Wheaton College is a private Evangelical Christian college in Wheaton, Illinois, United States. A four-year liberal arts school, it was founded by evangelical abolitionists in 1860. Wheaton College was a stop on the Underground Railroad and graduated one of Illinois' first Black college graduates. It has been considered one of the leading Christian universities in the United States and an influential institution in North American evangelicalism and as an anchor of the "Bible belt" centered around the Wheaton area.
History Wheaton College was founded in 1860. Its predecessor, the Illinois Institute, had been founded in late 1853 by Wesleyan Methodists as a college and preparatory school. Wheaton's first president, Jonathan Blanchard, was a former president of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and a staunch abolitionist with ties to Oberlin College. Mired in financial trouble and unable to sustain the institution, the Wesleyans looked to Blanchard for new leadership. He took on the role as president in 1860, having suggested several Congregationalist appointees to the board of trustees the previous year. The Wesleyans, similar in spirit and mission to the Congregationalists, were happy to relinquish control of the Illinois Institute.Clyde S. Kilby, "A Minority of One," (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), p. 146. Blanchard officially separated the college from any denominational support and was responsible for its new name, given in honor of trustee and benefactor Warren L. Wheaton, who founded the town of Wheaton after moving to Illinois from New England.
A dogged reformer, Blanchard began his public campaign for abolitionism with the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1836, at the age of twenty-five.Clyde S. Kilby, "A Minority of One," (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), p. 45. Later in his life, after the Civil War, he began a sustained campaign against Freemasonry. This culminated in a national presidential campaign on the American Anti-Masonic Party ticket in 1884.
Under Blanchard's leadership, the college was a stop on the Underground Railroad. The confirmation came from the letters of Ezra Cook, one of Blanchard's relatives by marriage, who notes that the town and college's anti-slavery beliefs were so widely held that he, along with hundreds of other Wheaton residents, had seen and spoken with fugitive slaves.
Blanchard consistently lobbied for universal co-education and was a strong proponent of reform through strong public education open to all. At this time, Wheaton was the only school in Illinois with a college-level women's program. Also, Wheaton saw its first graduate of color in 1866, when Edward Breathitte Sellers took his degree. Additionally, he is one of the first African-American college graduates in Illinois. In 1882, Charles A. Blanchard succeeded his father as president of the college.
In 1925, J. Oliver Buswell, an outspoken Presbyterian, delivered a series of lectures at Wheaton College. Shortly after that, President Charles Blanchard died, and Buswell was called to be the third president of Wheaton. Upon his installation in April 1926, he became the nation's youngest college president at age 31. Buswell's tenure was characterized by expanding enrollment (from approximately 400 in 1925 to 1,100 in 1940), a building program, strong academic development, and a boom in the institution's reputation. It was also known for growing divisiveness over faculty scholarship and personality clashes. In 1940, this tension led to the firing of Buswell for being, as two college historians put it, "too argumentative in temperament and too intellectual in his approach to Christianity." By the late 1940s, Wheaton was emerging as a standard-bearer of Evangelicalism.
By 1950, enrollment at the college had surpassed 1,600. In the second half of the twentieth century, enrollment growth and more selective admissions accompanied athletic success, additional and improved facilities, and expanded programs.
In 1951, Honey Rock, a camp in Three Lakes, Wisconsin, was purchased by the college.
The school changed its nickname from the Crusaders to the Thunder in 2000. The national press noted the change, and some alumni objected. Wheaton rejected other suggestions for a new mascot name, including the Mastodons — a reference to Perry Mastodon, which is a mastodon skeleton that was excavated nearby and is now on display on the college campus in the science building.Welcome to the Perry Mastodon Online . Wheaton College. While still known by the nickname "Thunder", in 2011, the college officially changed its mascot to a mastodon named "Tor Thunder" to integrate the nickname and mascot.
In 2003, Wheaton revised its long-standing conduct code to allow faculty to drink alcohol and smoke in private and to permit students to dance off campus and at approved campus events, while still banning alcohol and tobacco use on campus. The change reflected a broader shift among evangelicals away from viewing drinking and dancing as absolute moral prohibitions and toward treating them as matters of personal discretion.
On October 13, 2007, Stanton L. Jones, a Provost of Wheaton College, signed the interfaith document "Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You," agreeing that Islam and Christianity can be at peace with each other."Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word Between Us and You" (PDF format).
In 2010, the public phase of "The Promise of Wheaton" campaign came to a close with $250.7 million (~$ in ) raised, an "unprecedented 5-1/2 year campaign figure for Wheaton College". In the same year, Wheaton College became the first American Associate University of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's Faith and Globalization Initiative. Tony Blair noted that the partnership will "give emerging leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom the opportunity to explore in depth the critical issues of how faith impacts the modern world today through different faith and cultural lenses" and that Wheaton's participation will "greatly enrich the Initiative".
Presidents Jonathan Blanchard (1860–1882) Charles A. Blanchard (1882–1925) J. Oliver Buswell (1926–1940) V. Raymond Edman (1941–1965) Hudson Armerding (1965–1982) J. Richard Chase (1982–1993) A. Duane Litfin (1993–2010) Philip G. Ryken (2010–present)
Controversies In 2004, Wheaton College dismissed Joshua Hochschild, assistant professor of philosophy, for converting to Roman Catholicism.Golden, Daniel (January 7, 2006). "No Catholics at Wheaton?". The Wall Street Journal. Wheaton's president said his "personal desire" to retain Hochschild, "a gifted brother in Christ", was outweighed by his duty to employ "faculty who embody the institution's Protestant convictions".
In 2008, English professor Kent Gramm resigned after declining to give the college administration details of his pending divorce from his wife of 30 years."Divorce Costs Professor Job". Daily Herald.
In December 2015, Wheaton College suspended a tenured professor of political science Larycia Hawkins, due to "significant questions regarding the theological implications" of comments she made about religious solidarity between Muslims and Christians. The two officially parted ways in February 2016.
Campus
Wheaton's most recognizable and oldest building is Blanchard Hall, a limestone structure erected in 1853 to join the two-story "boarding hall" at the foot of the hill as the only two on campus. Jonathan Blanchard had a vision for the expansion of this structure into its present castle-like edifice. Wheaton contends that it patterns its campus architecture after buildings at the University of Oxford, which Blanchard admired on a trip to England in 1843. After four additions (1871, 1873, 1890, 1927), Wheaton completed the Main Building in 1927. That year, under college president J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., Wheaton renamed the Main Building Blanchard Hall to honor Wheaton's first two presidents, Jonathan Blanchard and his son Charles.
Blanchard Hall served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Academic In 1900, Wheaton built the brick "Industrial Building". From 1917 to 1945 it housed the Wheaton Academy, and from 1945 to 1960 the Graduate School. In 1960 it was renamed Buswell Hall, and in 1980 renamed Schell Hall in honor of Edward R. Schell.
Wheaton housed its science departments in Breyer (chemistry) and Armerding (biology, geology, math, and physics) halls until the 2010–11 school year when Wheaton completed a new Meyer Science Center. Armerding Hall was also the home to the Wheaton College Observatory (a feature of the college since the presidency of Charles Blanchard in the late nineteenth century), which Wheaton relocated to the Meyer Science Center.
The Wheaton College Conservatory of Music, housed in the Armerding Center for Music and Arts (previously in McAlister Hall and Pierce Memorial Chapel), is an internationally recognized music school and is the only conservatory within an Evangelical school of higher education. The approximately 200 students within the conservatory focus on various fields of music, including education, performance, composition, and history. Student recitals, required for graduation with a music degree, are held in the Armerding recital hall.
Academics
Wheaton College is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.
According to The Princeton Review's "The Best 351 Colleges", "If the integration of faith and learning is what you want out of a college, Wheaton is arguably the best school in the nation with a Christ-based worldview." Students may choose from about 40 majors in many liberal arts disciplines and the sciences. The most popular undergraduate majors, based on 2021 graduates, were: Business/Managerial Economics (64) Psychology (46) Biology/Biological Sciences (33) English Language and Literature (30) Elementary Education and Teaching (28) Health Services/Allied Health/Health Sciences (28) International Relations and Affairs (28)
In 2025, U.S. News & World Report ranked Wheaton College at 53 out of 265 Best National Liberal Arts Colleges. Wheaton continued to achieve high rankings in several areas of the report: No. 36 in freshmen retention (2025 Report) No. 38 in top performers on social mobility (2025 Report)
Wheaton College ranked ninth in the nation in the total number of graduates (all fields) who went on to earn doctorates (from 1986 to 1995) according to Franklin & Marshall College's 2004 survey, which included more than 900 private colleges and universities.
A “Statement of Faith and Educational Purpose” must be reaffirmed annually by all members of Wheaton’s Board of Trustees, faculty, and staff as a condition of continued employment. Signers affirm belief in a set of evangelical Protestant doctrines that include biblical inerrancy, the historical existence of a “directly created” Adam and Eve, and the existence of Satan.
Wheaton's acceptance of evolutionary biology in the science departments has been controversial to religious creationists. Wheaton College was prominently featured in the 2001 PBS documentary Evolution, which showcased Wheaton professors' acceptance of theistic evolution."Evolution: Show 7: What About God?". PBS.
Forbes magazine ranked Wheaton College 75th in their annual list of 650 best undergraduate institutions and gave Wheaton a financial grade of "A". Forbes also lists Wheaton among the Top 100 ROI Colleges in 2014.
Throughout 2010-2020, Wheaton College ranked 18th in the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics' survey of baccalaureate-origin institutions of non-Science-and-Engineering doctorate recipients. This ranking uses an institutional yield weighted by an institution's number of graduates..
Conservatory of Music