Edgewood College

History

The property that would become the Edgewood College campus was first purchased in 1855 from Governor Leonard J. Farwell and later developed by Samuel Marshall. Governor Cadwallader C. Washburn bought Edgewood Villa in 1873 and later donated it to the Dominican Sisters for educational use. In 1881, the Sisters opened St. Regina Academy, a private boarding school for girls with an initial enrollment of 16 students. A new building was constructed in 1893, but a fire later that year took the lives of three children and destroyed much of the property. The Sisters quickly raised funds and rebuilt the school, which reopened as Sacred Heart Academy in 1894.

By 1927, the school sought recognition as a junior college by the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The request was approved, and Edgewood Junior College opened in 1927 with 12 women enrolled. It offered a liberal arts curriculum at a tuition of under $600 per year. Enrollment grew slowly through the Great Depression, with a focus on supporting women's education. During this period, the college shared facilities and services with Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart. Edgewood's junior college operated alongside the high school until it transitioned to a full-fledged college.

In 1941, Edgewood became a four-year college and received approval from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to award Bachelor of Science degrees in education. By 1942, the first 25 students graduated with degrees in education. Although enrollment grew slowly in the college's early years, many older students and Dominican Sisters attended to earn degrees in elementary education. Summer sessions attracted notable faculty, including world-renowned musician Nadia Boulanger. By 1948, the first international students enrolled, and in 1949, the college admitted its first African-American students.

Edgewood continued to grow in the late 1940s with an increasingly diverse student body. The first African-American faculty member, Sharon Wexler, was hired in 1956. With the approval of the college's board of trustees and the leadership council of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, Edgewood College's leadership renamed it Edgewood University in 2025, its centennial year. The change was made official on July 1.

History

Women's athletics began in 1975, when the school was in the "Wisconsin Independent Colleges Women's Athletic Conference" (WIC-WAC). The men's athletic teams were originally in the Wisconsin Conference of Independent Colleges in 1974. In 1981, the conference changed its name to the Lake Michigan Conference (LMC). In the 1989–90 season, the members of the WIC-WAC women's conference joined the LMC, so that the men's and women's programs were in the same conference.

The 2005–06 season was the final year of the LMC. In 2006, all LMC members merged with the Northern Illinois-Iowa Conference (NIIC) members to form the Northern Athletics Conference, an NCAA Division III athletic conference.

Edgewood University has a dance team that performs at home athletic events and during Homecoming.

Edgewood teams play at the Todd Wehr Edgedome (volleyball and basketball), Breese Stevens Field, Madison (soccer), Yahara Golf Course, Madison (women's golf), the Oaks Golf Course (men's golf), McKee Farms Park, Fitchburg (tennis), Verona Little League Complex, Verona (softball), and Stampfl Field, Verona (baseball).

Edgewood's fitness center, which is free to Edgewood students and faculty, is on the lower level of the Sonderegger Science Center. It provides equipment such as treadmills, ellipticals, bicycles, free weights, and selectorized weight equipment. It also has six televisions.