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Benedictine University

Former names	St. Procopius College Illinois Benedictine College
Motto	Ut In Omnibus Glorificetur Deus (Latin)
Motto in English	That in all things God may be glorified
Type	Private
Established	1887
Affiliation	Roman Catholic (Benedictine)
President	Charles Gregory (interim)[1]
Provost	James E. Payne
Undergraduates	2,885
Postgraduates	2,216
Location	Lisle, Illinois 41°46′38″N 88°5′45″W / 41.77722°N 88.09583°W / 41.77722; -88.09583Coordinates: 41°46′38″N 88°5′45″W / 41.77722°N 88.09583°W / 41.77722; -88.09583
Campus	Suburban, 108 acres (43.7 ha)
Colors	Red and White
Athletics	NCAA Division III – NACC, MLC
Nickname	Eagles
Affiliations	ABCU ACCU NAICU CIC
Mascot	Eagle
Website	www.ben.edu

Benedictine University is a private Roman Catholic university in Lisle, Illinois.^[2] The school was founded in 1887 as St. Procopius College by the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey in the Pilsen community on the West Side of Chicago.^[3][4] The institution has retained a close relationship with the Benedictine Order,^[5] which bears the name of St. Benedict (480–543 A.D.), the acknowledged father of western monasticism.^[6]

The university resides within the Chicago metropolitan area, and is located nearby two national research facilities—Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The university's location in the East-West Tollway corridor provides various internship and employment opportunities for students. It has branch campuses called Benedictine University at Springfield in Springfield, Illinois, and Benedictine University at Mesa in Mesa, Arizona.

History

Benedictine University, also called BenU, was founded in 1887 as St. Procopius College by the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey, who lived in the Pilsen community of Chicago's West Side. The monks created the all-male institution just two years after their community began, with the intention of educating men of Czech and Slovak descent. While the school was called a college from its founding, it did not begin offering post-secondary courses until after it moved from Chicago to rural Lisle in 1901. It became fully accredited in 1957 and, as the area around it transitioned from rural to suburban, it grew substantially. Also in 1957, the institution's high school component began operating independently of the college and is now called Benet Academy. The college became fully coeducational in 1968.^[7]

The school changed its name to Illinois Benedictine College in 1971, and in 1996, it became Benedictine University. While the institution continued to grow in Lisle, it expanded its reach to include campuses in other cities, including Springfield, Illinois, in 2003 and Mesa, Arizona, in 2012. The university added the Kindlon Hall of Learning and the Birck Hall of Science in 2001 and the Neff Alumni Center in 2012, and in 2015, Benedictine opened the Daniel L. Goodwin Hall of Business, which features the Bloomberg Trading Lab and a 600-seat auditorium.

After recognizing that there is great demand for American business programs overseas, Benedictine joined forces with Shenyang University of Technology and Shenyang Jianzhu University in China to bring Master of Business Administration and Master of Science in Management Information Systems programs there.^[8]

Presidents

• Rev. Daniel Kucera, O.S.B. – a Benedictine who later became Archbishop of Dubuque, 1959–1965, 1971–1976.


• Richard C. Becker, Ph.D., 1976–1995


• William J. Carroll, Ph.D., 1995–2015


• Michael S. Brophy, Ph.D., 2015–2018


• Charles Gregory (interim), 2018–present^[1]

Academics

Benedictine University offers 59 undergraduate majors through The College of Science, The College of Liberal Arts, The Daniel L. Goodwin College of Business and The College of Education and Health Services. Newer offerings are undergraduate programs in Entrepreneurship, Human Resource Management, Business Analytics, Exercise and Sports Studies, Music Education and Theology. Adult programs are offered through the School of Graduate, Adult and Professional Education. Master's degrees are offered in Accountancy, Business Administration, Business Analytics, Clinical Exercise Physiology, Clinical Psychology, Finance, Integrative Physiology, Linguistics, Management Information Systems, Management and Organizational Behavior, Nursing, Nutrition and Dietetics, Nutrition and Wellness, Public Health, Reading and Literacy, Taxation and Values-Driven Leadership.

The university offers 19 graduate programs, 34 graduate certificates, and 4 doctoral programs.^[9] Ph.D. programs are offered in Organization Development and Values-Driven Leadership, a D.B.A. program in Values-Driven Leadership, and an Ed.D. program in Higher Education and Organizational Change.

Rankings

Forbes magazine named Benedictine among "America’s Top Colleges" for the seventh consecutive year in 2017.^[10]

U.S. News & World Report named Benedictine among its top colleges in 2017.^[11]

Benedictine's Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) is listed among the nation's “50 Most Affordable Online M.P.H. Programs 2015” by Topmastersinhealthcare.com ^[12]

Benedictine's Master of Science in Management and Organizational Behavior was named one of the best online master's programs in the nation in 2017 by Nonprofitcollegesonline.com.^[13]

Lisle campus

Daniel L. Goodwin Hall of Business

Benedictine University moved to Lisle, Illinois, in the far western suburbs of Chicago and DuPage County, in 1901. After the dedication of Benedictine Hall, new buildings were added throughout the early 1900s. Although it had admitted women from time to time, the college became fully coeducational in 1968. In 1971, it changed its name to Illinois Benedictine College. In response to community needs, graduate, doctorate and adult learner programs were added. In 1996, the college was renamed Benedictine University. The Birck Hall of Science and the Kindlon Hall of Learning were built in 2001. The Village of Lisle-Benedictine University Sports Complex, a unique cooperative venture between a governmental body and private university, was dedicated in 2005. Renovation of the Dan and Ada Rice Center was completed in October 2011.

The rapid growth of the Daniel L. Goodwin College of Business created the need for construction of the Daniel L. Goodwin Hall of Business – the largest classroom building on campus at 125,000 square feet – which houses the college's undergraduate and graduate business programs and doctoral programs in Organization Development and Values-Driven Leadership. The building also features classrooms, study areas, seminar rooms, offices, a 600-seat auditorium to facilitate lectures, a 40-seat real-time trading lab that provides hands-on investing experience, a 7,500-square-foot main hall and a café.

The Lisle campus' additionally features the Jurica-Suchy Nature Museum, a small natural history museum located on the second floor of the Birck Hall of Science. The museum represents the work of Frs. Edmund and Hilary Jurica, O.S.B., who collected specimens for their students to use during their almost 100 combined years of teaching at Benedictine University, and Fr. Theodore Suchy, O.S.B. (d. 2012), who served as museum curator for more than 30 years. The museum has continued to collect specimens since the Juricas' deaths in the early 1970s and now has a collection numbering more than 10,000 specimens ranging from small invertebrates to a roqual skeleton. The Jurica-Suchy Nature Museum is open to the public as well as to school groups.

Benedictine's Lisle campus has 2,885 undergraduate students of which 44 percent are male and 56 percent are female, and the student body represents 50 states and territories, and 15 countries. Approximately one-third of the students are minority.

Student Athletics

Dan and Ada Rice Center

The Eagles, at the Lisle campus, compete in 19 intercollegiate athletic programs in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) at the NCAA Division III level.^[14]

The Redhawks, at Benedictine University at Mesa, compete as members of the California Pacific Conference (CAL PAC) in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). The men's and women's golf, cross country, volleyball and tennis teams played their first season at the club level in 2014-15.^[15]

Both campuses also offer intramurals, group fitness classes and club sports. Benedictine students play men's tennis, men's lacrosse, and ping pong as club sports.

Benedictine University at Mesa

Benedictine University, Mesa became the first four-year Catholic university in Arizona when classes began in 2013. Undergraduate majors include accounting, communication arts, computer science, criminal justice, fine arts, graphic arts and design, management and organizational behavior, nutrition, political science, psychology, theology and Spanish.^[16]

The university also provides degree-completion programs and graduate studies through its School for Graduate, Adult, and Professional Education.^[17]

Its athletic teams are known as the Redhawks and compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics as a member of the California Pacific Conference. Student athletes compete in men's and women's cross country, golf, basketball, soccer, baseball and softball, and volleyball, including women's beach volleyball.^[18]

Springfield branch campus

The Springfield branch campus of Benedictine University was founded in 1929 as a separate institution known as Springfield Junior College. The college changed its name in 1967 to Springfield College in Illinois. In early 2003, Springfield College in Illinois and Benedictine University formed a partnership through which Benedictine offered bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in Springfield. This partnership resulted in a merger between the two institutions, following Illinois Board of Higher Education guidelines and those of the U.S. Department of Education. In 2010, Benedictine University established a branch campus known as Benedictine University at Springfield. Springfield College in Illinois ceased all academic programs in August 2011. In fall 2014, the Benedictine University Board of Trustees decided that the Springfield campus would end programs that cater to undergraduate students and transition to an adult-centric academic community. Adult programs are now offered through the University's School of Graduate, Adult and Professional Education.

On February 27, 2018, The Benedictine University Board of Trustees and the Board of Springfield College in Illinois announced that the Springfield property at 1500 N. 5th St. will be offered for sale. At the conclusion of the 2018 spring semester, courses will no longer be taught at the Springfield branch campus. Starting with summer 2018 courses, the adult degree-completion and graduate students formerly at the Springfield branch campus will attend Benedictine University at employer and community sites in the Springfield area. The Springfield branch campus property is in need of capital improvements.The decision to move to other area sites will provide the university's students and faculty with accessible, comfortable and equipped-for-teaching locations.^[19]

Benedictine in Asia

More than 1,000 students have graduated with a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) or Master of Science in Management Information Systems (M.S.M.I.S.) from Benedictine University through its partnerships with two Chinese universities – Shenyang University of Technology (SUT) and Shenyang Jianzu University (SJZU) – formed in the early 2000s. In 2009, Benedictine partnered with two universities in Vietnam—the Vietnam National University (VNU) in Hanoi and Binh Dong University in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon)—to offer graduate programs in business administration and management information systems. In 2012, Benedictine received approval from the Ministry of Education in China to offer a Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) through a partnership with Dalian Medical University.

Center for Values-Driven Leadership

The Center for Values-Driven Leadership is a scholar-practitioner center located in the College of Business at Benedictine University. Founded in 2008, the Center (also known as the CVDL), was established to help leaders improve their companies and make significant contributions to business and society through their lives and work. James D. Ludema, Ph.D., professor of Organization Development; and Sandra Gill, Ph.D., dean of the College of Business, are co-founders. The Center's doctoral program in values-driven leadership offers a Ph.D. or D.B.A. (Doctor of Business Administration) degree in a format designed for senior executives. Notable students include Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, National Managing Partner with KPMG and the National Chair of the Board for Girl Scouts of the USA. The Center has partnered with the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan and with the Small Giants Community to create the Return on Values research initiative. This initiative explores the link between culture and profit in small and mid-size businesses.

References

External links

• Official website


• Official athletics website