Saint Louis University (SLU) is a private Jesuit research university with campuses in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, and Madrid, Spain. Founded in 1818 by Louis William Valentine DuBourg, it is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River and the second-oldest Jesuit university in the United States. The university is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.
In the 2022–2023 academic year, SLU had an enrollment of 13,546 students. The student body included 8,437 undergraduate students and 5,109 graduate students that represent all 50 states and 82 countries. The university is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
For more than 50 years, the university has maintained a campus in Madrid, Spain. The Madrid campus was the first freestanding campus operated by an American university in Europe and the first American institution to be recognized by Spain's higher education authority as an official foreign university.
SLU's athletic teams compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I and are a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference.
History
Early years
Saint Louis University traces its origins to the Saint Louis Academy, founded on November 16, 1818, by the Most Reverend Louis William Valentine DuBourg, Bishop of Louisiana and the Floridas, and placed under the charge of the Reverend François Niel and others of the secular clergy attached to the Saint Louis Cathedral. Its first location was in a private residence near the Mississippi River in an area now occupied by the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial within the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Already having a two-story building for the 65 students using Bishop Dubourg's personal library of 8,000 volumes for its printed materials, the name Saint Louis Academy was changed in 1820 to Saint Louis College (while the secondary school division remained Saint Louis Academy, now known as St. Louis University High School). In 1827 Bishop Dubourg placed Saint Louis College in the care of the Society of Jesus. Not long after that, it received its charter as a university by act of the Missouri Legislature.
According to William Faherty, the first Jesuit president of St. Louis College, Peter Verhaegen, was a key leader in building Catholicism in the WesT from his arrival 1823 to his death in 1853. He kept frontier needs in mind while designing the curriculum, intensified the school's Catholic life, established a medical department, and moved the school to a bigger campus. It included Protestants among its faculty, student body, and supporters. It introduced evening adult programs, and taught poor boys with city funding.
University beginnings and American Civil War
In 1829, the new university moved its campus to Washington Avenue and Ninth, today the site of America's Center. At this time, the founders forced enslaved Black Americans from their St. Stanislaus Seminary in Hazelwood to labor at the university. Many had previously been separated from their families enslaved at White Marsh Plantation.
In 1852 the university and its teaching priests were the subject of an anti-Catholic novel, The Mysteries of St. Louis, which was written by newspaper editor Henry Boernstein. Boernstein's popular newspaper, Anzeiger des Westens, routinely criticized the university.
In 1867, after the American Civil War, the university purchased "Lindell's Grove", in what is now Midtown. The university subsequently moved to this new location, which is the current site of today's north campus. Lindell's Grove was the site of the Camp Jackson Affair, which had occurred only a few years prior to the university's purchase.
The first building on campus, DuBourg Hall, began construction in 1888, and the college officially moved to its new location in 1889. Construction of the new St. Francis Xavier College Church began on 8 June 1884. The basement of the church was completed later that year and was the location for liturgical functions until the upper church was subsequently completed in 1898.