Marquette University () is a private Jesuit research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. It was established as Marquette College on August 28, 1881, by John Henni, the first Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. Initially an all-male institution, Marquette became the first coeducational Catholic university in the world in 1909.
Marquette is part of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. The university is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and had an enrollment of about 11,000 students in 2023. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity". Marquette is ninth largest Catholic university by enrollment in the United States and the largest private university in Wisconsin.
Marquette is organized into 11 schools and colleges at its main Milwaukee campus, offering programs in the liberal arts, business, communication, education, engineering, law, and health sciences disciplines. The university also administers classes in suburbs around the Milwaukee area and in Washington, D.C. While most students are pursuing undergraduate degrees, the university has over 68 doctoral and master's degree programs, a law school, a dental school (the only such school in the state of Wisconsin), and 22 graduate certificate programs.
The university's varsity athletic teams, known as the Golden Eagles, are members of the Big East Conference and compete in the NCAA's Division I in all sports. Among its current and past faculty and alumni are 43 Fulbright Scholars, 6 Truman Scholars, 6 state governors, and 3 U.S. senators.
History
Marquette College Marquette University was founded on August 28, 1881, as Marquette College by John Martin Henni, the first Catholic bishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, with the assistance of funding from Belgian businessman Guillaume Joseph DeBuey. The university was named after 17th-century missionary and explorer Father Jacques Marquette. The highest priority of the newly established college was to provide an affordable Catholic education to the area's emerging German immigrant population. The first five graduates of Marquette College received their Bachelor of Arts degrees in 1887. Between 1891 and 1906, the college employed one full-time lay professor, with many classes being taught by master's students. By 1906, Marquette had awarded 186 students the Bachelor of Arts, 38 the Master of Arts, and one student Bachelor of Science.
Marquette University Marquette College officially became a university in 1907, after it became affiliated with a local medical school and moved to its present location. Johnston Hall, which now houses the university's College of Communication, was the first building erected on the new campus grounds. Marquette University High School, formerly the preparatory department of the university, became a separate institution the same year. In 1908, Marquette opened an engineering college and purchased two law schools, which would ultimately become the foundation of its current law program. Initially an all-male institution, Marquette University became the first coed Catholic university in the world, when it admitted its first female students in 1909. By 1916 its female students had increased to 375; many other Catholic institutions began adopting similar approaches in their enrollments during the 1910s and 1920s.Leahy, p. 74.
Marquette acquired the Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1913, leading to the formation of the Marquette University School of Medicine. During the 1920s and again during the post-World War II years, Marquette rapidly expanded, opening a new library, athletics facilities, classroom buildings, and residence halls. The student population increased markedly as well, met by the construction of buildings for the schools of law, business, dentistry, and the liberal arts. Marquette is credited with offering the first degree program specializing in hospital administration in the United States, and graduated the first two students in 1927. Despite the promising growth of the university, financial constraints led to the School of Medicine separating from Marquette in 1967 to become the Medical College of Wisconsin. Marquette's Golden Avalanche football team was disbanded in December 1960, and basketball became the leading spectator sport at the university.
In the 1960s an early fifteenth century French chapel, St. Martin de Seysseul, which was reputedly connected to St. Joan of Arc and which had been transported to the US in the 1920s, was transferred to the campus. It is, unsurprisingly, the oldest building in Wisconsin.
1970s–present
Graduate programs in the liberal arts and sciences, for which planning had begun in the preceding decade, were officially opened in the 1970s. In 1977, the university celebrated the victory of their men's basketball team over the University of North Carolina to win the NCAA Championship title.
In 1994, then-president Albert J. DiUlio made a controversial decision to discontinue the use of the "Warriors" nickname for the university's sports teams, citing growing pressure on schools to end the use of Native American mascots. Backlash from alumni, donors, and students ensued, though the administration and Marquette community eventually settled on the nickname "Golden Eagles". The mascot controversy again boiled over in 2005 when the university's leadership briefly changed the nickname to "the Gold", only to return to the "Golden Eagles" a week later.
During the 1990s, the university invested heavily in the neighborhood surrounding Marquette with its $50 million Campus Circle Project. It also opened a Washington, D.C.–based study center called the Les Aspin Center for Government, named after the former Secretary of Defense. MBA programs and the College of Professional Studies, with programs aimed at adult education, were also founded during the mid-1990s. In 1996, Robert A. Wild was installed as the university's 22nd president and shortly thereafter began a fundraising campaign that culminated in a major campus beautification effort and the construction of several major buildings, including a new space for the School of Dentistry. The university's growth was also marked by increases in overall enrollment and the highest test scores for incoming freshmen to date.
In the early 2000s, Marquette continued to grow, with new residence halls, a library, a School of Dentistry building, and athletics facilities. In 2003 the men's basketball team reached the Final Four, boosting the university's exposure on a national level. Fundraising efforts in the subsequent years helped the university complete its largest-ever capital campaign, the Magis Campaign, which raised over $357 million by 2006.
The two largest donations to Marquette University came within the same academic year. The second-largest gift was given by an anonymous couple who have, over time, donated over $50 million to the university. On December 18, 2006, President Wild announced that the couple donated $25 million to the College of Engineering. Less than five months later, on May 4, 2007, Marquette announced a $51 million gift from Raymond and Kathryn Eckstein that would directly benefit the Marquette University School of Law. The gift was the largest amount ever given to a Wisconsin university.
During the Fall 2013 semester, former Marquette president Robert A. Wild returned to Marquette University as interim president following the resignation of his successor and 22nd president of Marquette, Scott Pilarz. Michael Lovell, the former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, took over as president on July 1, 2014, following Wild's interim term. Lovell was the first layperson to serve as Marquette's president, as all previous presidents of the university were Catholic clergymen.
On February 28, 2022, the Marquette board of trustees approved an updated university seal and motto. The change was aimed to "reflect Marquette's history, tradition, and catholic, Jesuit mission, and more accurately depict the role of the Indigenous nations that guided Father Marquette on his journey". The updated seal removes an image depicting Fr. Marquette in a canoe pointing the way forward for a Native American guide and replaces it with an image of a river splitting into three, representing the Milwaukee, the Menomonee, and the Kinnickinnic rivers, and three stalks of wild rice in the foreground, to represent the Potawatomi, Menominee, and Ho-Chunk nations, who remain in the Milwaukee area today. With the seal change also came a change to the university's motto. The motto changed from "Numen Flumenque", meaning "God and the (Mississippi) River" to the Jesuit motto "Ad majorem Dei gloriam", meaning "For the greater glory of God".
On June 9, 2024, Marquette's most recent President Michael Lovell died at the age of 57 from sarcoma cancer.
Controversies On May 16, 1968, African-American students withdrew from Marquette University in a protest against what they called its "institutional racism". The students demanded the immediate hiring of an African-American administrator. A rally at the student union culminated in the arrest of seven people who refused to leave the building after closing. On May 17, Marquette moved toward the hiring of an African-American administrator to end the campus protest.
In April 2010, Marquette University offered a position as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences to Jodi O'Brien, an openly lesbian professor at another Jesuit university, Seattle University. On May 2, Marquette rescinded the offer over concerns about her scholarly writing as it related to Catholic teaching. O'Brien had published works on lesbian sex and same-sex marriage. Several faculty members at Marquette said the decision raised concerns about academic freedom. Faculty and students from both universities protested Marquette's decision.
On June 21, 2011, a 19-year-old Marquette student reported being raped by an athlete. No report was taken by university officers and the city police were not notified. Marquette University acknowledged that failing to notify police was a violation of state law and that the university had ignored its reporting obligations for 10 years. In at least two cases, the lapse played a role in prosecutors declining to press charges. Marquette had held an administrative hearing on another sexual assault allegation in January 2011. However, by the time the report was filed with police, too much time had elapsed to conduct a proper investigation. In 2016, independent research from The State of Education deemed Marquette University as the least sexually healthy college in the nation.
In the fall of 2014, an undergraduate student disagreed with how a course instructor dealt with the topic of gay rights. After class, the student recorded a conversation with the course instructor in which the course instructor stated that she would not tolerate homophobic, racist, or sexist comments in class. After taking the issue to the university, the student claimed to be shut out and told his academic professor, John McAdams, who posted about it on his personal blog. McAdams was put on suspension for refusing to apologize for his blog post, earning MU a spot on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's 2016 "10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech".
Campus
Marquette is located on a campus in the near downtown Milwaukee neighborhood of University Hill, on the former Wisconsin State Fairgrounds. Lake Michigan is roughly one mile east of the edge of campus. The campus stretches 12 blocks east to west and 5 blocks north to south. Wisconsin Avenue, a major thoroughfare in Milwaukee, bisects the campus, placing academic buildings on the south side, and residence halls and other offices and buildings on the north side. Named after the university, the Marquette Interchange, where Interstate Highways 43 and 94 intersect, is also close to campus.