Founded by the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland in 1871, Ursuline was the first Catholic women's College in Ohio and one of the first in the United States. Learn more about our heritage.
Though Ursuline College is organized as a non-profit with its own independent Board of Trustees, the institution maintains close ties to its founding religious congregation, the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland.
Values, representing your principles of faith and spirituality, will distinguish you as people of integrity from one another and are a vital element to each student's success. Ursuline College encourages students in their quest for self-growth, to heed their voice and express those values. Lastly, Ursuline promotes each student to continually shape their vision in an ever-changing world to move forward in future endeavors.
Ursuline College offers holistic education that transforms students for service, leadership, and professional excellence by providing undergraduate and graduate programs that foster lifelong learning and personal wisdom in an environment characterized by:
- Catholic and Ursuline heritage
- Women-centered learning
- Values-based curricula
- Inclusive, global perspective
A premier Catholic institution of higher learning that provides transformative experiences and inspires greatness in our graduates.
Ursuline College helps students to achieve their educational and career goals by emphasizing the whole person and providing personalized attention within a liberal arts higher educational environment. While welcoming persons of all faiths, the College is Catholic in its origins, identity, and environment. Instruction and services are based on the dignity of the human person by Catholic social teaching principles.
In the liberal arts tradition, an Ursuline education emphasizes critical thinking, clear and graceful expression free, mature judgment and choice and commitment to continued learning. Also, faithful to the Ursuline congregation's contemplative heritage, we perceive contemplation and reflection as integral factors in our search for wisdom. Thus, a distinctly Ursuline education emphasizes a strong foundation in the arts and sciences, fosters the student-professor dialectic with its corollary of shared responsibility, respects the individual student's learning needs, and recognizes the interrelatedness of spiritual vitality and service to the broader community.
Acknowledging that the liberal arts are life arts, we help students search for wisdom within the context of theology and philosophy, the fine arts and humanities, and the natural and social sciences. Our career programs build upon this broad foundation to prepare students to serve the community and their professions with distinction and integrity.
The institution's primary focus is on the academic preparation of students through an emphasis on excellence in teaching and on scholarship that supports teaching. The College seeks its faculty women and men who are professionally competent, committed to developing a learning community and contributing to its distinctively Ursuline character. As a corollary of our emphasis on shared responsibility, the College seeks to foster a collegiality climate in which all members have the opportunity to influence and participate in decision-making.
Today we serve students who reflect a wide range of ages, economic, social, academic backgrounds, and religions. We make a special effort to assess and meet our diverse clientele' needs by providing flexible scheduling and a variety of approaches to learning. Ursuline College also serves the local community by offering programs and facilities for social, cultural, and spiritual enrichment.
In all of our services, we strive to integrate the intellectual, aesthetic, social, psychological, physical, and spiritual dimensions of life – the heart of any endeavor to initiate and sustain a search for wisdom. Our mission is to further this life of wisdom in contemporary society and thus contribute to the building up in the history of the Reign of God.
Ursuline's student body, including undergraduate and graduate students, is over 1,100. Although we primarily educate women, 9% of our undergraduate student population are men. Approximately 29% of our undergraduate students represent a variety of minority groups.
Ursuline College employs qualified full-time and adjunct faculty, most of whom have earned doctorates or other terminal degrees in their study fields. Ursuline faculty members are fully committed to student learning and success. Small class sizes enable students to get to know their professors well, and they can count on their instructors to guide and challenge them during their time at Ursuline.
Ursuline College offers more than 30 undergraduate and nine graduate programs. We also offer the opportunity to finish an undergraduate business degree and a legal assistant's degree in an accelerated format. Internships, cooperative education, and mentoring opportunities are available to prepare students for their careers. A Program for Students with Learning Disabilities as well as a Program for Academic Success and tutorial assistance is administered through Academic Support and Disabilities Services.
Ursuline College is a Catholic community committed to providing value-based learning and working environments that ensure and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
For 146 years, Ursuline students have accomplished their goals with these words in mind. Your learning experience will be custom-tailored to you, with an average class size that averages 11 students. You will then put that learning into practice by rolling up your sleeves in a vibrant city and digging into internships, clinicals, practicums, service learning, networking, and research. And you will not be alone – Ursuline students completed over 5,600 hours of these activities last year. Given all of this individualized attention and exposure, be ready for lifelong friendships, a higher than average job placement rate and starting salary, and the likelihood to rise further and faster in your career, to name a few.
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