Hunter College, established in 1870, is a selective public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized nationally for its diversity and reputation for academic excellence. Hunter comprises six schools: The School of Arts and Sciences, The School of Education, The Roosevelt Public Policy Institute, The School of Health Sciences, The School of Nursing, and The School of Social Work. Hunter College has its origins in the 19th-century movement for normal school training which swept across the United States. Hunter descends from the Female Normal and High School (later renamed the Normal College of the City of New York), organized in New York City in 1870. Founded by Irish immigrant Thomas Hunter, who was president of the school during the first 37 years, it was originally a women's college for training teachers.