Marygrove College was a
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
graduate college in
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
, affiliated with the
Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
The Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (I.H.M.) is a Catholic religious institute of sisters, founded by Fr Louis Florent Gillet, CSsR, and a co-founder of the Oblate Sister of Providence, Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin, in 1845.
...
. It announced its closure on December 17, 2019, at end of the fall semester.
History
![Marygrove College Liberal Arts Building Detroit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Marygrove_College_Liberal_Arts_Building_Detroit.JPG)
The college grew out of a postgraduate tutorial offered to one young woman graduate of St. Mary's Academy in
Monroe, Michigan
Monroe is the largest city and county seat of Monroe County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Monroe had a population of 20,462 in the 2020 census. The city is bordered on the south by Monroe Charter Township, but the two are administered autonomo ...
, in 1899. By 1905 it had grown to a two-year college for women and in 1910 it was a four-year college chartered to grant degrees.
It was then known as St. Mary's College. The college moved to its current location in Detroit in 1927, and at that time became known as Marygrove College.
[ When it moved to Detroit its president was George Hermann Derry, who was the first lay person to serve as a president of a Catholic women's college in the United States.]
In the decades after World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, Marygrove College was an important local center of Catholic social action. Faculty members were chosen for their education, character, and faith, and President Derry encouraged each student to look beyond the prospect of eventual marriage and to become capable of "doing her part in the world's work in whatever sphere of life she may be placed". By 1936, the college catalog spoke in far more emphatic terms of female independence. In 1937, Sister Honora Jack became the college's first woman president. The college accepted its first black student in 1938.
Marygrove College was originally a women's college. It became co-educational in about 1970 during the presidency of Arthur Brown.
Glenda D. Price was appointed as the college's first African-American woman president in 1988. Dr. Price retired in 2006 and continues to be active in Detroit's community revival, most recently with her appointment to the city's financial advisory board.
In the final years several controversial events on campus occurred, including protests over the use of college facilities by the LGBT group Dignity USA, and the opening of a Muslim prayer room.
The final president, beginning in 2016, was Marygrove alumna Dr. Elizabeth Burns.
The college closed all undergraduate programs at the end of the Fall 2017 semester ostensibly to focus exclusively on graduate programs with a reduced staff and faculty. It had around 1,000 undergraduates in the college at the time. On June 7, 2019, the school administration announced it would cease operation the fall 2019 semester.
The contents of the library were transferred to the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
, which imported the catalog into OpenLibrary.org
Open Library is an online project intended to create "one web page for every book ever published". Created by Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Alexis Rossi, Anand Chitipothu, and Rebecca Malamud, Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a ...
and had over 50,000 scanned books online by March 2020.
The school's chapel is now used by St. Peter Claver Catholic Church, a nearby parish whose building collapsed in 2018.
The school buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 2022.
Campus
The current college encompasses a campus. There are large lawns and mature trees. The Madame Cadillac and Liberal Arts buildings, by architect D.A. Bohlen & Son, are Tudor Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
structures with stained glass
Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...
windows, wrought iron
Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag Inclusion (mineral), inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a ...
gates, carved wood decorations, high ceilings, arched doorways, and carved stonework. The campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 2022.
Athletics
The Marygrove athletic teams were called the Mustangs. The college was a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) established in 1940, is a college athletics association for colleges and universities in North America. Most colleges and universities in the NAIA offer athletic scholarships to its stu ...
(NAIA), primarily competing in the Wolverine–Hoosier Athletic Conference
The Wolverine–Hoosier Athletic Conference (WHAC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), and it's heaquartered in Livonia, Michigan. The conference consists of twelve college ...
(WHAC) from 2012–13 to the fall of the 2017–18 academic year. They were also a member of the United States Collegiate Athletic Association
The United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA) is a national organization for the intercollegiate athletic programs of 72 mostly small colleges, including community/junior colleges, across the United States. The USCAA holds 15 nationa ...
(USCAA) from 2002–03 to the fall of the 2017–18 academic year. The Mustangs previously competed as an NAIA Independent within the Association of Independent Institutions (AII) from 2008–09 to 2011–12.
Marygrove competed in 15 intercollegiate varsity sports: Men's sports included basketball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, soccer, baseball, and track & field (indoor and outdoor); while women's sports included basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, track & field (indoor and outdoor) and volleyball.
History
The college added golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
to its list of athletic programs with the installation of a new golf practice facility in the fall of 2010. Marygrove's golf practice facility, designed by world-renowned golf course architect Tom Doak
Tom Doak is a golf course architect. He has 6 courses ranked among the top 100 in the world according to the "Top 100 Courses in the World" March 2021 list compiled by ''Golf Magazine.'' These include Pacific Dunes in Oregon, Ballyneal in Colorad ...
, offered a leading urban land use plan, incorporating golf practice and other athletic facilities on a small urban land tract. In addition to the unique use of urban land for golf, the Golf Practice Facility incorporated environment-friendly land use and techniques, including minimal disruption to current trees, and used recycled water for irrigation and natural pesticides.
Discontinuation
With the August 2017 announcement of the closing of the school's undergraduate programs, the school also announced that all athletics would cease after the 2017 fall season.
Accreditation history
Marygrove was first accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools
The North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), also known as the North Central Association, was a membership organization, consisting of colleges, universities, and schools in 19 U.S. states engaged in educational accreditation. It w ...
in 1926.
Marygrove was accredited by NCA's (North Central Association) Higher Learning Commission,
the Michigan State Department of Education and the Council of Social Work and Education.
Alumni
References
External links
Official website
Official athletics website
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Liberal arts colleges in Michigan
Monroe, Michigan
Educational institutions established in 1905
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
Universities and colleges in Detroit
USCAA member institutions
Catholic universities and colleges in Michigan
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit
Former women's universities and colleges in the United States
1905 establishments in Michigan
History of women in Michigan
National Register of Historic Places in Detroit