University of Saint Mary

University of Saint Mary
Established	1859
Type	Private
Religious affiliation	Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth (Catholic)
President	Sr. Diane Steele, SCL
Undergraduates	600
Postgraduates	150
Location	Leavenworth, Kansas, United States
Colors	Navy and Gold
Nickname	Spires
Mascot	Spyro
Website	www.StMary.edu

The University of Saint Mary (USM) is a private liberal arts university in Leavenworth, Kansas. It is sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, who established it as Saint Mary College. Though it was originally a school for women, the school is now coeducational. St. Mary's Academy for high school students is located on the same campus. The mother house of the order is also on the premises. At one time the nuns' property had its own post office, Xavier, Kansas, the name honoring St. Francis Xavier.

The University of Saint Mary offers 26 bachelor’s degree programs and six master’s degree programs, including Master of Business Administration, Master of Arts in Psychology, Counseling Psychology, Education, Adaptive Special Education, and Teaching. Traditional, evening, degree completion, and online classes are available.

The Saint Mary’s mission is "to educate students of diverse backgrounds to realize their God-given potential and prepare them for value-centered lives and careers that contribute to the well being of our global society."

History

St. Mary's originated as a small institute for women in 1859. The Sisters of Charity came to Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1858 and began teaching boys and girls. One year later, they decided to start St. Mary's Institute in downtown Leavenworth. In 1870, St. Mary's was moved to its current location and was renamed St. Mary's Academy. In 1923 it was renamed St. Mary's College. In 1932, the college became a four-year institute and started accepting a few men in certain areas of study. The University didn’t become residentially coeducational until 1988. In 1974, St. Mary's became the first four-year university to offer a degree completion in Kansas City. In 2000, St. Mary's opened the Overland Park Campus. St. Mary College expanded again in July 2003 and changed its name to the University of St. Mary. St. Mary's first fully endowed chair was inaugurated in 1989 with the retirement of Sister Mary Janet McGilley. Sister McGilley was a poet, educator, and a president of St. Mary's University.

Academic profile

St. Mary’s has 886 students enrolled across four campuses. It has a full-time faculty of 31, who teach 26 undergraduate programs and six masters programs. St. Mary's has been named a "Best Value College" by the Princeton Review.^{[citation needed]} Students at St. Mary's come from 33 different states, and it has international students from Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Columbia, Finland, and Canada. The average age of residential full-time students is 22 and the average full-time undergraduate is 27. The student body is 47% male and 53% female. On average, USM receives 427 applications per year, and 233 students are accepted.

Campuses

The main campus of USM is located between 200 acres (0.81 km²) of hills in Leavenworth, Kansas, and is the location of undergraduate classrooms, two residential halls (Berchman's Hall and Maria Hall), and the main academic and administrative offices. It is near a nature preserve and has stately academic buildings, indoor athletic facilities, and outdoor playing fields.

The Overland Park Campus is in Overland Park, Kansas, on Pflumm Road, between College Boulevard and West 119th Street. This campus hosts evening master degree classes and degree-completion programs. Its main function is accelerated degree completion and graduate programs and it is home to various resource centers.

The Wyandotte County Campus is located inside Providence Medical Center. It hosts master degree classrooms and degree completion programs year round.

St. Mary's offers Masters in Art education at Sacred Heart in Shawnee, Kansas, and has an online degree program given in eight week sessions. Curriculum for this online program can be found at Saint Mary Online. Some of the buildings on these campuses are Annunciation Chapel, Saint Mary Hall, Xavier Courtyard, DePaul Library, McGilley Fieldhouse, Kehoe Memorial Baseball Field, and the Ryan Sports Center.

Athletics

Main article: Saint Mary Spires

USM is part of the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference which is part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. St. Mary's has eight men's and women's varsity sports, which include men's baseball, basketball, football, and soccer and women's basketball, soccer, volleyball, and softball. SMU's team colors are navy and gold. St. Mary's has four sports facilities. The Ryan Sports center is a 1,500 seat multi-purpose arena which hosts the women's volleyball and men's and women's basketball. It has an indoor track, training room, racquetball courts, and athletic offices. The McGilley's field house north of Ryan sports center is the main facility for practice and training and is home for intramural sports on campus. It has the campus weight lifting facility. The USM fitness center is used by both students and faculty. St. Mary's has separate baseball, soccer, and football fields used by both men and women.

USM projects

"Into the Streets" is a program for incoming freshmen. The freshmen are separated into groups and are assigned different tasks such as mentoring younger students during the first day of middle school, working on houses for people in the community, helping with maintenance at the local shelter, and helping the Red Cross. St. Mary's has the alternative where students are able to do charitable activities on spring and winter breaks. Students go to Denver, Colorado, during their winter break for the opportunity to work with three different organizations, the Mount Saint Vincent Home, Annunciation School, and the Humanitarian Center for Workers. During spring break students travel to Guatemala where they help at the community center. They have the choice to travel to Appalachia where they build new homes. USM has local service agency programs where students are able to take what they learn in the classroom and use it in the real world. Members of the productions and operations management class has helped Alliance Against Family Violence improve operations by creating a computerized inventory agency. Consumer behavior and marketing research classes helped the Leavenworth community library with strategic planning, including planning a new library layout and solving other problems.

References

• "University of Saint Mary – Rewriting History." 30 Apr. 2008.
• "University of Saint Mary." berecruited. 30 Apr. 2008.
• Athletics at University of Saint Mary. 30 Apr. 2008.
• Campus Locations. About Saint Mary. 30 Apr. 2008.
• About Leavenworth. University of Saint Mary. 30 Apr. 2008.
• "America's Best Colleges 2008." US News. 30 Apr. 2008.
• "Programs in the Spotlight." Kansas Campus Compact. 30 Apr. 2008.

External links

• Official website