For nearly 125 years, the University of St. Thomas consistently and successfully has responded to the changing needs of students and the wider community. In doing so, it has earned a reputation for offering a superior education across a broad range of disciplines characterized by exceptional teaching, a strong focus on ethics and moral values, and a decidedly entrepreneurial approach.
St. Thomas opened its doors in 1885 as a diocesan Catholic liberal arts college and seminary with the purpose of making higher education widely available to the large population of recent immigrants to America. Today, it is a Catholic comprehensive regional university and the largest private institution of higher learning in Minnesota.
Archbishop John Ireland founded St. Thomas with the intent of producing Catholic leaders who would engage society and work for its advancement. For decades since, the vision of success that Ireland had for an immigrant Catholic population has proven to have broad appeal to students from various religious, economic and social backgrounds.
Naturally, the university of today is larger and more complex than the college of yesterday. While this can be challenging, at the same time it enables St. Thomas to have far deeper and more widespread effects on society. Both the University of St. Thomas and its students strive to be agents of positive change, and their work should cause a cascade of beneficial results: St. Thomas benefiting its students; those students, as graduates, benefiting their families and the organizations to which they belong; and those families and organizations benefiting their respective communities – statewide, nationwide and worldwide. The vision for the future is for St. Thomas to become even better known for this effectiveness.
St. Thomas does not seek to be a "national university," but rather a university that is known nationally for what it does uniquely well. The university plans to build on the distinction of its academic programs in entrepreneurship, Catholic studies, law, business and engineering, and will develop other centers of excellence. A larger pool of financial aid will give greater access to students regardless of their economic backgrounds. More endowed chairs and improved facilities will act as magnets that will attract and retain the finest faculty members and students who will help St. Thomas to bring its vision to life.
In order to do this, it needs alumni, friends, students, parents, faculty and staff, corporations, foundations, and others who share in a belief in this potential to become interested, to become connected and to become active.
Almost a century and a quarter after its founding, this 21st-century university is, in significant ways, much like the college of old. The goal of St. Thomas still is to make its educational opportunities accessible and distinctly valuable. The board of trustees and the rest of the St. Thomas community believe that it is time to open the floodgates of further potential that can ensure that these attributes and blessings are passed along to many future generations of students.
The University of St. Thomas has the opportunity to become exceptional in areas of undergraduate Catholic liberal arts education, legal and business graduate education, and community involvement and service. Progress in these spheres and others will depend on major enhancements to the university’s infrastructure: endowment funds for financial aid, faculty positions and program enhancement, and physical facilities and other resources to support the recruitment and retention of the very best faculty and students.
Achieving excellence will call on the combined efforts of alumni, students, parents, faculty and staff members, administrators, trustees and friends. It will require an infusion of interest, attention and financial investment that only a major comprehensive capital campaign can produce.
It is an undertaking worthy of great effort – one that will open new doors through which students will enter and, later, depart, ready to bring the mission of St. Thomas to the world.