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College Profile:
Loyola University - Chicago
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LOYOLA Schools and Colleges Dual-Degree Programs Five-year Bachelor's-to-Master's Programs |
Loyola University Chicago was founded in 1870 by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and carries the namesake of the Society's founder, St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), who devoted his life to God through his quest for knowledge and the rigors of scholarship. Loyola nurtures the Jesuit tradition with a mission that is academically challenging and strives to develop the whole student by promoting compassion for others and a consciousness of justice and ethics. The Loyola Experience, launched in 1996 as a university-wide initiative, aims to deepen the Jesuit philosophy of educating the whole person through academic, social, service, and urban opportunities.
Consistently ranked as a top national university and a "best value" for higher education (U.S. News and World Report), Loyola is one of the largest of the 28 Jesuit universities and colleges in the United States, with an enrollment of 13,019 students from all 50 states and 88 foreign countries. Loyola's students ranked the university among the best for fostering a challenging academic program and nurturing a supportive campus environment in the National Survey of Student Engagement in each of the first two years the survey was taken in 2000 and 2001.
Loyola offers 52 undergraduate, 75 graduate, 39 doctoral and three professional programs of study - leading to 29 different academic degrees on four campuses. The Water Tower Campus on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, home to the schools of Business Administration, Education, Law, and Social Work, connects students to the heart of the city and its vast resources. Located on the shores of Lake Michigan on Chicago's Far North Side, the Lake Shore Campus is a tranquil, residential campus and home to the College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School, and the Niehoff School of Nursing. The Stritch School of Medicine is housed at the west suburban Maywood Campus. The Rome Center of Liberal Arts in Italy is one of the largest American university programs in Western Europe.
The College of Arts and Sciences, composed of 39 majors and 51 minors, embodies a holistic intellectual discipline to cultivate students' dedication to the family of the human race and to strengthen their courage to build a future for that family through the study of sciences and technology, language, literature, fine arts, theology, philosophy, and more.
The School of Education's influence on Chicago schools will be enhanced in the fall of 2002, when the school relocates to the Water Tower Campus off Chicago's North Michigan Avenue. Students and faculty will have more opportunities to establish alliances within the Chicago education system, and professionals will benefit from even greater access to the university's vast resources. Opened in 1995, Loyola's 25 E. Pearson Building on the Water Tower Campus is the state-of-art, 15-story home of the School of Business Administration, which offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in business, information systems, accounting, and marketing, as well as certificate programs in ethics, e-commerce, and data warehousing.
With a student/faculty ratio of 12 to 1, well below the national average of 19 to 1, students at Loyola discover convenient access to faculty renowned in their specific fields. Nearly all of Loyola's 940 full-time faculty members hold a Ph.D. or the highest available academic degree in their fields, and they are routinely called upon as experts on current events by the nation's most prestigious media, including The Wall Street Journal, Time, and NBC Nightly News. The same professors who teach advanced graduate courses also teach introductory, undergraduate courses.
Critical to the success of Loyola's students is the university's proximity to, and relationship with, the city of Chicago, where the campus classroom is extended through a vast array of opportunities provided through Loyola partnerships with the city in which students may enrich their lives by becoming active members of this metropolitan community. Now in its third year, the Urban Semester Program enables more than 75 undergraduate and graduate students to gain hands-on experience in community-based research that requires collaboration with local community and social service agencies. Between 1998 and 1999, Loyola's Center for Urban Research and Learning supported 20 collaborative projects to address numerous issues, including welfare reform, economic development, and access to affordable and available housing. Loyola's outreach extends well beyond its home of Chicago, however, with immersion trips or academic programs in Africa, Central America, and impoverished areas of the United States. Loyola's International Center, an exchange program, includes partnerships with universities in Israel, Mexico, Thailand, Korea, Ireland, England, Spain, and China. The center also links Loyola to the University of Sarajevo and Bosnian refugees in Chicago.
Since fiscal year 1993, Loyola has invested $464 million in capital outlay for its physical plant, which includes new construction and improvements to the existing infrastructure. Recent major building programs include $2 million in classroom renovations, leading to improvements in the Cudahy Science Building and Damen Hall.
More than 600 networked personal computers are available in campus computing centers and resident halls, and every student has access to the Internet. Every student is also assigned an electronic-mail account.
Other resources include, but are not limited to, a library system that ranks in the top six of all U.S. college and university libraries, the Martin D'Arcy Museum of Art, unique to Chicago because of its collection of medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art, and the Ann Ida Gannon, B.V.M. Center for Women and Leadership, a pioneer among Jesuit universities for its Women's Studies program.
Loyola students annually receive more than $110 million in financial assistance from numerous sources, including more than $31 million in Loyola-funded scholarships.
Students can choose from more than 140 social, cultural, ethnic, professional, and academic organizations. In the Ignatian spirit of celebrating diverse faiths, Loyola sponsors an active Hillel program for Jewish students, provides a mosque for Muslim students, and offers chaplains for students of Orthodox and Protestant traditions.
