college models, and Dartmouth College simply avoids letting graduate students teach undergraduates in most cases); and they have relatively small undergraduate populations, ranging between 4,100 for Dartmouth College and 13,700 for Cornell University. The Ivies are also all located in the Northeast region of the United States and are among the oldest universities in the country—all but Cornell University were founded during America’s colonial ear. Notably, the Ivies also prohibit the offering of athletic scholarships to students in most cases; this ban differentiates Ivy teams from those of schools that permit students to be paid to attend or to join a team. The Ivy League universities are privately owned and controlled. Although many of them receive funding from the federal or state governments to pursue research, only Cornell has state-supported academic units, termed statutory colleges, that are an integral part of the university. 2