Marymount Manhattan College

Marymount Manhattan College

Motto	Tua Luce Dirige
Motto in English	Direct Us By Thy Light
Type	Private, coeducational
Established	1936
Religious affiliation	formerly Roman Catholic
President	Kerry Walk, Ph.D.
Academic staff	92 full-time faculty
Undergraduates	1,750
Address	221 East 71st Street New York, NY 10021 (212)517-0400, Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Campus	Main Building, Nugent Building
Colors	Blue and white
Mascot	The Griffin
Website	www.mmm.edu

Marymount Manhattan College is a coeducational, independent, private college located in Manhattan, New York City. The mission of the College is to educate a socially and economically diverse student body by fostering intellectual achievement and personal growth and by providing opportunities for career development. Enrollment consists of 1,750 undergraduates, with women making up 75% and men 25%.

Directly from the college's website:

Marymount Manhattan College was founded in 1936 by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary as a two-year women's college and a New York City extension of Marymount College, Tarrytown in Tarrytown, New York. In 1948, the College moved to its present location on 71st Street and became a four-year bachelor degree-granting college; the first class graduated from MMC in 1950. In 1961, MMC was granted an absolute charter as an independent four-year college by the Regents of the University of the State of New York.

Faithful to the vision of its founders, Marymount Manhattan has a long history of reaching out to diverse populations in need of higher education. Over the years, Marymount Manhattan's mission as an urban, independent, coeducational nonsectarian liberal arts college has expanded to include a greater variety of students, including men, nontraditional students, and students from a variety of ethnic and geographic backgrounds.

Since 1961, Marymount Manhattan has been an independent, private college open to all creeds, while noting its foundation by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. While the college no longer described itself as Catholic, the Catholic Church continued to list it in the Catholic Directory until 2005. Unaware that the college did not claim to be a Catholic school, the Cardinal Newman Society protested the college's announcement of its decision to invite then-Senator Hillary Clinton to deliver a commencement address and to confer an honorary doctoral degree upon her, due to Senator Clinton's longtime public support for abortion rights. In response to the protests and without objection by the college, it was de-listed from "The Official Catholic Directory," which identifies Catholic institutions.