Santa Clara University was founded in 1851 by the Society of Jesus as Santa Clara College and is California’s oldest operating institution of higher learning. It was established on the grounds of Mission Santa Clara de Asìs, the eighth of the original 21 California missions. The college originally operated as a preparatory school and did not offer courses of collegiate rank until 1853. The institution became known as the University of Santa Clara in 1912, when the schools of engineering and law were added. For 110 years, Santa Clara University was an all-male school. In 1961, women were accepted as undergraduates and Santa Clara University became the first coeducational Catholic university in California. The number of students and faculty tripled over the next decade and the university began the largest building program in school history with eight residence halls, a student union, and an athletic stadium. In the early 1970s, the Board of Trustees voted to limit the size of the undergraduate population, an action that was intended to preserve the character and ensure the quality of the university for generations to come. In 1985, the university adopted Santa Clara University as its official name. Bibliography: Santa Clara University. “About SCU – History.” www.scu.edu/about/history.cfm (Accessed Nov. 23, 2010) McKevitt, Gerald, S.J. The University of Santa Clara: A History, 1851-1977. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1979.

Frederick Albert Cook was born in Callicoon, New York, in 1865. He received his M.D. from New York Medical School in 1890, and soon used his newly acquired skills to become a surgeon for Robert Peary’s 1891-1892 Arctic expedition, where he proved to be a valuable asset in preventing scurvy among the explorers. During his time on Adrien de Gerlache’s Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-1899, he visited Tierra del Fuego, where he met Anglican missionary Thomas Bridges, who had prepared a dictionary in Yahgan. Cook borrowed this dictionary and never returned it, later attempting to publish it as his own work. In 1903, he became his own explorer during a trip to the area surrounding Mount Denali, previously known as Mount McKinley, and later returned to supposedly climb it in 1906. Though he claimed he was the first to scale the mountain, Peary supporters during the North Pole debacle noted that he reached the wrong summit, a spot now known as Fake Peak. In 1907, Cook announced he was determined to discover the North Pole, and claimed to have reached it after a 14-month disappearance. Robert Peary then claimed in 1909 to have truly discovered it first. While Cook originally congratulated Peary, Peary purposefully campaigned to discredit Cook’s claims, since Cook had no navigational records of his trip to prove his achievement. After reviewing Cook's limited records, a commission of the University of Copenhagen ruled in December 1909 that he had not proven that he reached the pole. In 1911, Cook published a memoir of his expedition, continuing to assert his success. His reputation as an explorer never recovered, and he died in 1940.

Robert Edwin Peary Sr. was born in Cresson, Pennsylvania in 1856. He earned a civil engineering degree from Bowdoin College in 1877, and later joined as an engineer for the United States Navy in 1881. During his time with the Navy in 1885, he noted in his diary that he would be the first man to reach the North Pole. His first expedition took place across Greenland by dog sled in 1886, and served as a learning experience for future endeavours. He returned to Greenland in 1891 on a larger, more difficult expedition to see if Greenland extended as a land mass to the North Pole. Using Inuit survival techniques, he was able to complete a few more Greenland expeditions before attempting his final expedition from Ellesmere Island to the North Pole in 1909. During this time, he established “Camp Jesup,” allegedly within 5 miles of the pole. However, upon returning from his expedition, he learned that Frederick Cook, a surgeon from one of his previous expeditions, claimed to have reached the North Pole a year prior in 1908. Peary campaigned to discredit Cook, and after a trial at the University of Copenhagen, Peary was proved correct and Cook’s claim was disproved after he failed to supply proof (though Peary himself refused to submit his records, and the National Geographic Society forbade researchers from seeing them). Later on, Peary would become the leader of the Explorers Club and the Aero Club of America, along with proposing air mail routes that became the genesis of the U.S. Postal Service’s air mail system. He died a successful man in 1920.