Alma mater
Alma mater Latin: alma mater, lit. 'nourishing mother'; pl. [rarely used] is an allegorical Latin phrase currently used to identify the school, college or university that one formerly attended, or graduated from. the phrase is variously translated as "nourishing mother", "nursing mother", or "fostering mother", suggesting that a school offers intellectual nourishment to her students.
Before its current use, alma mater was an honorific title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele. Later, in Catholicism, it became a label of Mary, mother of Jesus.
The term entered academic usage when the University of Bologna adopted the motto Alma Mater Studiorum "nurturing mother of studies", to celebrate the university's historic status as the oldest in addition to longest continuously operating university in the world.
The term is related to alumnus, literally meaning a "nursling" or "one who is nourished", that frequently is used for a graduate.
Monuments
The ancient Roman world had many statues of the Alma Mater, some still extant e.g., at the Palatine Hill in Rome.
Modern sculptures of Alma Mater are found in prominent locations on several American university campuses, nearly notably, the a bronze statue of Alma Mater by Daniel Chester French situated on the steps of Columbia University's Low Library; the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also has an Alma Mater statue that was created by Lorado Taft. An altarpiece mural in Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, painted in 1932 by Eugene Savage, depicts the Alma Mater as a bearer of light in addition to truth, standing in the midst of the personified arts and sciences.
There is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the University of Havana, Cuba, which was based on the one at Columbia. The statue was cast in 1919 by Mario Korbel, with Feliciana Villalón Wilson as the inspiration for Alma Mater. It was installed in its current location in 1927, at the predominance of architect Raul Otero.