St. John's University (New York) - History

History

St. John's University was founded in 1868, by the Vincentian Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church in response to an invitation by the first Bishop of Brooklyn, John Loughlin, to provide the poor youth of the city with an intellectual and moral education.

St. John's Vincentian values stem from the ideals and works of St Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), who is the patron saint of Christian charity. Following the Vincentian tradition, the university seeks to provide an education that encourages greater involvement in social justice, charity and service.

St. John's University was originally founded as the College of St. John the Baptist at 75 Lewis Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The foundations of the first building were laid in the summer of 1868, and the building was opened for educational purposes September 5, 1871. Beginning with the law school in 1925, St. John's started founding other schools and became a university in 1933. In 1954, St. John's broke ground on a new campus in Jamaica, Queens, on the former site of the Hillcrest Golf Club. The following year, the original school of the university, St. John's College, moved from Bedford-Stuyvesant to the new campus. Over approximately the next two decades, the other schools of the university, which were located at a separate campus at 96 Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn, moved out to the new campus in Queens. The last of the schools to relocate to Queens would move there in 1972, bringing an end to the Downtown Brooklyn campus of the university.

The University received praise from Time Magazine in 1962 for being a Catholic university that accepted Jews with low household income. Later St. John's was the defendant in a lawsuit by Donald Scheiber (the only Jewish Vice President at the school) for discrimination after being removed because he was Jewish. The court ruled against St. John's University in this lawsuit. Time also ranked St. John's as "good−small" on a list of the nation's Catholic universities in 1962.

The St. John's University strike of 1966-1967 was a protest by faculty at the university which began on January 4, 1966, and ended in June 1967. The strike began after 31 faculty members were dismissed in the fall of 1965 without due process, dismissals which some felt were a violation of the professors' academic freedom. The tension of that year was noted in Time Magazine stating, "cademically, has never ranked high among Catholic schools; in troubles, it outdoes them all." The strike ended without any reinstatements, but led to the widespread unionization of public college faculty in the New York City area. In 1970 arbitrators ruled that the university had not acted improperly.

On January 27, 1971, the New York State Board of Regents approved the consolidation of the University with the former Notre Dame College (New York) a private women's college and the Staten Island Campus of St. John’s University became a reality. Classes began in the fall of 1971, combining the original Notre Dame College with the former Brooklyn campus of St. John’s, offering undergraduate degrees in liberal arts, business and education. In 1990 the tuition and fee's at St. John's was less than half of that at schools like NYU and Columbia. . Now the tuition is comparable with St. John's being $1104 per credit, NYU being 1106 and Columbia being 1302 per credit .

In 1999, St. John's purchased the La Salle Center in Oakdale, NY. The 175-acre (0.71 km2) campus served as a military academy since 1926. Before this, the land was owned by Frederick Bourne, President of Singer Sewing Machine Company, who constructed his estate on the grounds. His mansion still remains and is used for party receptions.

St. John's merged with the College of Insurance in 2001. The merger gave St. John's a five-story building located in lower Manhattan which is used by the Peter J. Tobin College of Business and the colleges School of Risk Management, Insurance and Actuarial Science. After the 9/11 attacks to the World Trade Center, the Manhattan campus was used by emergency workers.

In 2007, St. John's, along with several other universities, settled with New York State attorney general Andrew Cuomo for $800,000.00 among allegations of receiving kickbacks from student loan corporations.

Also in 2007, St John's University purchased a Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Center facility in Fresh Meadows. This added two medical programs to the school. This added a Physician's Assistant program as well as Bio-medical technician program to the school. Tuition for the PA program at Saint Vincent Medical Center was $15,000 per year, but when purchased by STJ it increased to 29,950 per year.

St. John's opened its new Rome campus in October 2008. Located in the Prati section of Rome, the 75,000 sq ft (7,000 m2). building can house up to 200 students.