University’s History Reflects Its Relationship with Chicago

If DePaul administrators had accepted a consultant’s recommendation in the late 1940s, Lincoln Park and the university would look very different today.

The consultants urged the university to move all of its programs from the campus at Fullerton and Sheffield to the university’s downtown campus. The Lincoln Park neighborhood was deteriorating and enrollment at the campus there was small. But instead of abandoning Lincoln Park--the site of the university’s founding in 1898-- administrators tabled the recommendation and focused efforts on strengthening academic programs to attract more students.

DePaul University served as an anchor for the community as neighborhood groups banded together to work on the rebirth on Lincoln Park. Years passed, the community rebounded, and the university grew to become a nationally ranked institution that today enrolls 17,800 students on six campuses.

This is just one of many facinating accounts in "DePaul University: Centennial Essays and Issues," a new book about the 100-year history of DePaul published this fall by Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company of Dubuque, Iowa. Written by eight DePaul administrators and faculty members, the 380-page soft cover book traces the transformation of DePaul from the tiny, financially strapped St. Vincent’s College to the nation’s second largest Catholic university. The book’s publication was timed to coincide with the university’s yearlong centennial celebration during the 1998-99 academic year.

The book is a compilation of essays based on scores of interviews with alumni, faculty and administrators, and is illustrated with 83 photos from the university’s archives. A wide range of subjects is covered, including the growth and expansion of DePaul, its relationship with the urban community, student life, campus culture, curriculum and the university’s mission.

The decision to stay in Lincoln Park is one of several accounts in the book that illustrate DePaul’s impact on Chicago, and the city’s impact on DePaul.

"DePaul’s history is irrevocably and inseparably tied to its location within an urban setting," wrote Charles Suchar, who penned one chapter and co-edited the book. DePaul has an "interdependent connection to the social, cultural, economic, political and religious institutional infrastructure of Chicago," he wrote.

"The city of Chicago offered DePaul students and faculty the opportunity for an ‘extended campus’ rich with possibilities that most certainly would not have been possible anywhere but in such a dense urban, social and cultural setting as Chicago," wrote Suchar, a DePaul professor of sociology and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

While students derived educational benefits from their location in Chicago, the city also benefitted from the university’s strong commitment to community service. This commitment has been an enduring cornerstone of DePaul’s mission, a major focus of the book.

Among the other themes in the book are DePaul’s history of inclusion and innovation. The university was open to all faiths from its earliest years and was the first Catholic university in the United States to admit women.

DePaul also was a pioneer in offering many of its professional programs at its Loop Campus by 1917, the book relates. Most colleges at the time shunned the hustle and bustle of urban centers.

The downtown campus helped fulfill the institution’s mission to offer education to first generation college students at a location easily accessible to students who worked. After World War II the university again was ahead of its time when it embraced adult learners, capitalizing on the return of GI’s.

The front door of the Loop Campus is now the DePaul Center at 1 E. Jackson Blvd., an 11-story, once defunct department store that DePaul acquired in 1991. After a $65 million rehabilitation, DePaul Center was opened in 1993 as the heart of its downtown campus. The building has helped revitalize the South Loop, where DePaul has proposed more than $200 million in future projects for campus expansion.

In the last 25 years, DePaul also has extended its reach beyond the city limits by establishing suburban campuses to provide access to education to suburban residents.

"One hundred years after its founding, DePaul continues to transform—and be transformed by—its urban surroundings," Suchar said.

Suchar co-edited the book with John Rury, professor of education, who wrote the introduction and contributed a chapter. Other authors were: Richard Meister, executive vice president for academic affairs; Dennis McCann, professor of religious studies; Anna Waring, assistant professor of Public Services; Albert Erlebacher, professor emeritus of history; Rev. Thomas Croak, C.M., associate vice president for donor relations, and Charles Strain, professor of religious studies.

The authors will autograph copies of the book at 4:30 p.m. Sept. 25 in the third floor Special Collections area of the university’s John T. Richardson Library, 2350 N. Kenmore Ave.

Copies of the $29.95 book can purchased at Follett’s Bookstore at DePaul or by calling 1-800-228-0810.