First Western Academy
The First Western Academy is a super academy of Ganyak, located in the college town of Pecos, New Mexico, some twenty kilometers southeast of Santa Fe. The largest and most prestigious super academy in North America and one of the largest and and most renowned in the world, First Western Academy has become the alma mater of a number of now well known superheroes (and a handful of villains).
History
One of the oldest of the super academies (though still relatively new), the First Western Academy was founded in 1963 by the Operator. He initially finagled a grant from the U.S. government to pay for the school's construction and its initial staffing, in exchange for conceding government oversight—in effect, though the Operator was the president of the university, the school was officially run by the government, and the government's then newly formed Board of Enhancement had the final say over its policies and administration. As the university president, the Operator was pressured into giving up his superhero code name, going instead by his legal name, Sidney Bellencourt.
The Academy began as a much smaller affair than it is today, with only a handful of buildings; at its opening, it boasted a faculty of ten, and a student body of three hundred. The the administration under Bellencourt and the Board of Enhancement gradually expanded the school over time, though it quickly outgrew the narrow valley in which it had been constructed. Though initially there were plans to build on the neighboring hills, in 1974 it was decided to extend the university not to the side but underground. Once this policy was begun, it accelerated quickly, and the subterranean construction quickly outpaced and soon replaced altogether the added construction aboveground.
In 1983, Bellencourt disappeared; while there are to this day numerous rumors about his fate, to this day it remains uncertain. For all Bellencourt's reputation for paranoia, he had apparently expected to continue indefinitely as the Academy's president; in any case, he had left no specific plans for a successor, nor was there any obvious next person in the chain of command. After a brief struggle among the Academy's administration, the Board of Enhancement stepped in and appointed a new president, Marella Quineva. Quineva's appointment was somewhat controversial largely because or her lack of superpowers; there were many who thought that only a super could really comprehend the issues facing supers enough to effectively run the university. Quineva, however, proved herself a very capable administrator, enough so that she gained a sufficient reputation to leveraged the position into a political career, stepping down as president after nine years in office. The Board did decide to appoint a super as her successor, but Alec Saldrin, formerly known as Mr. Moil, proved as feckless and forgetful as an administrator as Quineva had been rubrical and reliable. After an undistinguished five-year term, Saldrin was replaced by the superhero Cubbyhole, a.k.a. Nathan Dash.
Campus
At first glance, the First Western Academy looks quite small for a university of its fame. Appearances, however, are deceptive; while the immediately visible part of the campus may be small, this is because most of the campus is located underground, in a vast series of tunnels and chambers beneath the supraterraneous buildings and the hills to the east and west. Even most of the aboveground buildings aren't entirely aboveground, but extend for several stories below.
The overground portion of the campus is arranged in an irregular quadrilateral, a bit shy of a quarter kilometer across at its widest point. To the east it fronts directly on State Road 63 (which doubles as Pecos's Main Street), whence parking lots to the north and south of the campus proper are accessible. At the front of the campus is Reger Hall, best known for Reger Auditorium, the site of many assemblies and presentations. Opposite Reger Hall, on the west side of the campus, is Obero Hall, the university's administrative center. The north and south sides of the campus are lined by various lecture halls and offices. Most of the aboveground dormitories are on the north side of the campus; the best known landmark of this side of the campus is the Beacon, a dormitory topped by a tall antenna visible from a considerable distance. The best known buildings on the south side of the campus are Zou Library and the Hall of Honor. The center of the campus is given over to a large open space officially called Arradi Plaza, after the real name of the superhero the Quill who disappeared shortly before the university's founding, but better known to students as simply "the Quad". At the center of the Quad is a large fountain, boasting a statue commemorating the Quill and a few other superheroes who vanished at about the same time, Bombshell and Triton.
Across Main Street to the east is the New Mexico Museum of Parabilities, not formally affiliated with the university but nevertheless associated with it. The NMMP is a repository of relics and memorabilia from supers and their activities, open for public viewing five days a week. It's one of the foremost such establishments in the continent, rivaled only by the National Museum of Enhancement in Washington, D.C. and the Augmentarium in Vancouver, B.C..
The bulk of the modern academy is below the ground; however, because the hypogean portion is not clearly visible, its exact extent and arrangement is not immediately obvious. Given the rumors of various presidents or board members arranging for their own additions to the campus without consulting or informing their peers, it could well be that no one individual knows about every hall and chamber—and indeed that there may be some hidden places of which no one now living is aware. Certainly, though, there are many buildings and passages which are common knowledge. Many dormitories, lecture halls, offices, and other facilities fill the Academy's underfold. One notable location is Mole Street, an entire simulated city street, several blocks long, constructed underground for the use in training exercises and forays. Another is Wanakabe Cave, a natural cavern that excavators accidentally broke into in expanding the Academy and which has now been set apart as a sort of park. Perhaps the most infamous location in the Academy is Laurel Hall, an underground section run directly by the Board of Enhancement and closed to all but those few students specifically invited there. Even those few students who are asked to go to Laurel Hall are strictly forbidden to talk about what they are told or experience there, which inevitably has led to all manner of rumors of sinister goings-on.
Academics
Though the Academy tries to give its enrollees a well-rounded education, covering all the standard sciences and humanities and offering dozens of different majors, they of course leaven their learning with matters more directly related to supers. Students at the Academy are required to take classes on the history of supers, ethics as they relate to superpowers, and other carrological topics. In some academic subjects—notably mathematics and molecular biology—the First Western Academy has a high enough standing to attract students without superpowers or any interest in carrology. Therefore, while most of the Academy's students are supers, just under two percent are non-powered individuals.
The Academy's faculty includes many prominent scholars from various fields. Many of the institution's instructors are themselves supers, who apply their first-hand knowledge of how their super abilities relate to their field, but the Academy also employs many non-powered professors employed for their academic credentials. Famous faculty members include Madeleine Bhura, of the biology department; Merrick Waterman, in philosophy; and the (allegedly) reformed villainess Cynthia Rodina, formerly known as the Harvestman.
Extracurriculars
The Academy prides itself on its thorough and rigorous academic program, but it does make allowances for its students to participate in extracurricular activities as well. The Academy has its own student paper, the Daily Titan, as well as a student-run radio station, KFWA. (It is KFWA's antenna that forms the top of the Beacon.)
A number of student fraternities and sororities are active at the Academy, most of them housed on Guadalupe Lane in Pecos. While many of these are the same nationwide organization with presences at other universities, there are also represented some of the fraternities and sororities unique to super academies, namely Upsilon Pi Rho, Zeta Phi Nu, Kappa Alpha Rho, and Mu Lambda Beta. The hazing rituals of the Academy's fraternities and sororities are notorious, especially among the specifically super organizations.
Governance
The Academy's current president is Cubbyhole, who in defiance of the precedent set by his predecessors has chosen to continue to go by his code name, Cubbyhole, even though his legal name is now public knowledge. (The Academy's staff frequently refer to him as "Mr. C".) While the president has considerable say over the Academy's affairs, though, the ultimate power rests in the hands of the Board of Directors, a body appointed by the U.S. Board of Enhancement to decide on the Academy's proceedings. While the Board leaves the president a relatively free hand in most matters, they remain willing to step in if they feel his decisions aren't in line with their desires. There are currently twelve members of the Board of Directors, of which the most influential are Peter Baldridge, Samantha Xu, and Olivia Rutilez.
Alumni
Many alumni of the First Western Academy have risen to prominence as superheroes—and, in some regrettable cases, as supervillains. Among the best known of the former are the Compass, the Knight Errant, Cerulean, the Beam, the Artisan, and Arclength. The school's few known villainous alumni include Sandstorm and the Spanner.