Utah Valley

Coordinates: 40°10′N 111°40′W / 40.167°N 111.667°W / 40.167; -111.667

Utah Valley (aka "Happy Valley") is a valley in North Central Utah located in Utah County, and is considered part of the Wasatch Front. It contains the cities of Provo, Orem, and their suburbs, including Alpine, American Fork, Cedar Hills, Elk Ridge, Genola, Goshen, Highland, Lehi, Lindon, Mapleton, Payson, Pleasant Grove, Salem, Santaquin, Saratoga Springs, Spanish Fork, Springville, Vineyard and Woodland Hills.

Geography

Utah Lake is a natural shallow fresh water lake in its center. All rivers in the valley flow into Utah Lake, which itself empties into the Jordan River to the north. That river flows into the Salt Lake Valley through the Jordan Narrows, a gap in the Traverse Mountains.

Economy

Novell and WordPerfect were instrumental in making the Utah Valley a focus for software development. Today this area has many small companies whose employees have previously worked at Novell. Also located there are Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University. Adobe moved into this area which became known as Silicon Slopes.

Utah Valley University

Utah Valley University, or UVU, is a publicly funded university located in Orem, Utah, United States with a 2011 enrollment of 33,395 students. Utah Valley University is the largest public university in the State of Utah. The university offers approximately 58 bachelor's degrees, 66 associate degrees, 21 certificate/diploma programs, and 3 high-demand master's degrees in education, business, and nursing.

The university’s Wasatch Campus in Heber City, Utah, also offers bachelor's degrees in business management and secondary education, as well as associate degrees in accounting, behavioral science, business management, elementary education, and general education.

Previously called Utah Valley State College (UVSC), the school attained university status in July 2008, changing to Utah Valley University. Matthew S. Holland, appointed as the first president of UVU, officially began his duties on June 1, 2009.

History

UVU was founded in the fall of 1941, when the Utah State Vocational Office consolidated federal work program classes into one campus in Provo. At this time, the school was known as the Central Utah Vocational School.

University

A university (Latin: universitas, "a whole") is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which grants academic degrees in various subjects and typically provides undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The word "university" is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars."

History

Definition

The original Latin word "universitas" refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc." At the time of the emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, specialised "associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights usually guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were located" came to be denominated by this general term. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.

In modern usage the word has come to mean "An institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having the power to confer degrees," with the earlier emphasis on its corporate organization considered as applying historically to Medieval universities.