AUSTIN COLLEGE Kangaroos
www.austincollege.edu

Founded in 1849 by Princeton-educated Presbyterian Missionary Dr. Daniel Baker, Austin College has long been known for innovative programs, a strong faculty and state-of-the-art facilities.

Austin College received a charter signed by Texas Governor George Wood in November of 1849. Modeled after that of Princeton University, the College’s charter is still in use today, making Austin College the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under its original charter.

The college opened in Huntsville and admitted its first class in the fall of 1850. Its original building still stands in Huntsville. Two presidents of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston and Anson Jones, served on its original board of trustees. Three yellow fever epidemics, the Civil War years, and difficult economic conditions prompted its relocation to north Texas.

Austin College moved to Sherman, a more promising area, in 1876. The college became coeducational in 1918, merging in 1930 with Texas Presbyterian College, an institution for women. The Depression and World War II interrupted expansion and development. Beginning in the 1950s, the college engaged in extensive experimentation aimed at improving the traditional liberal arts curriculum. In 1972, the college adopted the comprehensive educational program that still shapes the academic life and curriculum of the college.

Since its founding by the Brazos Presbytery, Austin College has been related to the Presbyterian Church; that relationship continues to give the College a distinctive flavor to this day.

Austin College was the first college in Texas to grant a graduate degree.

BIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE Panthers
www.bsc.edu

Birmingham-Southern College is a four-year, private liberal arts institution founded in 1856 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The college is the result of a merger of Southern University, founded in Greensboro, Ala., in 1856, with Birmingham College, opened in 1898 in Birmingham, Ala. These two institutions were consolidated on May 30, 1918, under the name of Birmingham-Southern College.

Birmingham-Southern is situated on 92 wooded acres three miles west of downtown Birmingham. The college has 45 academic, residential, administrative, and athletic buildings/facilities, including 25 new facilities/structures, additions, or renovations completed since 1976. New facilities since 1998 include a campus center, fitness center, 100,000 square-foot science center, and a new Fraternity Row. In addition, renovation was completed in Fall 2002 to reconfigure North Residence Hall to three- and four-bedroom suites for male students, and a renovation project to convert the Phillips Science Building into a center to accommodate the academic needs of the college's Division of Humanities was completed in February 2003.

The most distinctive part of the Birmingham-Southern experience is the Interim Term, a four-week period each January in which students develop their potential for creative activity and independent study by exploring one topic or interest. This intensive program of experiential learning—the middle section of the college's 4-1-4 academic calendar—offers students unique opportunities to be further enriched through on- and off-campus projects, independent study or research, foreign study experiences, and challenging and unusual internships.

Birmingham-Southern is a sheltering institution for a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and is home to 20 other honorary or professional societies in various academic areas. The college established a new chapter of the business honorary Beta Gamma Sigma in 2003, joining 375 other schools, all accredited in business through AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, that honor top students by inducting them into lifetime membership in the society. Birmingham-Southern is one of only six baccalaureate-liberal arts institutions in the country to hold both AACSB International accreditation and the designation of Phi Beta Kappa and one of only six to hold Phi Beta Kappa and house a Beta Gamma Sigma chapter.

CENTRE COLLEGE Colonels
www.centre.edu

Centre College opened its doors in the fall of 1820, with a faculty of two and student body of five. Classes reflected the classical curriculum of the day which included Latin, Greek, rhetoric, and logic. They were held in Old Centre, a building which has been used continuously since Centre's beginning and which today houses the College's administrative offices as well as a Heritage Room and a classroom.

Centre College was officially chartered by the Kentucky Legislature on January 21, 1819. The Presbyterian Church was laying the groundwork for the establishment of a college in what was then the Kentucky County of Virginia. In 1780, the Virginia Assembly set aside 8,000 acres of land and in 1785, instruction began at the Transylvania Seminary near Danville.

After a long period of struggle for independent control and hard financial times for the Presbyterians, they petitioned the Kentucky Legislature for a charter, and Centre College was established. The legislature placed Isaac Shelby, the state's first governor, and Dr. Ephraim McDowell, who 10 years later made history by performing the first successful abdominal operation, were on the first board of trustees.

The Kentucky School for the Deaf, founded in 1824, was controlled during its early years by Centre's board of trustees. From the 1890s until 1912, a law school operated at Centre. In 1901, the Central University at Richmond (Ky.) was consolidated with Centre. And Danville's Kentucky School for Women merged with Centre in 1926.

Centre was granted a National Council of Phi Beta Kappa chapter in 1970, which highlighted a period of growth that saw enrollment double from 400 to 800 and 11 new buildings added to the campus. Centre is proud of its alumni, which include two U.S. vice presidents, one Chief Justice of the United States, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, 13 U.S. Senators, 43 U.S. Representatives, 10 moderators of the General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church, and 11 governors.

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Colorado College was established as a coeducational institution in 1874, two years before Colorado became a state. In 1871, General William Jackson Palmer, founder of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, laid out the city of Colorado Springs along his new line from Denver. Envisioning a model city, he reserved land and contributed funds for a college, which was to open May 6, 1874.

In the early years, even before there was a permanent building, the college gathered a small faculty whose roots ran to traditional New England scholarship. Today’s faculty, although more diverse philosophically, still balances teaching and scholarship as the college’s traditional strength.

The college’s first building, Cutler Hall, was occupied in 1880; the first bachelor’s degrees were conferred in 1882. Under President William F. Slocum, who served from 1888 to 1917, the campus took the shape it held until the 1950s. During this time, the college reached scholarly maturity, especially by significantly expanding and improving the library’s holdings and by attracting leading scholars in a number of fields. Phi Beta Kappa was chartered in 1904.

Since the mid-1950s, the campus has been virtually rebuilt. New facilities include three large residence halls, Worner Campus Center, Tutt Library, Olin Hall of Science and the Barnes Science Center, Honnen Ice Rink, Boettcher Health Center, Schlessman Pool, Armstrong Hall of Humanities, Palmer Hall, El Pomar Sports Center, and Packard Hall of Music and Art. The Gaslight Plaza Building, previously known as the Plaza Hotel and the Plaza Building, was purchased by the college in March 1991 and was renamed the William I. Spencer Center in public ceremonies on October 5, 1991, to honor the retiring charter trustee and board chairman. Bill Spencer served on the board from 1967 until 1991 and was chair from 1984 to 1991. The building houses development, college relations, and human resources. Turn-of-the-century Bemis, Cossitt, Cutler, Montgomery, and Palmer Halls, and the William I. Spencer Center are on the National Register of Historic Places.

The face of campus changed again at the beginning of the 21st century with construction of the Western Ridge Housing Complex, which offers apartment-style living for upper-division students and completion of the Russell T. Tutt Science Center; as well as the revitalization of the east campus, now home to the Greek Quad and several “theme” houses.

DEPAUW UNIVERSITY Tigers
www.depauw.edu

DePauw Univeristy was founded in 1837 and is recognized as a selective, high-quality, national liberal arts university by other institutions of higher education and the nation's business and professional communities. It has nationally known programs in its College of Liberal Arts and School of Music.

The University was originally founded as Indiana Asbury University when state leaders of the Methodist Church decided there should be a university espousing Methodism somewhere in Indiana. Greencastle was chosen and the school was named after Methodism's pioneer bishop, Francis Asbury. A single teacher offered college work to five students in a rented building in Greencastle.

The name remained until 1884 when, faced with a financial crisis that pervaded the nation, the school received a $600,000 gift from Indiana industrialist Washington C. DePauw. The original name remains in the Asbury College of Liberal Arts.

Distinguished alumni include former Vice President Dan Quayle, U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton (who was considered as a possible running mate by Democratic Presidential nominees Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis), interior designer Mark Hampton (one of the principal designers for the renovation fo Washington's Blair House), Bill Clinton transition team leader and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, the composer-lyricist team of Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford Charles, best-selling author John Jakes, former astronaut Joseph P. Allen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author James B. Stewart, and founder of ESPN William Rasmussen.

DePauw is also the birthplace of the national journalism society Sigma Delta Chi and the social sororities of Alpha Chi Omega and Kappa Alpha Theta. In 1918, the DePauw Athletic Association selected the nickname Tigers from student suggestions. The final suggestions were Tigers, Yellow Demons, Yellow Jackets, Wasps and Fighting Parsons.

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HENDRIX COLLEGE Warriors
www.hendrix.edu

In 1876, the institution which was to become Hendrix College was established in Altus, Arkansas, by Isham L. Burrow, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (now the United Methodist Church). Central Institute had an enrollment of 20 pupils. Originally a primary school, the institution soon added a secondary and then a collegiate department. In 1881 the name was changed to Central Collegiate Institute.

In 1884, Central Collegiate Institute was purchased by the Methodist Church in Arkansas. Five years later the primary department was discontinued, and the institution was renamed Hendrix College in honor of Bishop Eugene R. Hendrix. It was designed to be the "male college" of the Methodist Church, South, in Arkansas, but it continued to accept women students. In 1890 the Board of Trustees moved Hendrix to Conway from Altus and enrollment was about 25 students with five faculty members.

By 1900 Hendrix was cited by the U.S. Office of Education as having higher standards for admission and graduation than any other institution of higher learning in the state of Arkansas. The secondary department was discontinued by 1925 and student collegiate enrollment increased to around 325. During the period 1929-33, Hendrix was merged with Henderson-Brown College of Arkadelphia and Galloway Women's College of Searcy.

In the past 35 years Hendrix has grown to an enrollment of nearly 1,000 students and built 15 new academic buildings and residence halls. Dr. Roy B. Shilling Jr., formerly the president of SCAC member Southwestern University (Texas), served as president of Hendrix from 1969 until 1981.

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MILLSAPS COLLEGE Majors
www.millsaps.edu

The year 1890 was a tumultuous time for Mississippi - ravaging weather, a suffering economy, and political upheaval. Yet Major Reuben Webster Millsaps made good on his promise to establish "a Christian college within the borders of our state." With a gift of $50,000 and a pledge from Mississippi Methodists to contribute the same, Major Millsaps saw his dream realized in 1892 with the birth of a college in the state capital that would bear his name.

During the 1920s, Millsaps found itself in the position of leadership during a time of antagonism regarding higher education in the state. The public colleges and universities lost their accreditation because of political interference. As Millsaps successfully resisted this interference in academic matters, it now holds the longest continuous record of accreditation in the state.

Millsaps almost became a college for young women in the 1940s as men enlisted in the service for World War II. Millsaps became part of the war effort as men returned to the campus with the establishment of a unit of the Navy V-12 program, which provided college education for men who would become officers.

The issue of integration was volatile across the country during the 1960s, yet Millsaps maintained a steady course. Then Millsaps president, Dr. Homer Ellis Finger Jr., summed up the position of the college when he said, "College students have a right to hear various points of view. They are more mature in their judgment than they are sometimes credited with...Millsaps College has its weaknesses...but indoctrination is not one of our weaknesses." By 1965, voluntary integration occurred at Millsaps without violence.

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OGLETHORPE UNIVERSITY Stormy Petrels
www.oglethorpe.edu

Old Oglethorpe University began in the early 1800s with a movement by Georgia Presbyterians to establish in their state an institution for the training of ministers. For generations, southern Presbyterian families had sent their sons to Princeton College in New Jersey, and the long distance to travel by stage or horseback suggested the building of a similar institution in the South.

Oglethorpe University was chartered by the state of Georgia in 1835, shortly after the centennial observance of the state. The college was named after James Edward Oglethorpe, the founder of Georiga, and classes commenced in 1838 at one of the earliest denominational institutions in the South located below the Virginia state line. The antebellum college, which began with four faculty members and about 25 students, was located at Midway, a small community near Milledgeville, then the state capital of Georgia.

The school closed in 1862 due to the Civil War and then briefly relocated in 1870 to Georgia's postbellum capital of Atlanta, at the site of the present City Hall. But it was forced to close again in 1872. However, Oglethorpe was rechartered in 1913 and the first cornerstone to the new campus was laid at its present location in 1915.

Oglethorpe's most famous former faculty member is James Woodrow, an uncle of Woodrow Wilson and the first professor in Georgia to hold the Ph.D. degree. Its most famous alumnus is Sidney Lanier , a noted poet, critic and musician. And one of college athletics most unusual nicknames belongs to Oglethorpe - the Stormy Petrel, which was named by Dr. Thornwell Jacobs. This persistent seabird, according to legend, inspired James Oglethorpe while on board his ship to Georgia in 1732.

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RHODES COLLEGE Lynx
www.rhodes.edu

On February 4, 1848, the trustees of Montgomery Academy, a preparatory school, conveyed their property to the Masonic Order of Tennessee on condition they establish a first rate college. The Masons raised $15,000, built a fine building, and launched the Masonic University of Tennessee in Clarksville. It continued for seven years, but faltered in 1855.

A gentleman by the name of Mr. William M. Stewart, who was a distinguished scientist from Philadelphia who amassed a fortune in the iron business, rescued the college. After serving as a professor, Stewart eventually became president and interested the Presbyterians in purchasing the Masonic College. In his honor, the name of the college was changed to Stewart College.

Federal troops occupied the buildings during the Civil War and left nothing but the bare walls and floors. But the Presbyterians raised $6,000 and reopened the college in 1869. Then, under the Plan of Union of 1873, the Presbyterian Church reorganized the college after the Reconstruction Era to operate it as the single Presbyterian college. By 1875 the name of the college was changed to Southwestern Presbyterian University and the institution grew and prospered. It also added a School of Theology, growing under the leadership of Dr. Joseph Wilson, father of Woodrow Wilson.

In 1925 the institution moved to Memphis and adopted the name Southwestern, denoting a liberal arts college. Then in 1945 the official name of the college name became Southwestern At Memphis. On July 1, 1984, the name of the College was changed to Rhodes College in honor of President Peyton Nalle Rhodes, who served the College as president from 1949 until 1966. In fact, Dr. Rhodes served the College from 1926 until his death in 1984.

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The University of the South was founded by leaders of the Episcopal Church in 1857 and continues to be supported by and constitutionally related to 28 Episcopal dioceses in 12 states. The University is located on a 10,000-acre campus atop Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau, approximately 45 miles from Chattanooga and 90 miles from Nashville.

It gained its popular name of Sewanee because the founders accepted an offer of land from the Sewanee Mining Company at a place known to the Indians as Sewanee. The Domain of The University of the South is located on the western face of the Cumberland Plateau and includes the campus, residential areas, the village of Sewanee, lakes, forests, woodland paths, caves and bluffs. The town of Sewanee (pop. 2,500) is not incorporated but is managed by the University administration and provides municipal services.

Concerned by the failure of the Episcopal Church to establish a single successful university with the various southern states, 10 Episcopal dioceses agreed in 1856 to work together to create an institution which would serve the entire area. Responding to their bishops' invitation, clergy and lay delegates from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee met at Lookout Mountain near Chattagooga, Tennessee, on July 4, 1857, and organized the first Board of Trustees.

After a second meeting to select the name and site, a third Trustees meeting was held in 1858 at Beersheba Springs resort near Sewanee to receive the charter from the State of Tennessee. On October 10, 1860, the ceremonial laying of the cornerstone was held for the first building. The Bishop of Georgia, Stephen Elliott, placed a Bible and Prayer Book within the stone.

The dreams were swept away during the Civil War. But in 1866 a simple ceremony was held to construct a small cross with nearby saplings at the site of the campus, and the University was re-established. The University of the South has gone on to post an impressive record of academic achievement, including 22 Rhodes Scholars and 18 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship winners. The Sewanee Review, published by the university, is the oldest continuously published literary quarterly in the United States and one of the best journals of its kind.

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SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Pirates
www.southwestern.edu

Southwestern University first opened its doors in Georgetown in 1873, but its founding lies in the hard work of visionaries who established four "root" institutions earlier. Those schools - Rutersville College, Wesleyan College, McKenzie College and Soule University - were the foundation upon which Southwestern was conceived and built.

It all began in 1835 when Col. William B. Travis of the volunteer Texas army wrote to the publisher of the New York Christian Advocate, calling for the establishment of a Methodist presence in the region where settlers were beginning to revolt against the government of Mexico. Fearing the political consequences of founding a foreign mission before tensions in Texas were resolved, Methodist leaders refrained from sending missionary preachers until 1837 when Texas became a sovereign republic.

One of those persons was Martin Ruter, who founded Rutersville College in 1840, six miles north of LaGrange, Texas. By 1844 the college had the first six graduates of the Republic of Texas. However, a series of misfortune eventually closed the school in 1856. Area Methodists founded Wesleyan College in 1844 and it eventually merged with San Augustine University in 1847 to form the University of Eastern Texas under state control. McKenzie Institute was founded in Clarksville in 1839 and officially chartered in 1848, although it was finally closed due to the Civil War. Soule University was founded in 1856, named after Bishop Joshua Soule of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. However, it continuously experienced financial trouble and closed in 1887.

Despite the financial woes, Soule opened the first medical department as soon as the Civil War ended in 1865. Francis Asbury Mood, a teacher from South Carolina, moved to Texas in 1865 and convinced the five Texas Methodist conferences to support one central institution. In 1872 a new site was secured in Georgetown and two years after opening its doors as Texas University in 1873, the institution's Union Charter was granted by the State of Texas in 1875 under the name Southwestern University.

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TRINITY UNIVERSITY Tigers
www.trinity.edu

Founded in 1869 when Ewing College, Chapel Hill College and Larissa College joined forces in the tiny North Texas town of Tehuacana, Trinity University came to be known as a university related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA). After a move to Waxahachie, Texas, in 1902, Trinity accepted the City of San Antonio's invitation to relocate in the Alamo City in 1942. Since 1953, Trinity has enjoyed its current location.

With little money and lots of talk about a world war, Texas Presbyterians in 1939 began to have serious doubts about the future of Trinity University, which was located on a hill overlooking the drought-plagued fields of Waxahachie - 20 miles south of Dallas. At the same time, financial problems also troubled another Presbyterian school, Austin College in Sherman. During the Christmas season of 1940, Chamber of Commerce representatives from San Antonio met to explore the idea of bringing Trinity and Austin to the Alamo City and merge with the existing University of San Antonio. The Presbyterian Church decided to keep Austin College in Sherman and Trinity was moved in the summer of 1942.

After enjoying its first location in San Antonio on Woodlawn with 26 faculty members and 453 students, Trinity was moved in 1952 to its present location known as the "Skyline Campus", which overlooks downtown San Antonio. The 117-acre campus was initially designed by renowned San Antonio architect O'Neil Ford, described as "the region's most imaginative architect" by The New York Times.

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