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Learning
for Life
A history of New Haven-area colleges and universities
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Business New Haven
11/30/1998
By: Priscilla Searles
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Area students seeking post-secondary education in southern Connecticut have a major advantage over students in most other locales - there are many choices in many price ranges, offering student assistance to those who qualify.
Although the region's oldest institution of higher education dates back to the 18th century, in the last three decades the area has given birth to a number of newer colleges and universities - all contributing to a rich and multi-hued tapestry of intellectual endeavor.
Yale University, of course, is the area's oldest university. In 1701 ten Connecticut Congregationalist clergymen met in Branford, each contributing a gift of books for the “founding of a College in this colony.” The college, then known as the Collegiate School, was originally located in Killingworth (now Clinton) in the residence of the Rev. Abraham Pierson, its first rector. The school moved several times, always looking for a permanent place to locate.
New Haven wanted the school, and began a campaign to raise the needed funds. In 1716 the school was moved to New Haven. Funds from Elihu Yale in 1718 were used to complete the first college building, and in the benefactor's honor the name was changed to Yale College.
The first graduating class consisted of one student with a faculty of the rector and one tutor, with classes held in one wooden building. The curriculum originally consisted of logic, rhetoric, grammar (Greek, Latin and Hebrew), arithmetic, astronomy and geometry - six of the seven liberal arts inherited from ancient European tradition. The program was designed to prepare young men for a life of public service.
The passing of time dictated changes, and soon students were studying music. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, the study of English grammar and composition was added. Shortly thereafter the study of literature was also added. Following the Revolution, modern history and political philosophy were introduced, then modern languages. In the early 19th century chemistry, natural history, geology and mineralogy were added to the curriculum.
Yale has continued to add graduate and professional schools to make it a true university. These have included a school of medicine, divinity school, law school, graduate school of arts and sciences (which awarded the first Ph.D. earned in the United States) schools of art, music; forestry and environmental studies, nursing, drama, architecture and management. Today the faculty comprises more than 2,400 men and women.
Albertus Magnus College traces its beginnings to 1924, when the Dominican Congregation of St. Mary of the Springs purchased an estate at 700 Prospect Street in New Haven to found a women's college. The group named the mansion on the property Rosary Hall. The college's charter was signed on July 13, 1925. The first classes were held in Rosary Hall on September 24, 1925.
Since its founding the college has acquired several mansions and homes which are now used for student housing and administration. An extensive building program has provided a freestanding chapel and a state-of-the-art, $6 million athletic complex.
Some important firsts for the school include admitting men to all programs in 1985, and offering its first graduate degree, through the master of arts in liberal studies program, in 1992. Today three graduate programs are offered.
Albertus points to the success of its graduates with pride. Some of these include: Margaret M. Heckler, former U.S. Representative from Massachusetts and U.S. ambassador to Ireland; Ellen Bree Burns, the first women to be named a federal judge in Connecticut; Mary Wrenn, the first woman to earn the rank of vice president at Merrill Lynch; and Martha McCaffrey, the first women to become president of a major insurance company.
In 1969 the college's board of trustees was reorganized, and today 80 percent of its members are lay people. The other 20 percent are members of the Congregation of Dominican Sisters of St. Mary of the Springs.
Plans for the organization of Quinnipiac College as a non-profit co-educational institution were initiated and developed by Samuel W. Tator in the spring of 1929. A group of his former students served as the incorporates of the institution, then known as Connecticut College of Commerce. Judge Philip Troup, one of the incorporators, was elected the first president of the college that same year and served until his death in 1939, at which time Tator was elected president.
From the beginning, control has been vested in a board of trustees, which now included public and alumni members, three faculty members and two students.
Quinnipiac College relocated within New Haven as expansion in enrollment and curriculum demanded, and in 1966 the school moved to the current campus in Hamden. The name Quinnipiac College was chosen in 1951 by students to commemorate the early Indian settlers who made their home in and around the New Haven Harbor area.
In 1952 Quinnipiac assumed administrative control of Larson College, a private women's college. Today the college offers master's degrees in nine areas. In August 1995, the college received full accreditation from the American Bar Association to award the J.D. degree through its School of Law. A new School of Law Center was dedicated in October 1995.
The University of New Haven was founded in 1920 as the New Haven YMCA Junior College, a division of Northeastern University. The college became New Haven College in 1926 by an act of the Connecticut General Assembly. For nearly 40 years the college held classes in space rented from Yale University.
In September 1958, the college completed construction of a classroom building on Cold Spring road in New Haven for its daytime engineering programs. That same year the college received authorization from the Connecticut legislature to offer bachelor of science degree in the fields of business accounting, management and industrial engineering.
Although the student body on the new Cold Spring campus numbered fewer than 200 persons, the college's facilities were fact becoming overcrowded. The meet the college's needs, in 1960 the board of governors purchased three buildings and 25 acres of land in West Haven formerly belonging to the New Haven County Orphanage.
The combination of increased classroom space and the four-year degree programs sparked a period of tremendous growth in enrollment and facilities. In 1961, the year after the college moved to West Haven, the graduating class numbered 75. Thirty-seven years later the figure has climbed to 1,100 graduates annually.
New Haven College received full accreditation for its baccalaureate programs and in 1969 added a graduate school. Today the school offers a doctoral program and 30 master's programs, along with a wide array of graduate certificates. The school became the University of New Haven in 1970.
Undergraduate and graduate courses and programs are offered on the main campus as well as in New London and other off-campus and in-plant sites. A select group of undergraduate and graduate programs are offered on a cohort basis in Israel. Bachelor of science programs in fire science are offered at two locations in California. Graduate courses in selected fields are offered in New London, Stamford, Stonington, Newington and Newtown, as well as Cyprus College in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Sacred Heart University was founded by the Most Rev. Walter W. Curtis, S.T.D., second bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport. The idea for a university had first come to Curtis shortly after his appointment as Bridgeport's bishop on September 23, 1961. He had surveyed his new diocese and was struck by the lack of Catholic higher-education facilities, especially for students of modest circumstances.
Curtis looked to the campus of Notre Dame High School for the college. The property was located on Park Avenue in Fairfield, a major local artery and close to the Merritt Parkway, making it accessible to the expanding populations of Bridgeport, Fairfield and the surrounding communities. The high school's declining enrollment also suggested that its facilities could be put to better use.
As Curtis looked over the property, he began to develop an idea for a lay-administered college, the first of its kind in the nation. He appointed a committee of trustees, which he served as chairman. The trustees were charged with developing a plan to found a college.
Despite the absence of a plan for any graduate programs, a bill was introduced in the state legislature on January 23, 1963 to incorporate Sacred Heart as a university. The necessary provisional accreditation from the state was hastily granted a week later.
Sacred Heart's first class totaled 173 students - 125 men and 48 women. Today enrollment is well over 5,600, making it the third largest Catholic university in New England. Tuition the first year was $750, with the bishop personally paying tuition for four students. Once the university was established and running, Curtis continued to serve as chairman of the board of trustees, a position he held until his retirement in 1988 at age 75. Curtis passed away in October 1997.
The University of Bridgeport was founded in 1927 as the Junior College of Connecticut - the first junior college chartered by any legislature in the Northeast states.
Its founders wanted to develop in students “a point of view and a habit of mind that promotes clear thinking and sound judgment in later professional and business experience.” Although the university has changed in many ways since then, this commitment to student preparation and community service remains central to its mission.
The school became the University of Bridgeport in 1947, when the governor chartered the institution as a four-year university with authority to bestow baccalaureate degrees. By that time, the former Barnum estate at Seaside Park had been purchased and growth in students, faculty, programs and facilities was rapid. The school had previously been located on Fairfield Avenue. The college of arts and sciences and the college of business were added, and shortly thereafter, the colleges of nursing, education and engineering.
The Junior College expanded its offerings through a merger with the Weylister Secretarial Junior College of Milford and the addition of the Fones School of Dental Hygiene (at its inception in 1949 the only such school in Connecticut and the second in New England).
Today the University of Bridgeport campus encompasses 86 acres with an enrollment of approximately 3,500 students. It has a faculty of 183. In 1951 the university awarded its first master's degree, and in 1979 inaugurated its first doctoral degree program. BNH
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