The University of Denver provides its students with a backdrop of the Rocky Mountains and Denver, offering access both to solitude and a bustling city. Known locally as D.U., the university was founded on a potato farm as a Methodist seminary in 1864 by territorial Governor John Evans; it is the oldest independent university in the Rocky Mountains region. An unstable economy forced the institution to close, but it reopened in 1880. The university has about 11,000 students on a 125-acre campus and offers more than 170 undergraduate and 120 graduate and professional programs. It has produced eight Rhodes scholars. Its sports teams play under the Pioneers banner.
The university employs 2,900 faculty members and staff on a budget of $380 million. Its alumni include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; U.S. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.); Ahmad Ismail, the mayor of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and David Adkins, the comedian known as Sinbad.
