Aquinas College Grand Rapids Michigan

Aquinas College is a small, Roman Catholic, liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States. The College was ranked among the "Best Regional Universities – Midwest" by U.S. News & World Report in 2012. The Congregation of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of the Roman Catholic Order of Preachers (Dominican Order), today commonly known as the "Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids", Michigan, led by Mother Aquinata Fiegler, OP, founded the Roman Catholic Novitiate Normal School in Traverse City, Michigan in 1886. The School's mission was to educate young women who had yet to make their vows in the Order of Preachers, i. e., "novitiates", to be parochial elementary school teachers throughout Michigan, and it trained and sent forth numerous sister teachers successfully. In 1911 the School was transferred to Grand Rapids, along with the motherhouse of the Sisters, pursuant to an invitation of the Bishop of the young Diocese of Grand Rapids. In response to the need for their sister teachers to hold baccalaureate degrees, in 1922 the Sisters reorganized the Novitiate Normal School as Sacred Heart College and also commenced admitting lay women. The State of Michigan granted a charter to award two-year degrees to women to the new College in the same year. The site of the new College was transferred to the newly erected motherhouse of the Sisters on East Fulton Street, in the margins of Grand Rapids. At some time between 1922 and 1931 it was renamed as Marywood College. In 1931, it was reorganized as Catholic Junior College, transferred to a site on Ransom Street adjacent to the Grand Rapids Public Library, and became the first Roman Catholic college in the United States governed by women religious to become coeducational. Bishop Joseph G. Pinten of Grand Rapids instigated the reform to admit men alongside women. At that time it awarded two-year degrees.