Marygrove College history

By January 15, 1846, St Mary Academy welcomed its first students.

The college grew out of a postgraduate tutorial offered to one young woman graduate of St Mary's Academy in Monroe, Michigan, in 1899.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Academy had begun to offer college-level courses and by 1905 the Sisters had built a separate St Mary College.

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 moved to its current location in Detroit in 1927, and at that time became known as Marygrove College.

In 1937, Sister Honora Jack became the college's first woman president.

The college accepted its first black student in 1938.

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.

In addition, the College community revised, for the first time since 1953, Marygrove's mission statement, identifying competence, compassion, and commitment as essential goals of the institution itself and of its students.

When Marygrove celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1960, Sister Honora launched a major development drive for the construction of the new library wing.

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

After a decade of almost uninterrupted change, the Board of Trustees appointed Doctor Raymond Fleck to the presidency in 1972.

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.

Glenda D. Price was appointed as the college's first African-American woman president in 1988.

Following Doctor Shay's retirement in 1997, Marygrove's longstanding executive vice president, Sister Andrea Lee, IHM, served as interim president before her appointment to the presidency of the College of St Catherine, St Paul, Minnesota.

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

The College won support for the $3 million renovation and full upgrade of the Marygrove Theatre, which re-opened on Founders Day, November 10, 2002, the 75th anniversary of Marygrove College in the City of Detroit.

Doctor Price retired in 2006 and continues to be active in Detroit's community revival, most recently with her appointment to the city's financial advisory board.

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

The final president, beginning in 2016, was Marygrove alumna Doctor Elizabeth Burns.

A unique P-20 cradle-to-career educational campus was formally announced in the fall of 2018.

On June 7, 2019, the school administration announced it would cease operation the fall 2019 semester.