Benedictine University

Benedictine University is a private Roman Catholic university in Lisle, Illinois. It was founded in 1887 as St. Procopius College by the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey in the Pilsen community on the West Side of Chicago. The institution has retained a close relationship with the Benedictine Order, which bears the name of St. Benedict (480–543 A.D.), the acknowledged father of western monasticism. The university resides in the western Chicago metropolitan area, located near two national research facilities, Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The university's location along the East-West Tollway corridor provides internship and employment opportunities for students. Benedictine University also has a branch campus in Mesa, Arizona. History Benedictine University, also called BenU, was founded in 1887 as St. Procopius College by the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey, who lived in the Pilsen community of Chicago's West Side. The monks created the all-male institution just two years after their community began, with the intention of educating men of Czech and Slovak descent. While the school was called a college from its founding, it did not begin offering post-secondary courses until after it moved from Chicago to rural Lisle in 1901. It became fully accredited in 1957 and, as the area around it transitioned from rural to suburban, it grew substantially. Also in 1957, the institution's high school component began operating independently of the college and is now called Benet Academy. The college became fully coeducational in 1968, though the first female, Joan Hewitt, graduated in 1953. The school changed its name to Illinois Benedictine College in 1971, and in 1996, it became Benedictine University. While the institution continued to grow in Lisle, it expanded its reach to include campuses in other cities, including Springfield, Illinois, in 2003 and Mesa, Arizona, in 2012. The university added the Kindlon Hall of Learning and the Birck Hall of Science in 2001 and the Neff Alumni Center in 2012, and in 2015, Benedictine opened the Daniel L. Goodwin Hall of Business, which features the Trading Lab and a 600-seat auditorium.