Westminster College (Utah) - History

History

The school was founded in 1875 as the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute, a prep school under the supervision of the First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City.

At that time, members of many Protestant Christian denominations flocked to Salt Lake City in order to try to convert people who belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster is the only remaining vestige of a trend in the late 19th century in which the Protestants set up private primary and secondary schools and offered free tuition to children in order to try to convert them from other religions.

College level classes were first offered in 1897 as Sheldon Jackson College. It was given that name after a Presbyterian minister and its primary benefactor, Sheldon Jackson. High school level classes ceased to be offered in 1945, and the school become strictly a college.

The college changed its name to "Westminster College" in 1902 to better reflect a more general Protestant education. The name is derived from the Westminster Confession of Faith, a Presbyterian confession of faith, which, in turn, was named for a London suburb where it was devised. Today, students from all religious persuasions (or none) are welcome as Westminster severed its ties to the Presbyterian church in 1974.

The college is also no longer antagonistic toward The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About 37 percent of its students are LDS. The school also proposed abandoning its traditional crest emblem, a shield emblazoned with the term "Pro Christo et Libertate." After students actively protested the administrative effort, however, the school crest was preserved, though in 2007, it was finally abandoned as the new crest with Converse Hall took its place.

Westminster was the first accredited two-year junior college in Utah. It became a liberal arts institution in 1949.

Originally located in downtown Salt Lake City, the college moved to its present campus on 27 acres (0.11 km2; 0.04 sq mi) in the Sugar House neighborhood of the city in the early twentieth century where it is still located today.

Westminster College has had seventeen presidents since its founding, the current president is Dr. Brian L. Levin-Stankevich, who was appointed in July 2012.