The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. is the oldest Catholic college in New England, founded in 1843. Boston College was founded in 1864 to serve the needs of the Irish working class; it later moved to its present location at Chestnut Hill. Pennsylvania has two Jesuit institutions -- St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia and the University of Scranton -- while Connecticut has Fairfield University. St. Peter's College is located in New Jersey, with campuses in Jersey City and Englewood Cliffs. New York State can claim three Jesuit institutions -- Le Moyne College in Syracuse, Canisius College in Buffalo and Fordham University in the Bronx. Besides its four undergraduate colleges and six professional schools, Fordham is a comprehensive research institution.
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. is one of the world's leading academic and research institutions. Loyola University Maryland was founded in Baltimore in 1852. It has four campuses and maintains Clinical Centers in the city. Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia is the youngest of the Jesuit institutions, founded in 1954. Loyola University New Orleans has five colleges, consisting of Humanities and Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Business, Music and Fine Arts and Law. Spring Hill College, Alabama's oldest institution of higher learning, was founded in 1830 in Mobile. In 1954, it was the first -- and for a time the only -- desegregated college in the Deep South.
Loyola University Chicago is the largest Jesuit Catholic institution in the United States. It has three campuses in Chicago as well as the John Felice Rome Center in Italy and acts as the host university to the Beijing Center for Chinese Studies in China. St. Louis University was founded in 1818. It is the oldest university west of the Mississippi and the second oldest Jesuit institution. Ohio has two Jesuit institutions -- Xavier University in Cincinnati and John Carroll University in Cleveland. Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis., was named after the 17th century Jesuit missionary and explorer Father Jacques Marquette. Omaha, Nebraska is the home of Creighton University, while the University of Detroit Mercy is Michigan's largest Catholic university.
Santa Clara University is California's oldest institution of higher learning. It was founded in 1851 on the site of the Mission Santa Clara de Asís, which was the eighth of the original 21 missions established by the Spanish in California. The University of San Francisco was established not long after, in 1855. In Los Angeles, the Jesuit Loyola University merged with Marymount College, run by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, to form Loyola Marymount University in 1973. Regis University in Denver, Colo., started life in Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1877. In the state of Washington, Gonzaga University in Spokane originally began as a school to train young men for the priesthood, while Seattle University is the largest independent university in the Pacific Northwest.