Marygrove history

Accordingly, in March, 1922, for $241,000, Mother Domitilla purchased as the site of the new St Mary College an 80-acre wooded tract in a developing area of northwest Detroit.

The purchase price of the land, however, exhausted the money that had been set aside to build the new campus in Monroe, so the Congregation launched a Building Campaign Fund in 1923, culminating in a week-long Marygrove Festival at the Arena Gardens in Detroit.

The new site suggested a new name, and in 1925, with the laying of the cornerstone of the present Liberal Arts Building, St Mary College became Marygrove College.

The college was also on the front-lines of the desegregation movement when, in 1938, it accepted its first African-American student.

Sister Honora's educational vision was recognized in 1943 when the Association of American Universities, an association of graduate schools, placed Marygrove on the approved list.

Marygrove's growing responsiveness to the Detroit community took on new and deeper dimensions in 1967 after the urban rebellion in Detroit.

Originally founded as a women’s only institution, Marygrove welcomed its first coed classes in 1970.

In 1980, Doctor John E. Shay, Jr., assumed the presidency after a twenty-year career in student affairs at the College of the Holy Cross and the University of Rhode Island.

In 1998 the Marygrove College Board of Trustees appointed Doctor Glenda D. Price, former provost of Spelman College, Atlanta, as Marygrove's seventh president.

In 2009, the IHM Sisters transferred ownership of the campus and its buildings to the College.

In September 2018, the Kresge Foundation announced a $50 million commitment to create what was termed a “P-20 campus” that would include a K-12 public school, early childhood center and teaching residency program through U of M.