Ursinus College

Ursinus College is a private liberal arts college in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1869 and occupies a 170-acre campus.

Ursinus College
Seal of Ursinus College
MottoSuper Firmum Fundamentum Dei
Motto in English
On the Firm Foundation of God
TypePrivate
Established1869 (1869)
AffiliationSecular
Endowment$131.2 million (2019)[1]
PresidentBrock Blomberg
Academic staff
366 full-time
81 part-time[2]
Undergraduates1,472 (Fall 2019)[2]
Location
Collegeville
,
Pennsylvania
,
United States

40.1934°N 75.4559°W / 40.1934; -75.4559
CampusSuburban 170 acres (0.69 km2)[3]
ColorsRed, Old Gold, and Black[4]      
Athletics25 Varsity Teams[2]
Centennial Conference
NCAA Division III
NicknameUrsinus Bears
WebsiteOfficial website

History

19th century

1867: Members of the German Reformed Church begin plans to establish a college where "young men could be liberally educated under the benign influence of Christianity." These founders were hoping to establish an alternative to the seminary at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, a school they believed was increasingly heretical to traditional Reformed faith.

1869: The college is granted a charter by the Legislature of Pennsylvania to begin operations in its current location on 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 proposed naming the college after Zacharias Ursinus, a 16th-century German theologian and an important figure in the Protestant Reformation.

1870: Instruction begins at the college in September; on October 4, the Zwinglian Literary Society was founded. For many years the annual opening meetings of "Zwing" and its rival society, Schaff, were the major events of the student year.

1881: Women first admitted, as a direct consequence of the closing of the Pennsylvania Female College in 1880, and a separate literary society for women, The Olevian, is formed. Like Zwingli and Schaff, Olevian Hall on campus is named in honor of its respective historical society.

1893: The first meeting of the college's alumni association is held at the Colonnade Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1896: In 1896, the town of Freeland officially incorporated as the Borough of Collegeville, the name the Pennsylvania Railroad had given the place in 1869—because of the Pennsylvania Female College; and not, as many believe, because of the then brand-new Ursinus. However, in years since, the "college" in Collegeville has come to mean Ursinus.

1897: The Ruby, Ursinus' yearbook is 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.[5]

20th Century

1921: The first aerial photograph of Ursinus is taken, by future college president D.L. Helfferich, and is published in the 1921 Ruby.

1938: J.D. Salinger enrolls at Ursinus for the fall semester. As quoted from the Ursinus website, "The late 30s also saw the arrival of someone who was perhaps Ursinus’ most famous student ever: Jerome D. Salinger. Gallant and slim, he swooped in from New York City for a few months in 1938, wrote a zany column for the student newspaper, The Skipped Diploma, dated a few of the coeds, then dropped out at Thanksgiving. He went on to great fame as author of The Catcher in the Rye, and short stories appearing in The New Yorker".[5]

Berman Museum of Art

1942: Ursinus sees its male enrollment drop in half due to the start of World War II, falling from 535 to 350. During the war, Ursinus made a concerted effort to bring in military students from across the country, even acquiring a Naval V-12 unit.

1972: Dr. Gerald Edelman '50, wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work with Dr. Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system, becoming the college's first Nobel laureate.[6]

1989: The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art opens on the Ursinus campus.[7]

1990: Phi Beta Kappa invites Ursinus into its ranks. Also in 1990, the F.W. Olin Foundation awarded a $5.6 million grant to Ursinus to construct a humanities building.

1993: Ursinus joins the Centennial Conference at its inception, a regional athletic conference, consisting of Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, Dickinson College, Gettysburg College, Johns Hopkins University, Franklin & Marshall College and others.

1995: The college appoints Dr. John Strassburger as its 12th president, the first president from outside the Ursinus alumni group. Dr. Strassburger was an American Historian, a graduate of Bates College, Oxford University, and Princeton University. Under President Strassburger, Ursinus initiated the Summer Fellows program in which selected students worked on individualized research projects with faculty advisors. During President Strassburger's tenure as president Ursinus became affiliated with numerous prestigious groups such as the Annapolis Group, the Watson Foundation, the Kemper Scholars group and Project Pericles.[5]

21st Century

2006: Ursinus College is profiled among only 40 colleges in former New York Times education editor Loren Pope's popular guidebook, Colleges That Change Lives.

2011: Dr. Bobby Fong, a graduate of Harvard and UCLA and former president of Butler University, began his tenure as the 13th president of Ursinus on July 1, 2011.[8][9] For the third year in a row Ursinus is designated as a Top Ten Up and Coming College by U.S. News & World Report.

2014: Dr. Fong dies suddenly of natural causes at his home in Collegeville.[10] Lucien T. (Terry) Winegar, the Dean and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, is appointed Interim President.[11]

2015: S. Brock Blomberg, Dean of the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance at Claremont McKenna College, is named 17th president of Ursinus.[12]

Ursinus College is independent in character with historical ties to its religious past.

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. While students can choose from 60 courses of study, "biology, business and economics, and English are the three majors with the largest numbers of students."[13]

Common Intellectual Experience

The Common Intellectual Experience is Ursinus' unique seminar course required of all first-year students and is a requisite for the bachelor's degree. The Common Intellectual Experience (referred to as CIE) is composed of two semester-long seminar courses which seek to investigate four of the central questions of the traditional liberal arts education: What should matter to me? How should we live together? How can we understand the world? What will I do?[14] The courses are characterized by students in all CIE classes discussing the course texts at the same time, and studying the works in both the seminar room and through additional avenues of scientific and artistic exploration. The course is taught by faculty in all disciplines and the assigned texts and materials are altered yearly, allowing students and faculty a mutual experience of discovery and critical engagement. CIE, in combination with residential clustering of first-years, is meant to foster a sense of togetherness for incoming students, and to create introspective discussions on the core questions beyond the classroom. To further this environment, there was also an experiment conducted in which the students in one CIE class lived on the same hall together. This was dubbed the Delphi Project and was used to determine how physical proximity might generate more discussion and creativity with ideas. Ursinus also offers additional higher-level CIE classes that go beyond the original questions, extending the discussion into new domains. Unlike the requisite classes where the questions remain constant, the questions posed by the higher-level classes change from semester-to-semester. CIE classes are often paired with a writing fellow, a student trained with background in writing rhetoric. The writing fellow will meet with the CIE freshman to help them with their papers in the course. CIE Fellows also work with freshmen students to further explore and discuss CIE texts and themes.

In September 2012, Ursinus and Columbia University were awarded a joint grant from the Mellon Foundation to work together on the core of their seminar courses - Ursinus College's CIE, and Columbia University's Core Curriculum. The $300,000 grant will allow Ursinus faculty with prior experience teaching CIE classes to work with, and mentor, post-doctoral students at Columbia, will create post-doctoral fellowship program at Ursinus, and will also support campus visits and guest lectures from Columbia faculty who have expertise in the subject matter of CIE.[15]

Student life

While the first students enrolled at Ursinus were almost exclusively Pennsylvanians, today the school's 1,500 students come from 35 states and 12 countries. Twenty-two percent are students of color and two percent are international students. The school has a 12:1 student/faculty ratio.[2]

Greek life

The Ursinus College Greek community consists of five sororities (Kappa Delta Kappa, Phi Alpha Psi, Sigma Sigma Sigma, Tau Sigma Gamma, and Omega Chi), four fraternities (Alpha Phi Epsilon, Kappa Alpha Psi, Phi Kappa Sigma, and Sigma Pi) and two co-educational fraternities (Delta Pi Sigma and Pi Omega Delta).[16] The Ursinus College Inter-Greek Council serves as the elected governing body of all social Greek organizations.

Clubs and organizations

The Leadership Development and Student Activities Office provides the student body with leadership opportunities through its more than 100 student clubs and organizations. Ursinus College clubs and organizations range from student government to community service, academic honor societies, political clubs and intramural sports.[17] Ursinus is also home to a student-run newspaper, The Grizzly - the name taken from the Latin root of Zacharias Ursinus' surname (ursus translating as 'bear') - as well as The Lantern, one of the oldest, continuously produced student literary journals.[18]

Athletics

Ursinus is a member of the Centennial Conference, founded in 1993, and which now contains eleven private colleges in the mid-Atlantic region, including Bryn Mawr, McDaniel, Johns Hopkins, Dickinson, Haverford, Franklin and Marshall, Swarthmore, Gettysburg, Muhlenberg, and Washington.

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 the nearby area that is now Valley Forge National Historical Park, and skating, bathing and boating in the Perkiomen were popular pastimes for students. In fact, students used to be able to rent canoes and fishing rods from the same location where they can now rent bikes. Students then 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 college was well known for many years for its Patterson Field endzone, in which a large 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. A new sycamore, growing since 1984 from a seedling taken from the old tree, stood nearby until a turf field project required its removal in 2011.[19]

In 1974, the NCAA Award of Valor was presented to the 1973 basketball team. Every member of the team had entered a burning building, with their combined efforts leading to the rescue of 14 persons.[20] In the 2003–04 season, senior shooting guard Dennis Stanton led all NCAA Men's Basketball scorers, averaging 32.6 points per game.[21]

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 and 1977, as a Division I program, and the United States Field Hockey Hall of Fame's permanent home is at the college. Ursinus' women's lacrosse team were the 1986, 1989 and 1990 NCAA Division III Women's lacrosse champions and the 1985, 1987 and 1991 runners-up.

Campus and facilities

The 170-acre (0.69 km2) campus is 25 miles (40 km) 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:[3]

  • Bomberger Memorial Hall, opened in 1892 and renovated in 2006. Bomberger Hall is named for John Henry Augustus Bomberger, the 1st President of Ursinus College. Bomberger Auditorium is home to the Heefner Memorial Organ, a three-manual 62-rank organ dedicated in 1986, the gift of the late Mrs. Lydia V. Heefner in memory of her husband, Russell E. Heefner.
  • The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, dedicated in 1989, located in the original Alumni Memorial Library, built in 1921, expanded in 2010.[22] The museum program is fully accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and houses over 4,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, decorative, and cultural objects representing a broad array of art historical genres.[23][24]
  • The Eger Gate, erected in 1925.
  • Brodbeck-Wilkinson-Curtis Hall, Brodbeck and Curtis opened in 1927, Wilkinson Hall, named for Joseph C. Wilkinson, opened in 1966 connecting Brodbeck and Curtis.
Pfahler Hall of Science
Curtis Hall, where J.D. Salinger lived on the third floor during his time at Ursinus
  • Pfahler Hall & the Walter W. Marstellar Memorial Observatory. Pfahler Hall opened in 1932, renovated and expanded in 1998. Named in honorof Dr. George E. Pfahler, famed radiologist, Pfahler Hall is where Professor John Mauchly built key components of ENIAC, considered the world's first computer, and Nobel LaureateGerald Edelman (Ursinus Class of 1950) attended classes. Pfahler's well-equipped laboratoriescontain a 300-MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer, three Fourier-transform(FTIR) spectrometers, an isothermal calorimeter, two gas chromatography/mass spectrometers(GC/MS), a voltammetric analyzer, four U-V visible absorbance spectrometers, seven highperformance liquid chromatographs (HPLC), an atomic absorption (AA) spectrometer, a capillary electrophoresis (CE) apparatus, a Mössbauer spectrometer, and a fluorescence spectrometer.
  • Beardwood-Paisley-Stauffer Hall, opened in 1957, named in honor of Hannah Beardwood and her husband Matthew, a chemistry professor at Ursinus from 1903 until 1940, Dr. Harry Paisley, president of the Ursinus board of directors from 1910 until 1961, and Rev. George A. Stauffer, class of 1894.
  • Wismer Center, opened in 1964, named for Ralph Fry Wismer, class of 1905.
  • Reimert Hall, opened in 1966, named for William D. Reimert, class of 1924.
  • Corson Hall, dedicated in 1970.
  • Thomas Hall, opened in 1970 and renovated in 1991, it is the home of the Biology and Psychology departments and the following endowed laboratories: Levi Jay Hammond Laboratory of Comparative Anatomy, the W. Wayne Babcock Laboratory of General Biology, the Anna Heinly Schellhammer Laboratory, and the Parlee Laboratory.[22][25]
  • Myrin Library, opened in 1971, renovated in 1988, and again in 2004–05. Myrin houses more than 420,000 volumes, 202,000 microforms, 32,000 audiovisual materials, 3,800 e-books, and offers on-site and remote access to approximately 25,900 print, microformand electronic periodical titles.The library is also one of only three U.S. Government depositories in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and, as such, receives print and electronic federal documents for the collection.[26] Myrin Library is home to the Pennsylvania Folklife Society Collection (an extensive Pennsylvania German archive), the Linda Grace Hoyer Papers, the Grundy Collection on South African history, and the Ursinusiana Collection (college archives).
  • Ritter Center, opened in 1980.
  • Olin Hall, opened in 1990, named for the F.W. Olin Foundation. Olin Hall contains a 320-seat lecture hall, a 63-seat tieredclassroom, a 42-seat tiered classroom, a Writing Center, eight traditional classrooms and four seminar rooms.[27]
  • The Floy Lewis Bakes Field House, dedicated in 2001 upon the expansion and renovation of Helferich Hall, 1972. The Field House encompasses the D.L. Helfferich Hall of Health and Physical Education and the William Elliott Pool. The field house pavilion opened in 2001, while the other buildings were dedicated in 1972 in honor, respectively, of the ninth president of Ursinus College and Dr. William Elliott. Helfferich Hall now includes completely renovated locker and training rooms, and a two-story, glass-enclosed area for fitness and recreation. The physical education complex serves both men and women with three full-size basketball courts; locker rooms and team rooms; wrestling room; weight room; dance studio; classrooms; a regulation collegiate-sized swimming pool; squash and handball courts, and a gymnastics space. (Helfferich
  • Richter-North Residence Hall, opened in 2002, named for former college President Richard P. Richter.
  • Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center, opened in April 2005 with a performance by jazz legend Wynton Marsalis.[28] The performing arts center features The Lenfest Theater (a 380-seat state-of-the-art Proscenium Arch Theater), a flexible seated black box "experimental" studio theater, a box office and concession booth, a rehearsal studio, a scenic workshop, as well as teaching support space and a gallery and work space for art students.[29]
  • New Residence Hall, opened in 2007.
  • Innovation and Discovery Center (IDC), opened in October 2018, houses the Parlee Center for Science and the Common Good and the U-Imagine Center for Integrative and Entrepreneurial Studies.[30]
  • Olin Plaza
  • Bomberger Hall
  • Thomas Hall
  • Chadwick sculptures
  • Reimert Hall
  • Hobson Hall
  • Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center

Notable people
Main article: List of Ursinus College people

Notable people associated with Ursinus College include:

References
  1. As of June 30, 2019. "U.S. and Canadian 2019 NTSE Participating Institutions Listed by Fiscal Year 2019 Endowment Market Value, and Percentage Change in Market Value from FY18 to FY19 (Revised)". National Association of College and University Business Officers and TIAA. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  2. "College Fact Sheet". Retrieved 19 November 2019.
  3. "Our Campus". Retrieved 19 November 2019.
  4. "Just the Facts". Ursinus College. Retrieved 19 November 2019.
  5. "History". Ursinus College. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  6. "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1972". Retrieved 2007-09-27.
  7. https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1989-10-22-2720231-story.html
  8. "Bobby Fong To Become 13th President of Ursinus College". October 29, 2010. Archived from the original on November 5, 2010. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  9. Jeff Gammage (February 3, 2012). "Ursinus' Fong a rare Asian American college president". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  10. Susan Snyder (2014-09-10). "Ursinus President Bobby Fong, 64, dies of natural causes". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  11. "Winegar Appointed Interim President". 2014-10-27. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  12. Susan Snyder (2015-04-30). "Ursinus taps a political economist as next president". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  14. "Common Intellectual Experience". Ursinus College. Retrieved 2017-12-01.
  15. "Mellon Grant Supports Ursinus-Columbia U. Partnership". Ursinus College. Retrieved January 23, 2013.
  16. "Greek Organizations". Ursinus College. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  17. "Clubs and Organizations". Ursinus College. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  18. "Publications and Media". Ursinus College. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  19. "Touchdown Tree". Ursinus College. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  20. "Will Receive Valor Award for Athletes". The Gettysburg Times. 1973-12-28. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  21. "Division III Men's Basketball Records" (PDF). NCAA. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  22. "The Campus Setting". Ursinus College. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  23. "Ground Broken for New 'Pfeiffer' Wing at Ursinus' Berman Museum". CollegeNews.org. November 5, 2008. Archived from the original on 2014-11-29. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  24. "Berman Museum of Art Opens New Wing and Celebrates 20-year Anniversary". MuseumPublicity.com. September 25, 2010. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  25. "Ursinus College Sets Fund-raising Goal Of $39 Million By 1994 It Will Be The College's Largest Effort. The Endowment, Library, Renovation Projects And Student Life Would Gain". Philadelphia Inquirer. June 7, 1992. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  26. "Ursinus College Gets Largest Grant Ever". Allentown Morning Call. July 17, 1986. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  27. Jill Wendling (June 4, 1989). "Ursinus College Ceremony Starts $5.7 Million Project". Allentown Morning Call. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  28. "Ursinus College Opens New Performing Arts Center". CollegeNews.org. Archived from the original on 2014-11-29. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  29. "Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center". Ursinus College. Retrieved 2016-01-27.
  30. "Ursinus dedicates new $29 million science center". The Mercury. 30 October 2018. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
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