History
The seeds of WJU's founding were planted as early as the 19th century. Bishop Richard Whelan, leader of the Diocese of Wheeling, lobbied the Society of Jesus to establish a university in the burgeoning city. Over a century later, Whelan's original vision came to fruition. After a donor, Sara Tracy, left her estate to the diocese, it was able to purchase land from the neighboring Mt. De Chantal Visitation Academy.
Wheeling Jesuit University, then Wheeling College, was founded through a partnership of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston with the Maryland Society of Jesus. Ground was broken on November 24, 1953, and the college was officially opened September 26, 1955. The establishment of the college required $2.75 million in start-up costs. Overcoming the difficulties of temporary facilities and a faculty of just twelve Jesuit priests and four lay professors, the school has grown considerably.
For the 1987–1988 school year, the university became Wheeling Jesuit College, and in the 1990s, gained university status.
On October 22, 2010, the university announced the selection of Richard A. Beyer as its ninth president. Beyer is the first lay president to lead WJU. Beyer took office effective January 2, 2011.
Read more about this topic: Wheeling Jesuit University
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“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)