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Wake Forest University is a private university that is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and is known for its programs in the liberal arts.
The Wake Forest University campus is located north of downtown Winston-Salem, roughly at the juncture of Polo Road to the north and University Parkway to the east.
Bachelors, master's, and doctoral programs are offered through the Babcock Graduate School of Management, the Divinity School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Law, School of Medicine, and the Wayne Calloway School of Business and Accountancy.
History
The university first opened February 3, 1834 by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina as the Wake Forest Manual Labor Instituite; it was located in its namesake town Wake Forest, North Carolina. In 1838 it was renamed to Wake Forest College. In 1894 the School of Law was established, followed by the School of Medicine in 1902. The university held its first summer session in 1921.
The School of Medicine moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1941 and became the Bowman Gray School of Medicine. The following year, 1942, Wake Forest admitted its first women undergraduate students. In 1956, as a result of large endowments from the Z Smith Reynolds Foundation, the rest of the college also moved to Winston-Salem. A graduate studies program was inagurated in 1961, and in 1967 the school became the fully accredited Wake Forest University.
The Babcock Graduate School of Management was established in 1969, and the James R Scales Fine Arts Center opened in 1979. In 1995, the business school was renamed to the Wayne Calloway School of Business and Accountancty, while in 1997 the medical school was renamed to the Wake Forest School of Medicine.
On October 11, 2000, Wake Forest hosted the presidential debate between candidates George W Bush and Al Gore, in Wait Chapel.
Athletics
Originally the Wake Forest team was known as the Deacons. However, in 1941 after a particularly good win against the Trinity (now Duke) Blue Devils, a newspaper reporter wrote that the Deacons "fought like Demons," giving rise to the current team name, the "Demon Deacons".
The Demon Deacons participate in the NCAA's Division I (I-A for football) and in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Recent athletic honors include winning the regular-season ACC basketball championship in 2003 under the leadership of forward Josh Howard.
Wake Forest is generally regarded as a decent basketball team, one that often qualifies for the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship (18 times in the school's history). They reached the Final Four once, in 1962. The school's most famous basketball alumni are Billy Packer, a guard on the 1962 Final Four team who became far more famous as a basketball broadcaster, and current NBA superstar and two-time league MVP Tim Duncan.
Their football team is historically poor, though in the early 2000's they achieved moderate success and attended bowl games. Wake has the smallest undergraduate enrollment of any school that plays Division I-A football--even smaller than that of the service academies.
Both the current head basketball coach, Skip Prosser, and football coach, Jim Grobe, were signed to huge 10 year contracts in 2003. The current Athletics Director is Ron Wellman.
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