Trinity College history

1830: The college awards its first academic degree to a black person in preparation for his work as missionary and educator.

The Dublin University Magazine (1833-82) became one of the most widely circulating monthly reviews in Ireland or Britain, conservative in its politics, highly original in its literary coverage and on occasions quite subversive, not unlike its original College sponsors.

The University of Durham was founded in 1837 as an Oxford-model campus with several colleges for residence and teaching; it later acquired affiliate colleges elsewhere—some in British colonies.

The Engineering School was established in 1842 and was one of the first of its kind in the English-speaking world.

The college was renamed Trinity College in 1845; the original campus consisted of two Greek Revival buildings.

The expansion of the College’s teaching activity during the nineteenth century was evident in the changing campus landscape, most strikingly with the Museum Building (1853-7), designed to accommodate civil engineers and geologists.

Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., opened in 1868 and was the first American university to be divided into colleges offering different degrees.

Founded in 1869 by Cumberland Presbyterians, Trinity University has resided on four campuses in three different locations.

So the trustees were persuaded to sell the entire campus to the city in 1872 for $600,000.

When Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876, it was divided administratively into an undergraduate college and a graduate school.

But English universities founded after 1879—commonly called “red brick” universities—have no colleges.

Trinity followed the European pattern of using academic regalia from its foundation, and was one of only four US institutions (all associated with the Episcopal Church) to assign gowns and hoods for its degrees in 1883.

Formed in 1900, the Tehuacana Warriors were the University's first intercollegiate football team.

However purpose-built science laboratories came late; it was thanks primarily to the philanthropy of the Guinness family that some really fine architecture began to grace the East End when the Physics and Botany buildings appeared c.1903-06.

More momentously, women students became part of the College: admitted for the first time in 1904, within a decade they amounted to 16 per cent of the student body.

The Easter Rising of 1916 had engulfed the College environs, and Trinity was lucky to escape serious physical damage.

President Remsen Ogilby (1920–43) enlarged the campus, and more than doubled the endowment.

The First World War marked a general turning point in the College’s fortunes, the human cost recognised in the hall of honour (1928), erected in Front Square.

In 1932, under President Remsen Ogilby, the Gothic chapel was completed and became the symbol of Trinity College.

On December 8, 1941, Trinity accepted an invitation from the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce to establish a strong Protestant institution of higher learning in the Alamo City.

Under President Keith Funston (1943–51), returning veterans expanded the enrollment to 900.

But power remained with the senior fellows until the provostship of Albert McConnell (1951-74), who managed to widen the collegiate governance of the College and initiate major administrative reform.

On May 13, 1952, Trinity moved for the final time to its Skyline Campus in San Antonio.

The founding of the University of Hartford in 1957 allowed Trinity to focus on becoming a regional institution rather than a local one.

In some years around 1960, nearly half the student body was coming from outside Ireland (north and south). The overall student population remained small until the mid-1960s, when the cap was raised by a third to 4,000.

In 1962, Connecticut Public Television (CPTV) began its first broadcasts in the Trinity College Public Library, and later in Boardman Hall, a science building on campus.

1969: Trinity votes to admit women as undergraduates for the first time.

The real growth in student numbers began in the 1970s, reflecting the introduction of free second-level education and of third-level student grants, the removal of the Catholic episcopal ‘ban’ (in 1970), the widening career opportunities for women and a stronger underlying economy in Ireland.

"Man's Evolving Images," the largest montage mural in the world, was completed in 1983 after four years of manual work.

In 1985, the University made it mandatory for all first-year students to live in residence halls on campus.

Halls on the east side of campus became known as the "first-year quad." By 1992, the residency requirement had been extended to sophomores and juniors.

In 1993 the College also began to boost recruitment from within Dublin city by developing a series of access programmes (TAP). The aim was to raise the number of young adults from socio-economic and ethnic groups underrepresented in higher education coming to university.

The play, dubbed the "Mississippi Miracle," was named the Pontiac Game-Changing Performance of the Year for the 2007 NCAA football season and the No.

But the most ambitious construction project in the College’s history, the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute in Pearse St (2008-11), has become the strongest physical statement of the College’s outward movement.

2014: Joanne Berger Sweeney becomes the 22nd president of Trinity College, marking many firsts: she is the first woman, first African American, and first neuroscientist to become president of the college.