Ursinus College
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Ursinus College |
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| Established | 1869 |
| Type | Private |
| Endowment | $118,000,000 |
| President | John Strassburger, B.A., Bates College; M.A., Cambridge University; Ph.D., Princeton University |
| Undergraduates | 1,499 |
| Location | Collegeville, PA, USA |
| Campus | 168 acres |
| Mascot | Bear |
| Website | www.ursinus.edu |
Ursinus College is a small, highly selective, coeducational, liberal arts college in Collegeville, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The college is known for its study abroad and undergraduate research programs and for the internships and other independent learning experiences it offers its students.
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[edit] Background
[edit] School Mission
| “ | To enable students to become independent, responsible and thoughtful individuals through a program of liberal education. That education prepares them to live creatively and usefully, and to provide leadership for their society in an interdependent world. | ” |
[edit] History
In 1867, members of the German Reformed Church began plans to establish a college where "young men could be liberally educated under the benign influence of Christianity." On February 5, 1869, the college was granted a charter by the Legislature of Pennsylvania to begin operations in its current location - what was at the time the grounds of Todd’s School (founded 1832) and the adjacent Freeland Seminary (founded 1848).
Dr. John Henry Augustus Bomberger, for whom the campus' signature Romanesque building is named (see Gallery, below), served as the college’s first president until his death in 1890. Bomberger had proposed naming the college after Zacharias Ursinus, a 16th-century German theologian and an important figure in the Protestant Reformation, in order to declare the Reformed orthodoxy of the College.
Instruction at the college began on September 6, 1870. On October 4 of the same year, the Zwinglian Literary Society - which was to be resurrected in the early 1990s - was founded. For many years the annual opening meetings of 'Zwing' and its rival society, Schaff, were the major events of the student year. Women were first admitted to Ursinus College in 1881, as a direct consequence of the closing of the Pennsylvania Female College in 1880, and a separate literary society for women, The Olevian, was formed.
The Ruby, Ursinus' yearbook, was first published by the Class of 1897 as a tribute to Professor Samuel Vernon Ruby, who collapsed as he was entering Bomberger Hall in 1896 and died in its chapel, surrounded by students and teachers who had gathered there for morning prayers. The first aerial photograph of Ursinus was taken by future college president D.L Helfferich and was published in the 1921 Ruby.
The Reformed Church united with the Evangelical Synod of North America to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church in 1934, and with the Congregational Christian Churches in 1957 to form the modern-day United Church of Christ. The school is now independent in character and operates on a growing $118,000,000 endowment.
[edit] Ursinus Today
[edit] Academics
Ursinus established its chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1992. At the time, only 242 of the nation's 3,500 colleges and universities had gained acceptance into the elite group. The school is also a member of the Watson Foundation List, Project Pericles, Project DEEP, and the Annapolis Group. All students and faculty have been issued Dell Latitude laptop computers since the Fall of 2000.
While students choose from 28 majors and 49 minors, Biology, Business & Economics, and English are the three programs with the most students. Many graduates go on to attend law and medical schools, and 90 percent of those who do apply to these schools are accepted.
[edit] Current Students
While the first students enrolled at Ursinus were almost exclusively Pennsylvanians, today the school's 1,499 students come from 25 states and 15 countries. Ten percent are African American, 3% are Latino, and 4% are international students. The school has a 12:1 student/faculty ratio.
[edit] Campus and Facilities
The 168-acre campus is 25 miles northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is also within three hours’ driving distance of New York City, Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC. Notable facilities at Ursinus include the Phillip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, the Walter W. Marstellar Memorial Observatory, and the Kaleidoscope Peforming Arts Center, which opened in April 2005 with a performance by jazz legend Wynton Marsalis.
The college's Myrin Library has an extensive Pennsylvania German archive and is one of three government repositories in Montgomery County.
[edit] Intercollegiate Athletics
In the immediate years following its founding, there were no organized athletics at Ursinus College. Baseball matches held against neighboring towns, hiking along the Perkiomen Creek and in nearby Valley Forge, and skating, bathing and boating in the Perkiomen were popular pasttimes for students. Students first organized a tennis club in 1888, and intercollegiate baseball began with play against Swarthmore College, Haverford College, and Muhlenberg College in 1890. The college's first football team was also fielded in 1890.
A field house with shower and locker facilities was first built in 1909, and a "field cage" with facilities for indoor basketball practice was built behind the field house in 1910.
The school is now a member of the Centennial Conference, founded in 1992 by eleven selective colleges in the mid-Atlantic region, including Bryn Mawr, Haverford College, Franklin and Marshall, and Swarthmore College. Ursinus' athletic teams regularly place regionally and nationally; Its field hockey team was the 2006 National Champion for NCAA Division III. The team earned spots in the national championship game three times before, between 1975-77, as a Division I program, and the United States Field Hockey Hall of Fame's permanent home is at the college.
The college was well-known for many years for its Patterson Field endzone, in which a sycamore tree grew undisturbed. Ripley's Believe it or Not featured the famous tree for being the only one on an active field of athletic play. [1] Wood from the tree was eventually incorporated into furniture and other keepsakes given and sold to college alumni.
[edit] Ursinus and the World Beyond
[edit] Outside Recognition
- 1992: At the school's annual Founders Day celebration, Polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk declares that uniting Ursinus' psychology and biology departments under one roof "represents a union of nature and human nature," and calls the school "one of the few colleges integrating these concepts which will serve as a role model for other institutions"
- 1999: Featured in Loren Pope’s Colleges That Change Lives
- 2001: Listed on "Yahoo! Most Wired Colleges"
- 2004: The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools accrediting team writes that “Developments at Ursinus in the last five years are nothing short of astonishing”
- 2005: Featured in National Survey of Student Engagement report identifying 20 of 700 campuses nationally which "do an especially good job of educating students", and have a “clear educational purpose and coherent educational philosophy" and an “unshakable focus” on student learning
- 2006: Named one of 25 "Hottest Freshman Year" schools and "one of America's 367 most interesting schools" by Newsweek Kaplan College Guide
- 2007: U.S. News America's Best Colleges (A+ rating, "first-rate programs", one of country's “Best Liberal Arts Colleges" (53rd among its 215 peers in terms of graduation and retention)
- 2007: The Princeton Review identifies Ursinus as one of the nation's "Best 361 Colleges"
[edit] Notable Faculty
- Raymond Dodge, experimental psychologist: Appointed Professor of Philosophy in 1896
- Royal Meeker, statistician: Taught at Ursinus from 1906 until his appointment by President Wilson to be Commissioner of Labor Statistics in 1913. He later served (1923-24) as Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor and Industry
- John Mauchly, computer pioneer and creator of the ENIAC: Was a faculty member at Ursinus from 1933 to 1941, working at Ursinus's science labs in Pfahler Hall, a building which still stands on campus (see Gallery, below)
- Deborah Poritz, former Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court: Taught at Ursinus in the late 1960s
- Joseph Melrose, former U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone: Ambassador-in-Residence of the school's International Relations Program
[edit] Notable Alumni and Former Students
- Jacob G. Francis (Class of 1891): Author, historian, Church of the Brethren pastor, and founder of Elizabethtown College
- Linda Grace Hoyer Updike (Class of 1923): Author and mother of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike; her literary papers are kept at the Myrin Library. John Updike was made an honorary graduate in 1964
- Wesley Updike (Class of 1923): Father of John Updike
- Teru Hayashi (Class of 1938): Cell physiologist, senior research scientist at the Papanicolaou Research Institute, and Professor of Biology, corporation member, and trustee at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole
- J.D. Salinger (attended 1937-38): Author of The Catcher in the Rye; he left the school after one semester and continued his studies at other institutions. Attended prep school at nearby Valley Forge Military Academy. A letter from Salinger hangs in Ursinus' Corson Hall
- Hermann Eilts (Class of 1943): Former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Egypt who assisted Henry Kissinger's Mideast shuttle diplomacy effort, worked with Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat throughout the Camp David Accords, and dodged a Libyan hit team
- Gerald Edelman (Class of 1950): Winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in medicine
- James F. Scott II (Class of 1953): Director of the Magellan Space Mission at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
- Sam Keen (Class of 1953): Noted author, professor of philosophy and religion, and former contributing editor of Psychology Today
- Ismar Schorsch (Class of 1957): Former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
- Joseph Melrose (Class of 1966): Former U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone
- Jonathan Zap (Class of 1978): Noted dreamwork specialist, author, and radio commentator
- Linda M. Springer (Class of 1979): Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management
- Jeff Trinkle (Class of 1979): Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; known for his work in robotic manipulation, multibody dynamics, and automated manufacturing
- Samuel Conway (Class of 1986): Organic chemistry researcher and chairman of Anthrocon
- Dan Mullen (Class of 1994): Offensive Coordinator for the Florida Gators football team
[edit] External Links
- Official Ursinus College Website
- Reunion and campus photos, including interior and winter scenes of the town and college
[edit] References
- Ursinus College Catalog. Ursinus College: January 1991.
- Yost, Calvin Daniel. Ursinus College: A History of Its First Hundred Years. Ursinus College: 1985.
[edit] Gallery
 Entrance to the college along Main Street |
 View of Bomberger Hall |
 The Reader I, sculpture by J. Steward Johnson Jr. |
 Reimert Hall (exterior) |
 Reimert Hall (interior courtyard) |
 Pfahler Hall of Science |
| Centennial Conference |
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| Bryn Mawr • Dickinson • Franklin & Marshall • Gettysburg • Haverford • Johns Hopkins • McDaniel • Muhlenberg • Swarthmore • Ursinus • Washington Col. |
