Motto | "Having Light, We Pass It On To Others" |
---|---|
Type | Private |
Established | 1845 |
Affiliation | Evangelical Lutheran Church in America |
Endowment | $98.7 million (2016) |
President | Michael L. Frandsen |
Provost | Interim, Mary Jo Zembar |
Academic staff
|
196 full-time |
Students | 2,000 |
Postgraduates | 70 |
Location | Springfield, Ohio, United States |
Campus | Small city, 114 acres (46 ha) |
Colors | Red and white |
Athletics | NCAA Division III — NCAC |
Mascot | Tiger |
Website | www |
Wittenberg University is a private four-year liberal arts college in Springfield, Ohio, US serving 2,000 full-time students representing 37 states and approximately 30 foreign countries.
Wittenberg College was founded in 1845 by a group of ministers in the English Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Ohio, which had previously separated from the recently established German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States.
A German American pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Rev. Ezra Keller was the principal founder and first president of the college. Its initial focus was to train clergy with the Hamma School of Divinity as its theological department. One of its main missions was to "Americanize" Lutherans by teaching courses in the English language instead of German, unlike the nearby Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.
The first class originally consisted of eight students at the beginning of the academic year, but grew to seventy-one by the end. With a faculty of one professor and two tutors, classes were held in Springfield, Ohio in a church on land that was donated. That city was selected for its location on the National Road, running from the East's cities of Baltimore and mountainous Cumberland, Maryland to the West in the Illinois Country, eventually to the territorial capital of Vandalia, near the Mississippi River.
In 1874, women were admitted to the college, and, the following year, blacks were admitted. The name of the school came from the historic Wittenberg University, in Wittenberg, Germany, the town where then Roman Catholic priest and theological professor Martin Luther, (1483-1546), famously posted his "95 Theses" on the chapel church door on October 31, 1517.