page_title: Loyola University Chicago
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Loyola University Chicago / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Loyola University Chicago
context_page_description: Loyola University Chicago is a private Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1870 by the Jesuits, Loyola is one of the largest Catholic universities in the United States. Loyola's professional schools include programs in medicine, nursing, and health sciences anchored by the Loyola University Medical Center.
  Comprising eleven colleges and schools, Loyola offers over 80 undergraduate and 140 graduate/professional programs and enrolls approximately 17,000 students. Loyola has six campuses across the Chicago metropolitan area, as well as a campus in Rome and guest programs in Beijing and Ho Chi Minh City. The flagship Lake Shore Campus is on the shores of Lake Michigan in the Rogers Park and Edgewater neighborhoods of Chicago, eight miles north of the Loop.
  Loyola's athletic teams, nicknamed the Ramblers, compete in NCAA Division I as members of the Missouri Valley Conference. Loyola won the 1963 NCAA men's basketball championship, and remains the only school from Illinois to do so. The Ramblers are also two-time NCAA champions in men's volleyball.
context_section_description: Loyola was established as St. Ignatius College on June 30, 1870, by Jesuit priest and educator Fr. Arnold Damen. At that time Chicago was a much smaller, but rapidly growing, city just shy of 300,000 people, and as a result the original campus was much closer to the city center along Roosevelt Road. In 1909 the school was renamed Loyola University, and in 1912 it began to move to the current Lake Shore Campus; today the original building is part of St. Ignatius College Prep, adjacent to the University of Illinois at Chicago.
  To meet the growing needs of Chicago, Loyola established professional schools in law (1908), medicine (1909), business (1922), and nursing (1935). The Chicago College of Dental Surgery became part of the university in 1923, and was closed 70 years later. A downtown campus was founded in 1914, and with it the School of Sociology. As the predecessor to the School of Social Work, it enrolled Loyola's first female students, though the school would not become fully coeducational until 1966. Loyola Academy, a college prep high school, occupied Dumbach Hall on the Lake Shore Campus until it was relocated to north suburban Wilmette in 1957.
  The current Water Tower Campus opened in 1949. In 1962, Loyola opened a campus in Rome near the site of the 1960 Summer Olympics. In 1969, Loyola established the School of Education and consolidated medical programs at the Loyola University Medical Center, a hospital and health care complex located in Maywood, an immediate suburb of Chicago. The university legally separated from the Jesuits in 1970, and today is under lay control and governed by a board of trustees. Loyola purchased neighboring Mundelein College in 1991.
  Major capital campaigns since the turn of the century have greatly enhanced Loyola's academic profile and campuses. In 2005 the Loyola University Museum of Art was established on the Water Tower Campus, and the Rome campus was renamed in honor of Director Emeritus John P. Felice. In 2009, the Cuneo Foundation presented the university with the Cuneo Mansion and Gardens, a 100-acre estate with an Italianate mansion and extensive collections of art and furnishings located in suburban Vernon Hills. The $50 million gift is the largest in Loyola history.
  In 2010, Loyola purchased the Resurrection Retreat Center in Woodstock, which became the school's fifth campus for retreat and ecological study. In 2012, Loyola alumnus Michael R. Quinlan donated $40 million to the business school, which was renamed in his honor. During this time over 200,000 square-feet of LEED-certified sustainable spaces have been built on the Lake Shore Campus alone, along with significant mixed-use developments on the Water Tower Campus.
  Today, Loyola ranks among the top 104 universities in the nation, and is in the midst of over $800 million in capital construction projects. In 2015, the university established Arrupe College, a uniquely structured two-year college designed to give low-income students access to a Loyola education.
  On May 23, 2016, Loyola named Jo Ann Rooney its 24th president. She is the first female president in the history of the university.
caption: Mundelein Center
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