Johnson & Wales University (JWU) is a private university with its main campus in Providence, Rhode Island. Founded as a business school in 1914 by Gertrude I. Johnson and Mary T. Wales, JWU enrolled 7,357 students across its campuses in the fall of 2020. The university is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.
History
1914–1947
Johnson & Wales Business School was founded in September 1914 in Providence, Rhode Island. Founders Gertrude I. Johnson and Mary T. Wales met as students at Pennsylvania State Normal School in Millersville, Pennsylvania. Years later, both were teaching at Bryant and Stratton business school in Providence (now Bryant University) when they decided to team up and open a business school. The school opened with one student and one typewriter on Hope Street in Providence. The school soon moved to a larger site on Olney Street, and later moved downtown to 36 Exchange Street to better serve returning soldiers after World War I. The curriculum in the early part of the 20th century included bookkeeping, typing, shorthand, English, and mathematics. The school admitted both men and women.
1947–1963
In June 1947, founders Johnson and Wales, facing old age and illness, sold Johnson & Wales Business School to partners (and Navy buddies) Edward Triangelo and Morris Gaebe. At this time the school had roughly 100 students.
Triangelo and Gaebe served as co-directors as the school grew rapidly. The school earned national accreditation in 1954. In 1960, Johnson & Wales was accredited as a junior college.
1963–present
The school became a registered nonprofit organization in 1963. Edward P. Triangolo served as the college's first president from 1963 to 1969.
During the 1960s and 1970s, as Providence hotels and department stores fled to the suburbs, Johnson and Wales took the opportunity to expand its downtown presence. The university purchased the former Crown Hotel in 1966, and both the former Dreyfus Hotel and the Gladdings Department Store building in 1975.
Morris Gaebe served as president from 1969 to 1989, and later chancellor. Gaebe introduced the hospitality program in 1972, despite skepticism from the college's board. Enrollment in the program grew from 141 students in 1973 to 3,000 in 1983. Eventually the school's culinary programs became widely renowned. The college officially became Johnson & Wales University in 1988, known informally as JWU.
By 2016, the university had 16,000 students and more than 2,400 employees across campuses in four cities. Degree programs were offered in business, culinary arts, arts and sciences, nutrition, education, hospitality, physician assistant studies, engineering, and design.
The university shut down its Denver and North Miami campuses at the end of the 2020–21 school year.
Campuses
Johnson & Wales University has operated campuses in four locations:
The founding Providence, Rhode Island campus housing JWU's business, hospitality, and technology programs (called Downcity and opened in 1914) with a subsidiary campus housing JWU's culinary and graduate programs (called Harborside and opened in 1985) in Cranston, Rhode Island North Miami, Florida (opened in 1992 – closed in 2021) Denver, Colorado (opened in 2000 – closed in 2021) Charlotte, North Carolina (opened in 2004)
Two previous campuses in Charleston, South Carolina (opened in 1984) and Norfolk, Virginia (opened in 1986), were gradually consolidated into the Charlotte campus, starting in September 2003 and ending in May 2006 with the closures of these campuses.
Facilities
In addition to the on-campus academic buildings and dorms, the university also operates hotels used as practical education facilities for the university's Hotel & Lodging Management, Food Service Management, and Culinary Arts degree programs. The university also owns the Doubletree Hotel Charlotte-Gateway Village at the Charlotte campus.