40 Fun Facts About Drexel University

Which invention did Drexel graduate students Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver patent, drawing on Morse code?

Barcode lines began as Morse dots and dashes that Woodland drew in beach sand, then stretched downward with his fingers. The first product scanned, in 1974, was a pack of chewing gum.

Which newly launched personal computer did Drexel students receive at a steep discount in early 1984?

Macintosh machines for Drexel carried a blue D on the case, and Apple agreed to a $1,000 price for a model that sold to the public for $2,495.

Which future Wall Street titan became the junior partner of Drexel University founder Anthony Drexel in 1871?

J. P. Morgan was sent to Drexel as a troubled young banker in need of a mentor. Two years after Drexel died, their firm was renamed for the junior man, and it is an ancestor of JPMorgan Chase.

Which classic American side dish did Drexel home economics graduate Dorcas Reilly invent in a Campbell's test kitchen?

Green bean casserole was one of hundreds of recipes Reilly created at Campbell's, alongside a tomato soup meatloaf. In 2002 her recipe was donated to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Which kind of Drexel student group has performed since 2005 under the name 'The Drexel Football Team'?

Improv comedy troupe members took the name because Drexel has had no varsity football since the sport was cut after the 1973 season. Former players have come to watch and praised the idea.

Which 1970s television talent contest spoof was hosted and produced by Chuck Barris, a 1953 Drexel graduate?

The Gong Show made Barris a public figure in 1976, years after he had created The Dating Game. He also wrote the pop hit Palisades Park, first recorded by Freddy Cannon.

Virginia Halas McCaskey, who studied business management at Drexel, was the longtime principal owner of which NFL team?

Chicago Bears founder George Halas was her father, and she had gone to Drexel hoping to become his secretary. She instead inherited the team in 1983 and owned it until her death in 2025.

Sandra Lee, a 1998 graduate of Drexel's medical college, became a YouTube and TV star under which nickname?

Dr. Pimple Popper took off in 2015, when Lee saw how popular her skin extraction clips had become. TLC gave her a series of the same name in 2018.

Drexel graduate Christopher Ferguson commanded the final Space Shuttle mission in 2011 aboard which orbiter?

Atlantis flew that last mission, STS-135, with a crew of only four, the smallest on any shuttle flight since 1983. Ferguson had earned a mechanical engineering degree at Drexel in 1984.

Which name does Drexel's dragon mascot carry, honoring an alumnus who attended its basketball games for over 20 years?

Mario the Magnificent honors Mario V. Mascioli, a Class of 1945 graduate and trustee who was a fixture at Drexel games. The teams have been called the Dragons since the 1920s.

Drexel won its first intercollegiate basketball game in the 1890s by a lopsided 26–1 against which school?

Temple was still called Temple College when it managed that single point. Drexel's first season was 1894–95, which makes its program one of the earliest in college basketball.

In 2018 Drexel erased a 34-point deficit, then the biggest comeback in Division I basketball, to beat which team?

Delaware led 53–19 at one point before the Dragons stormed back to win 85–83, a swing of 36 points.

Which future two-time NBA champion led Drexel to its 1996 NCAA tournament upset of fifth-seeded Memphis?

Malik Rose averaged over 16 points and 12 rebounds a game at Drexel, then won his rings with San Antonio in 1999 and 2003. He went to the same Philadelphia high school as Wilt Chamberlain.

Drexel's basketball rivalry known as the Battle of 33rd Street is played against which neighboring team?

Penn Quakers are Drexel's most notable rival, and the campuses sit so close that it is one of the nearest rivalries in college basketball. Both schools belong to Philadelphia's City 6.

Drexel's women won five national championships between 1947 and 1954 in which sport, dropped by the school in 2003?

Rifle teams shot for Drexel from 1919 until 2003, when the program was shut down over public safety concerns and the cost of renovating the range.

Drexel's unbeaten 12–0 men's team of 1958 was voted national champion in which sport?

Soccer had no NCAA playoff until the following year, so the sport's governing association simply awarded Drexel the 1958 title. For that reason the NCAA does not officially recognize it.

Drexel won eleven national collegiate team championships between 1988 and 2004 in which martial art?

Karate brought Drexel its titles in two team events, kata and kumite, at the National Collegiate Karate Association championships. The program practiced the Shotokan style.

From 2011 through 2019, Drexel's Daskalakis Athletic Center hosted the annual U.S. Open of which racquet sport?

Squash arrived at Drexel in a hurry: varsity men's and women's teams were added in 2011 under head coach John White, a former world number one.

Drexel crews have won gold at which regatta, the largest regular intercollegiate rowing event in the United States?

Dad Vail is named for Harry Emerson Vail, a longtime rowing coach at the University of Wisconsin. The regatta settled on Philadelphia's Schuylkill River in 1953.

Drexel opened in 1891 as an institute of 'Art, Science and' which third field, completing its original name?

Industry rounded out the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry, founded to teach practical skills to women and men of all backgrounds. It took the name Drexel University in 1970.

Which Drexel program, introduced in 1919, is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States?

Co-op education has Drexel students alternate classroom terms with full-time work in their field. A five-year student typically works 18 months for up to three employers.

Which famous inventor joined Andrew Carnegie among the guests at the 1891 dedication of Drexel's main building?

Thomas Edison sat in a crowd that also included Levi Morton, the vice president of the United States. Speaker Chauncey Depew praised the new school for preparing students for jobs in science.

When Congress refused in 1877, Drexel University founder Anthony Drexel's bank paid the wages of which institution?

US Army pay for the whole force was underwritten by Drexel's firm to restore investor confidence. The same bank later helped rescue the New York Stock Exchange during the Panic of 1907.

Saint Katharine Drexel, niece of Drexel's founder, opened a New Orleans school that grew into which university?

Xavier University of Louisiana grew from a high school she opened on the former site of Southern University. Canonized in 2000, she was the first saint born a US citizen.

Which Philadelphia research museum, founded in 1812 as the oldest of its kind in the Americas, joined Drexel in 2011?

Academy of Natural Sciences naturalists sponsored expeditions and amassed more than 17 million specimens. After the affiliation the institution added Drexel's name to its own.

Hahnemann Medical College, a forerunner of Drexel's College of Medicine, was named for the founder of which practice?

Homeopathy was founded by Samuel Hahnemann, and the Philadelphia college that took his name opened in 1848. Drexel absorbed its successor, MCP Hahnemann University, in 2002.

David Shulkin, who earned his medical degree at a college since merged into Drexel, led which US cabinet department?

Veterans Affairs was run by Shulkin from 2017 to 2018, after he had served as its under secretary for health in the previous administration. He was also a vice dean at Drexel's College of Medicine.

Drexel's Charles D. Close School is described as the first freestanding US school devoted to which subject?

Entrepreneurship students there can launch companies through the school's Baiada Institute, an incubator that gives Drexel startups resources and mentors.

In 1961 Drexel founded an institute billed as the first in the United States for which branch of engineering?

Biomedical work at Drexel grew from that institute into a full school whose research spans biomaterials, neuroengineering and cardiovascular engineering.

Alassane Ouattara, who earned a Drexel business degree in 1965, became president of which West African country in 2010?

Ivory Coast first knew Ouattara as an economist: he worked for the International Monetary Fund and served as the country's prime minister in the early 1990s.

Drexel library science graduate Elizabeth Gray Vining tutored the crown prince of which country after World War II?

Japan's Emperor Hirohito personally chose Vining to teach English to Crown Prince Akihito from 1946 to 1950. She also won the Newbery Medal for her novel Adam of the Road.

Meinhardt Raabe, who earned a Drexel MBA in 1970, played a coroner in which classic 1939 film?

The Wizard of Oz cast him as the Munchkin who certifies the Wicked Witch of the East dead. He outlived every other cast member who had a line of dialogue.

Drexel computer science graduate John Gruber co-created which plain-text formatting language with Aaron Swartz in 2004?

Markdown was built so people could write in easy-to-read plain text that converts to valid HTML. Gruber also writes the Apple enthusiast blog Daring Fireball.

Lin Bin, who earned a Drexel master's degree in computer engineering, co-founded which Chinese smartphone maker in 2010?

Xiaomi was launched by Lin with Lei Jun and five others, after Lin had worked on Internet Explorer at Microsoft and served as an engineering director at Google.

Which celebrated illustrator taught at Drexel from 1894 to 1900, with Maxfield Parrish among his students?

Howard Pyle also taught Violet Oakley and Jessie Willcox Smith at Drexel, then left to found his own school of illustration after 1900.

Drexel graduate Paul Baran is called a founding father of the Internet for inventing which networking method?

Packet switching had two independent inventors, and Baran called his units message blocks; the word packets came from the other, Donald Davies. Baran graduated from Drexel in 1949.

Which podcast host earned computer science degrees and a doctorate at Drexel, where his father taught plasma physics?

Lex Fridman finished his Drexel doctorate in 2014 and began his long interview podcast in 2018. His brother Gregory was on the Drexel faculty too.

Guinness World Records listed Drexel master's graduate Alia Sabur, appointed at age 18, as the world's youngest what?

Professor Sabur joined Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, three days before her 19th birthday. Her Drexel master's degree was in materials science.

Which student newspaper has covered Drexel since 1926, with television producer Chuck Barris among its past columnists?

The Triangle won two National Pacemaker Awards for excellence in college newspapers in 2004. Drexel's yearbook has been called the Lexerd since 1913.

Drexel-educated analyst Elaine Garzarelli became a Wall Street star for predicting which 1987 event?

Black Monday crash warnings from Garzarelli came while she was a stock analyst at Shearson Lehman. On October 19, 1987, the Dow fell 22.6 percent in a single day.