How can a small university like Carnegie Mellon have such a big impact on the world? Ironically, being small is a key reason the university is so prolific. An intimate environment, coupled with an extraordinary ratio of world-class thinkers, has produced a culture of collaboration that may be unmatched elsewhere in higher education.

How that culture emerged is now chronicled in a series of essays by Carnegie Mellon faculty, including the late Nobel Prize-winner Herb Simon, the "father of artificial intelligence." Find out what caused Carnegie Mellon's meteoric rise from its trade school...