Bastyr University - History

History

Bastyr University was established in 1978 as the John Bastyr College of Naturopathic Medicine in Seattle, Washington, by Sheila Quinn, Joseph E. Pizzorno Jr., William A. Mitchell, Jr., and Les Griffith. It is named after John Bastyr, a pioneering naturopathic physician and chiropractor in the Seattle area who was instrumental in keeping interest in naturopathic medicine alive through the 1960s. It has offered baccalaureate, master's and doctoral degree programs since 1989.

In 1984, the school was renamed Bastyr College, and in 1994, it became Bastyr University. In 1996, Bastyr relocated to its current location in the Saint Thomas Center, a former Catholic seminary building in the Inglewood-Finn Hill neighborhood of Kenmore, Washington. Its campus is almost completely surrounded by Saint Edward State Park's dense fir and hemlock forest. In November, 2005, the university completed the purchase of this property, which it had been leasing from the Archdiocese of Seattle.

In 1994, Bastyr was awarded a grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Alternative Medicine, becoming the first natural medicine institution to receive an NIH grant. In 1999, Jane Guiltinan, dean of clinical affairs, was appointed to the board of Harborview Medical Center, becoming the first naturopathic doctor to serve on a public hospital board in the United States. In 2010, Bastyr received a $4.52 million NIH grant to study the healing effects of Asian medicinal mushrooms on breast and prostate cancer in partnership with the University of Washington. The same year, Bastyr merged with Seattle Midwifery School and established the nation's first regionally accredited and articulated direct-entry Master of Science in Midwifery degree.