Quinnipiac University

Quinnipiac University is a private university in Hamden, Connecticut. The university grants undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees. It also hosts the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. History What became Quinnipiac University was founded in 1929 by Samuel W. Tator, a business professor and politician. Phillip Troup, a Yale College graduate, was another founder, and became its first president until his death in 1939. Tator's wife, Irmagarde Tator, a Mount Holyoke College graduate, also played a major role in the fledgling institution's nurturing as its first bursar. Additional founders were E. Wight Bakke, who later became a professor of economics at Yale, and Robert R. Chamberlain, who headed a furniture company in his name. The new institution was conceived in reaction to Northeastern University's abandonment of its New Haven, Connecticut, program at the onset of the Great Depression. Originally, it was located in New Haven and called the "Connecticut College of Commerce". On opening its doors in 1929, it enrolled under 200, and its first graduating class comprised only eight students. At the time, it awarded only associate's degrees. In 1935, the college changed its name to the "Junior College of Commerce".