Ten years ago this Friday, Rosary College stepped out of a proud and gracious, if somewhat sleepy, past and into a hopeful and ambitious future. On May 4, the school, now known to the world as Dominican University, will celebrate a decade of honoring that past while pursuing opportunities for growth.
The name change originally came about after the university’s administration and board of trustee determined that it was an appropriate time to adopt a name that reflected its long evolution into a co-educational, post-graduate university. What started out as a college for Catholic women early in 1929 (and its previous incarnations even before that) is now a modern and varied co-educational university with partnerships in China and India and programming that sends its students around the world.
Still, the school is proud that the core of Rosary College remains.
“The university had a vision 10 years ago, led by President Donna Carroll and the board of trustees, and that vision has been realized,” said Dominican spokesperson Jessica McKinnon. “We have enjoyed great growth in enrollment, academic programs and our campus while staying true to our Dominican heritage and our commitment to providing students with a quality education rooted in the liberal arts and sciences.”
Indeed, the undergraduate program, which has added a dozen academic programs since 1997, has expanded by over 60 percent, going from 913 students in 1997 to 1,462 today. Meanwhile the graduate program, which added two courses of study in the past decade, has more than doubled to 1,830 students from 887.
Just as significantly, said McKinnon, the university’s business school was renamed to honor longtime area residents and Dominican benefactors Ed Brennan and his wife Lois, who graduated from Rosary College.
If academic development represents the university’s internal reality, its campus buildings are its physical reality-the face it presents to the world. It’s a face that many in River Forest appreciate. Throughout all the changes, Dominican has remained rooted in its past with the collegiate Gothic look of campus buildings designed by the same man who designed the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel as well as many Princeton University buildings. Most of the campus’ newer architecture has followed that outline, lending a solid timeless quality to the campus.
“It’s a terrific village asset,” said River Forest Village President Frank Paris. Besides offering a wide array of educational opportunities to residents of all ages, Paris said, the school lends physical beauty to the area.
“It certainly is a beautiful edifice,” he said, adding that he also appreciates the increased involvement of the college in River Forest’s communal life since the early ’90s.
“They’re much more conscious of the community and much more respectful of it,” he said.
Laurel McMahon, a 20-year village resident and former president of the Historical Society of Oak Park-River Forest, with a well-known love of unique architecture and historic preservation, said she, too, appreciates the manner in which Domincan has worked to be a part of the community. The university, she noted, contributed significantly to the village’s recent 125th Anniversary celebration, with its design school creating the anniversary logo, and the school itself hosting the gala celebration in its spacious community hall.
McMahon said she’s “absolutely impressed” with the mix of old and new on Domincan’s campus, saying, “The recent improvements are so wonderfully in keeping with their architectural past.”
McKinnon said school officials are particularly excited about the upcoming opening of Parmer Hall on the west end of the campus in August. Set among the trees just east of Thatcher Avenue, the new four-story neo-Gothic edifice is the new academic and science building.
The school has no special plans to note the actual anniversary on Friday. That day is itself a historic occasion, another example of tradition melding with modernity at Dominican. At dusk on Friday, graduating seniors will gather on the school’s quad to participate in the annual “Candle and Rose” ceremony. First conducted in 1929 when the teacher’s college’s “girls” wore white dresses, the ceremony now includes male students. While the clothes and the participants have changed, the purpose-to honor the passing of wisdom and love from graduating seniors to the next class-remains, like the school’s mission, the same.