Saint Leo University is a private Roman Catholic liberal arts university in St. Leo, Florida. It was established in 1889. The university is associated with the Holy Name Monastery, a Benedictine convent, and Saint Leo Abbey, a Benedictine monastery. The university and the abbey are both named for Pope Leo the Great, bishop of Rome from 440 to 461. The name also honors Leo XIII, who was Pope at the time the university was founded, and Leo Haid, then abbot of Maryhelp Abbey in North Carolina, now Belmont Abbey, who participated in founding the university and served as its first president.
The first Roman Catholic college in Florida, Saint Leo is one of the fifteen largest Catholic colleges in the United States. It enrolls students at the traditional University Campus, and through its Center for Online Learning. University-wide, Saint Leo educates students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, three U.S. territories, and more than 80 countries. As of Spring 2017, total enrollment was 16,207 students, with 2,088 of those at University Campus. As of 2023, total enrollment is 9,523.
Saint Leo was one of the first American universities to provide distance learning opportunities to students, beginning with educating military men and women in 1973 during the Vietnam era at the height of the anti-war movement. Saint Leo University offers more than 40 associate, baccalaureate, and master's degrees, and certificate programs and inaugurated its first doctoral program in 2013. As of Fall 2016, the faculty included 219 full-time faculty and 1,157 fully qualified adjunct faculty members. In 2020, they had approximately 2000 employees.
History
Saint Leo traces its history to August 10, 1881, when Edmund F. Dunne, a former chief justice of the Arizona Territory, gained control of 100,000 acres in Florida. He established a Roman Catholic colony in an area that is now the city of San Antonio and the town of St. Leo.
To accommodate a number of German-speaking colonists, Bishop John Moore of the Diocese of St. Augustine wrote the abbot of Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania to request a German-speaking priest. That request led to the Benedictine monks first arriving in the area. In 1888, Saint Vincent Archabbey transferred control of the colony to Mary Help of Christians Abbey (commonly called Maryhelp) in Belmont, North Carolina.
In February 1889, Abbot Leo Haid, OSB, of Maryhelp Abbey accepted a gift from Edmund Dunne of 36 acres on Lake Jovita for the founding of a Benedictine College. That same month, Benedictine nuns arrived from Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
On March 11, 1889, they founded Holy Name Monastery. Saint Leo College and Saint Leo Abbey were founded on June 4, 1889. St. Leo College, the original name of the institution, opened its doors on September 14, 1890. The first student to arrive was 12 years old. He and six others were enrolled on the first day, and the student body grew to 32 for the 1890–1891 school year. The first five students graduated in June 1893 with Master of Accounts degrees.
In 1898, before it was legal in Florida for black and white students to attend school together, Saint Leo enrolled a black student—Rudolph Antorcha from Cuba. Today, he and the welcoming Benedictines are honored with a sculpture titled A Spirit of Belonging, which was dedicated at University Campus in 2013.
Over the years, the school went through a series of varying focuses and name changes: St. Leo's College initially, then St. Leo Military College (1890–1903), St. Leo College (1903–17), St. Leo College Preparatory School (1917–18), Saint Leo College (1918–20), St. Leo College High School (1920–23), St. Leo Academy (1923–27), Benedictine High School (1927–29), Saint Leo College Preparatory School (1929–64), Saint Leo College (1959–99), and finally Saint Leo University (1999–present). During that time, it served as a military college within three different periods.
Saint Leo College Preparatory School operated from 1929 to 1964. In addition, Saint Leo returned to its college roots in 1959 and opened a junior college, with the first junior college graduates earning their associate degrees in 1961. The monks managed both the junior college and the prep school from 1959 to 1964. The Saint Leo College Prep School athletic teams were known as the Lions, and their colors were purple and gold. The Saint Leo College teams were known as the Monarchs, using green and gold as colors. In 1999, the Saint Leo athletic teams re-adopted the Lions name.