Centre College

Centre College

Latin: Collegium Centrum
Motto	Doctrina Lux Mentis (Latin)
Motto in English	Learning is the Light of the Mind
Type	Private Undergraduate Liberal arts
Established	January 21, 1819
Affiliation	Presbyterian Church (USA)
Endowment	$263.81 Million
President	John A. Roush
Academic staff	145
Undergraduates	1,385
Location	Danville, Kentucky, U.S.
Campus	Small city 152 acres (62 ha) National Register of Historic Places
Newspaper	The Cento
Colors	Gold and White
Athletics	Southern Athletic Association NCAA Division III
Mascot	Colonels
Website	www.centre.edu

Centre College is a private liberal arts college located in Danville, Kentucky, a community of approximately 16,000 in Boyle County, about 35 miles south of Lexington, Kentucky. Centre is an undergraduate four-year institution with an enrollment of approximately 1,375 students. Centre was founded by Presbyterian leaders, with whom it maintains a loose affiliation, and officially chartered by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1819. The college is a member of the Associated Colleges of the South.

The Kentucky General Assembly established Centre College on January 21, 1819. The college was named for its proximate location in the geographic "centre" of the Commonwealth, using early nineteenth century America's contemporaneous spelling of the word. Auspiciously, the legislature placed many of Kentucky's most prominent citizens in charge of Centre College's Board of Trustees, with Isaac Shelby, the Commonwealth's first governor, serving as chair. Classes began in the fall of 1820 in Old Centre, the first building on campus and the oldest college administration building west of the Allegheny Mountains.

In its early years, Centre navigated financial hardships, disputes within and outside the Presbyterian Church, and six wars, including the occupation of Old Centre by both Confederate and Union troops during the Civil War. A Centre alumnus, John Todd Stuart, played a formative role in American history by encouraging Abraham Lincoln to study for the bar, providing his first set of law books, and serving as Lincoln's professional and political mentor. From 1830 to 1857, President John C. Young oversaw a vast enlargement of the faculty and a five-fold increase in the student body. Following the Civil War, Centre affiliated itself with several other educational institutions. From 1894 until 1912, J. Proctor Knott, a former Kentucky Governor and U.S. Congressman, operated a law school at Centre as its dean. The Centre College Board of Trustees controlled the Kentucky School for the Deaf, also in Danville, during its early years; consolidated the college with the Central University in Richmond, Kentucky in 1901; and merged with Danville's Kentucky College for Women in 1926, although the women did not move onto Centre's campus until 1962.