Thomas Jefferson University history

The trustees agreed, establishing the Medical Department of Jefferson College in Philadelphia in 1825.

In response to a second request, the Pennsylvania General Assembly granted an expansion of Jefferson College's charter in 1826, endorsing the creation of the new department and allowing it to grant medical degrees.

That same year an undergraduate division, the College of Allied Health Sciences, was added. It served as the medical department of Jefferson College (then located in Canonsburg) until the state granted the medical college an independent charter in 1838.

In 1841, Jefferson Medical College hired what would be dubbed "The Faculty of '41", an influential collection of professors including Charles Delucena Meigs and Mütter Museum founder Thomas Dent Mütter.

The graduating class of 1849 included a son of college founder Joel Barlow Sutherland, Charles Sutherland, who went on to serve as Surgeon General of the United States Army.

In 1877 it opened one of the first teaching hospitals in the United States.

In 1880, they formed the Philadelphia Association of Manufacturers of Textile Fabrics, with Theodore C. Search as its president, to fight for higher tariffs on imported textiles and to educate local textile leaders.

Search joined the board of directors of the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the University of the Arts), thinking it the perfect partner for his plans for a school, and began fundraising in 1882.

Due in part to the Lebanon Cemetery grave robbery scandal, the Pennsylvania Anatomy Act of 1883 was passed which provided for legal means by which medical colleges could obtain cadavers without having to buy them from grave robbers.

The school was officially opened on November 5, 1884.

1891 In 1891, the Jefferson College of Nursing was created as the Jefferson Hospital Training College for Nurses.

1941 In 1941, the Philadelphia Textile School was granted the right to award baccalaureate degrees and changed its name to the Philadelphia Textile Institute (PTI).

In 1961, the school changed its name again, to Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science, but was still known as Philadelphia Textile for short.

The Medical College became Thomas Jefferson University on July 1, 1969.

The College purchased an adjoining property in 1972, doubling the size of its campus.

In 1976, it offered its first graduate degree, the Master of Business Administration.

1991 The College of Architecture and the Built Environment was founded when the architecture program joined the existing interior design program at Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science.

In 1992, the 54,000-square-foot (5,000 m) Paul J. Gutman Library opened.

Having been awarded university status by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on July 13, 1999, it officially changed its name to Philadelphia University and is the first and only private university in the United States named exclusively after the city of Philadelphia.

In January 2007, the university sold Thomas Eakins' painting The Gross Clinic, which depicts a surgery that took place at the school, for $68 million, to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

2008 In 2008, Philadelphia University adopted a bold, innovative Strategic Plan and directed efforts on advancing our mission and vision: to be the model for professional university education.

2012 Kanbar College of Design Engineering and Commerce was founded in 2012, named after alumnus Maurice Kanbar ’52, H’03, who donated $15 million in to Philadelphia University.

On June 17, 2014, Sidney Kimmel Foundation donated $110 million to Jefferson Medical College, prompting the announcement that Jefferson Medical College would be renamed Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

2015 In 2015, Thomas Jefferson University was the largest free-standing health sciences university in Philadelphia.