Bellarmine University
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Bellarmine University is a Roman Catholic liberal arts university located in Louisville, Kentucky. It opened as Bellarmine College on October 31 1950, sponsored by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville. The school was one of the first in the Commonwealth of Kentucky to be open to all races and was the first integrated college in the state with an African-American player on its basketball team.
In 1963, Bellarmine opened the Thomas Merton Studies Center, which is devoted to the works of Thomas Merton, a monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani. Today this internationally-significant archive contains over 20,000 items; over 100 doctoral dissertations, plus masters, theses, and numerous books, have been written based, at least in part, on work at Bellarmine's Center.
In 1968, Bellarmine merged with Ursuline College, a Catholic college for women established by the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville in 1938. It was at the time of merger that the traditional student body became coeducational (the evening division was coeducational already), and Bellarmine became independent with a self-perpetuating governing board.
In 2000 the Board of Trustees voted to change the name of the institution to Bellarmine University to reflect its status as a Masters I university. With a total enrollment hovering around 2,500 students, Bellarmine offers a range of undergraduate programs as well as graduate degrees in business, education, information technology, nursing, physical therapy and spirituality.
The university is perennially ranked by U.S. News & World Report as a top-tier Southern masters university.
Some 27 buildings, including five residence halls and a new library, now stand on the rolling hills of the 135 acre (546,000 m²) campus in the Highlands neighborhood of Louisville. The third, and current, president is Dr. Joseph J. McGowan.
Most of the university's sports teams, the Knights, compete in the Great Lakes Valley Conference, arguably the toughest conference at the NCAA Division II level. The newly-formed men's lacrosse program, the only one in Kentucky, is an NCAA Division I program. The school's colors are scarlet and silver.
External links
- Bellarmine University (http://www.bellarmine.edu/) official site