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Ursinus College is a small, coeducational, liberal arts college in Collegeville, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

Contents 1 Background 1.1 School Mission 1.2 History 2 Ursinus Today 2.1 Academics 2.2 Current Students 2.3 Campus and Facilities 2.4 Intercollegiate Athletics 3 Ursinus and the World Beyond 3.1 Outside Recognition 3.2 Notable Faculty 3.3 Notable Alumni and Former Students 4 External Link

Background

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."[1]

History

• Named after Zacharias Ursinus, a 16th-century German theologian and an important figure in the Protestant Reformation
• Founded in 1869 by the German Reformed Church on the grounds of the Freeland Seminary
• Women were first admitted to the school in 1881
• Now independent in character and resting upon a growing $118,000,000 endowment

Ursinus Today

Academics

• 28 majors and 49 minors
• Biology, Business & Economics, and English are the three majors with the most students
• A high percentage of graduates go on to attend law and medical schools
• 90 percent acceptance rate among graduates who apply to law and medical schools
• Member of Phi Beta Kappa, 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 institution of the Laptop Initiative in Fall 2000

Current Students

• 1,485 students from 25 states and 15 countries
• 10% African American, 3% Latino, 4% International
• 12:1 student/faculty ratio

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 a recently completed performing arts center, the "Kaleidoscope," which opened in April of 2005 with a performance by jazz legend Wynton Marsalis
• The library has an extensive Pennsylvania German archive and is one of three government repositories in Montgomery County

Intercollegiate Athletics

• 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
• Its athletic teams regularly place regionally and nationally. Its field hockey team was the 2006 National Champion for NCAA Division III

Ursinus and the World Beyond

Outside Recognition

• Featured in Loren Pope’s "Colleges That Change Lives"
• Named "Hottest Freshman Year" in 2006 by Newsweek Kaplan College Guide
• According to U.S. News and World Report, Ursinus is one of the nation’s “Best Liberal Arts Colleges," ranking 47th among its 215 peers in terms of graduation and retention rank and 65th in terms of selectivity
• USA Today cited Ursinus as one of 20 American schools that truly excel at creating “a campus culture that fosters student success”
• The Princeton Review ranks Ursinus as one of the nation's "Best 361 Colleges"
• Listed on Yahoo! Most Wired Colleges 2001

Notable Faculty

• Former U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone Joseph Melrose is Ambassador-in-Residence of the school's International Relations Program
• Computer pioneer John Mauchly, creator of the ENIAC, was a faculty member at Ursinus from 1933 to 1941, working at Ursinus's science labs in Pfahler Hall, a large building which still stands on campus
• The former Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, Deborah Poritz, taught at Ursinus in the late 1960s

Notable Alumni and Former Students

• One of Ursinus's most notable students was The Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger (1937 to 1938). He left the school after one semester and continued his studies at other institutions, including nearby Valley Forge Military Academy. A letter from Salinger hangs in Ursinus' Corson Hall
• The literary papers of writer Linda Grace Hoyer Updike, a member of the Ursinus Class of 1923 and mother of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike, are kept at the Myrin Library. John Updike was made an honorary graduate in 1964
• Gerald Edelman, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in medicine
• Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
• James F. Scott II, director of the Magellan Space Mission at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• Jing Johnson, former Major League Baseball player
• Sam Keen, noted author, professor of philosophy and religion, and former contributing editor of Psychology Today
• Hermann Eilts, 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
• Joseph Melrose, former U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone
• Ryan Melhem, Hollywood producer most famous for recent comedy Beerfest
• Dan Mullen, Offensive Coordinator for the Florida Gators football team

External Link

• Official Ursinus College Website

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