Trinity Washington University is a private Catholic university in Washington, D.C. The university was founded as Trinity College by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1897 as the nation's first Catholic liberal arts college for women. Trinity was chartered by an Act of Congress on August 20, 1897. It became Trinity Washington University in 2004.
Trinity is a comprehensive university with five schools; the undergraduate College of Arts & Sciences maintains its original mission as a liberal arts women's college, while men attend Trinity's other schools at both the graduate and undergraduate level. It enrolls more than 1,800 students in its undergraduate and graduate programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Nursing and Health Professions, School of Education, School of Business and Graduate Studies, and School of Professional Studies. Trinity enrolls more District of Columbia residents than any other private university in the city and in the nation – more than half of Trinity’s students are residents of the D.C.
An elite collegian institution in its early life, the college faced declining enrollment by the 1980s. It chose to begin recruiting local underprivileged students, and became predominantly black and Hispanic. Trinity’s student body in 2020 includes about 95% ethnic minorities, including about 65% Black/African American and 30% Latina/Hispanic. Trinity is designated by the U.S. Department of Education as a Minority Serving Institution and is the only university in the D.C. region, and one of only a few in the nation, designated as both a Predominantly Black Institution (PBI) and Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).
Trinity has a 97% acceptance rate with 35% of students graduating, and with 63% of graduates earning more than a high school graduate.
History
Trinity College was founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1897 as the nation's first Catholic liberal arts college for women.
For more than 70 years, Trinity educated middle-class Catholic women, who were underrepresented in America's colleges. (For more background on women's higher education, see Origins and types of Women's colleges in the United States.)
When many all-male colleges became co-ed, Trinity's full-time enrollment dropped – from 1,000 in 1969 to 300 in 1989. The school's 12th president, Sister Donna Jurick, responded in the early 1980s by opening a weekend college for working women from the District of Columbia, a racially diverse population the school had previously not served. The first such program in Washington, it became very popular; within three years, it had more students than the undergraduate program.
Under Patricia McGuire, a Trinity alumna, who became president of the college in 1989, Trinity became a multifaceted university that reached out to the Black and Hispanic women of Washington. McGuire split the college into three schools: the historic women's college became the College of Arts and Sciences; the higher-revenue teacher college became the School of Education; and the continuing education classes were folded into a School of Professional Studies. Trinity began recruiting at D.C. high schools. She expanded the professional schools, whose combined enrollment rose from 639 in 1989 to 974 in 1999. By the school's 1997 centennial, it had become the private college of choice for the women of D.C. public schools.
Academics
Five schools
Trinity has an annual enrollment of more than 1,800 students in the university's five schools, which offer undergraduate and graduate degrees.