Last fall Ursuline College, a women’s oriented educational institution in Pepper Pike, Ohio, announced plans to merge with Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania. That deal had now been finalized. The Ursuline College Campus of Gannon University, will be the university’s third campus. (The third campus is in Ruskin, Florida.) The Ursuline College Campus of Gannon University will have distinct academic programs and maintain its own athletics team The eighteen-month transition period will begin at the end of this academic year.
Ursuline College is sponsored by the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland. In the fall of 2023, it enrolled 637 undergraduate students and 286 graduate students. The vast majority of degrees awarded are in nursing and other health-related fields.
The Ursuline Sisters came to Cleveland in 1850 from their native France to establish the first religious teaching community in Cleveland. Mother Mary of the Annunciation Beaumont, the first superior of the Cleveland Ursulines and the founder of Ursuline College, obtained a charter from the state of Ohio to establish a college “to confer, on the recommendation of the faculty, such degrees and honors as are conferred by colleges and universities in the United States.” Ursuline College thus became one of the first Catholic women’s colleges in the United States organized and chartered explicitly for the purpose of college education. Ursuline College was also the first chartered Catholic college for women in Ohio. Enrollment was open to the public of all races and creeds who qualified scholastically.
Like Ursuline, Gannon University is a Catholic institution. It enrolls just under 3,000 undergraduate students and more than 1,600 graduate students. Women make up 59 percent of the undergraduate student body.
“As the landscape of higher education experiences turbulent times, particularly with smaller Catholic institutions, our vision is focused on a successful collaboration that will offer a model of academic excellence and mutual respect of our individual identities, all while creating a new shared culture and combined strength,” said David King, president of Ursuline College.
“We are proud to have the support of both boards in our collective effort to improve and strengthen Catholic higher education in our region,” said Walter Iwanenko, president of Gannon University. “This combination will bring new opportunities to both institutions’ students, staff, faculty and alumni that would not be possible otherwise.”