Alvernia College now Alvernia University
September 1, 2008
Alvernia College has been granted university status from the Pennsylvania State Department of Education. University officials announced the status change today in a brief ceremony on the new Campus Commons quadrangle amidst hundreds of students, faculty, and staff. Hereafter, it will officially be known as Alvernia University, effective immediately.
“University status reflects what we have already become due to the extraordinary growth and progress of recent years,” said Dr. Thomas F. Flynn, president of Alvernia University, citing a total enrollment of almost 3,000 students from undergraduates to graduates to Ph.D. candidates. “It also positions us for growth and improvement in our future, inspired and guided by the Franciscan educational ideal of ‘knowledge joined with love.’”
The first graduate of Alvernia to chair the Board of Trustees, Mrs. Kathy Herbein, class of 1995, cited the institutional transformation occurring at Alvernia as a major reason for pursuing the change. “In view of the expansion of our academic program, particularly the explosive growth in graduate studies in the last eight years, the addition of satellite centers in Philadelphia and Pottsville and an increasing number of offsite locations,” Herbein said, “university status was a logical next step.”
Following remarks by Flynn; Herbein; Dr. Karen Cameron, president of the faculty council; Sister Madonna Marie Harvath, General Minister of the Bernardine Franciscan Sisters; and Margo Allen, president of the executive board of the Student Government Association, a university banner showcasing the new logo was unfurled. A campus-wide picnic followed for everyone in attendance, held on the newly completed green space, one of many improvements to the physical plant in the last five years, with more significant additions and upgrades to follow in the next five.
Today’s announcement caps two years of work and preparation by many faculty members and administrators after the pursuit of university status emerged as a centerpiece of the university’s new strategic plan. Under the direction of Provost Shirley Williams, the college submitted a formal application for university status to the State Department of Education in July 2007. An evaluative visit by a site team representing the Education Department occurred in April of 2008, with approval following in September.
Alvernia is coincidentally observing a year-long 50th anniversary celebration, founded in 1958 by the Bernardine Franciscan Sisters, a Catholic religious women’s order, as an undergraduate college preparing Sisters to teach. A private coeducational Franciscan university rooted in the Catholic and liberal arts traditions, Alvernia University enrolls 1,500 traditional undergraduates, 620 continuing education students, and 780 graduate and fifty doctoral students across three Pennsylvania campuses—a 123-acre campus in Reading and two satellite academic centers in Philadelphia and Pottsville.