Loyola College in Maryland is a Jesuit Catholic comprehensive university committed to the educational and spiritual traditions of the Society of Jesus, including liberal education, development of the whole person, and service to the greater community. Established in 1852, Loyola College was the first Jesuit college in the U.S. to bear the name of St. Ignatius Loyola and the ninth among today's Jesuit collegiate institutions in the country.

Father John Early, a former president of the College of the Holy Cross, and five of his Jesuit conferees established the college to educate the young Catholic laity of Baltimore-as well as a wider circle of non-Catholics-who sought a liberal education without the commitment of joining the priesthood. Less than a year later, the college petitioned the Maryland legislature for a charter, and on April 13, 1853, the Associated Professors of Loyola College in the City of Baltimore were incorporated. The charter permitted the granting of university level degrees.

Initially located in a house on Holliday Street in downtown Baltimore-a site marked by a commemorative plaque in what is now Baltimore's War Memorial Plaza and adjacent to City Hall-the college quickly outgrew its environs and moved in 1855 to a new facility at Calvert and Madison Streets. In 1897, Loyola constructed a new five-story addition joined to the original Calvert Street building, including a magnificent hall, a student chapel, a chemistry lab, and numerous classrooms.

"The frontage of our buildings is one of the sights of the City, and must certainly impress on the minds of numerous passers-by on this most busy thoroughfare, the presence of Catholic education in their midst," said Rev. Edward Devitt, S.J., of Georgetown University in 1899, after viewing the college's newly expanded Calvert Street campus, which today houses Baltimore's Center Stage theatre and the parish of St. Ignatius Loyola, including the St. Ignatius Loyola Academy, a Catholic primary school for underprivileged boys.

In 1922, after more than six decades in downtown Baltimore, Loyola purchased Evergreen, a 20-acre parcel of suburban land with a large, half-timbered Tudor-style mansion, for $240,000 from the prominent Garrett family and relocated to its current campus in what is today the city's northern tier. The move was significant beyond Loyola's strategic growth objectives; the college also separated from the high school with which it had been affiliated since its founding, and the severance set the stage for the college to attain higher academic standards. Under the leadership of President Henri Wiesel, S.J., Loyola formalized its procedures for admission and registration, increased resources for the sciences and its library, and earned formal accreditation in 1931 at a time when only 40 percent of Catholic colleges in America were accredited, and when none of the Loyola faculty held the Ph.D. degree.

Over the next several years, course offerings were increased and the faculty organized into departments. Evening classes were begun in 1942, and seven years later a graduate division in education was established.

Starting in 1964 with the appointment of the Reverend Joseph A. Sellinger, S.J., to the presidency, and continuing throughout his 29-year tenure, three developments proved instrumental in defining the present-day Loyola. The first was the inclusion of laity among the college's trustees in 1969, a decision growing out of the Second Vatican Council that provided a more strategic management structure to the institution. The second was the 1971 decision to join with Mount Saint Agnes College, a nearby women's college operated under the auspices of the Sisters of Mercy, during which Loyola absorbed some academic programs and the Mount's students, becoming co-educational across all four undergraduate classes. And, in 1980, the college established of a separate school of business and management, providing a stronger partnership with the Baltimore business community that continues to play a crucial role in the college's development.

In 1984, the business school was formally named the Joseph A. Sellinger, S.J. School of Business and Management, in honor of Father Sellinger, at the time the longest tenured president of any Jesuit institution in the nation. In 1993 the Maryland program of state assistance to private colleges was named the Reverend Joseph A. Sellinger, S.J., Program by the Maryland state legislature in recognition of the role played by the late Loyola president in upholding the program.

Under the leadership of the college's twenty-third president, the Reverend Harold Ridley, S.J., Loyola College has realized a series of strategic plans that have furthered the institution's growth, providing curricular and co-curricular opportunities that are creating new avenues for teaching and learning. Simultaneously, a comprehensive campus expansion has dramatically augmented the academic and residential environment on the college's Evergreen campus, as well as its graduate centers in Timonium and Columbia. Applications to Loyola have grown dramatically in number and quality, with Loyola transcending its traditional Baltimore origins to stand today as a nationally ranked regional university, third among Northern Master's Universities in the 2004 U.S. News & World Report ranking of America's Best Colleges.

With 308 full-time faculty, the college has nearly 3,500 undergraduate and more than 2,700 graduate students representing 39 of the 50 states and several foreign countries. The male:female ratio is about 1:1, and more than 80 percent of the undergraduate students live on campus. The 2004-5 freshmen class had an overall high school grade point average of 3.4 (on a four-point scale) and an average combined Scholastic Aptitude Test of 1215.