Illinois Wesleyan University

The institution was founded in 1850 as a private four-year college in Bloomington, Illinois.

The university's first international students, Y. Osawa and K. Tanaka, arrived from Japan in 1889.

Illinois Wesleyan's College of Liberal Arts was formally organized in 1906, and the College of Fine Arts – combining schools of art, music, and theatre arts – was established in 1948.

Illinois Wesleyan offered nursing study in conjunction with the Brokaw School of Nursing beginning in 1923, and in 1959 established the IWU School of Nursing with a four-year baccalaureate program.

IWU operated a School of Law from 1873 to 1928.

The institution's board of trustees took formal action to invite black students to enroll at Illinois Wesleyan in 1867 and women in 1870. The first female graduate, Hannah I. Shur, received her diploma in 1872. Gus A. Hill was the first African-American graduate, earning a law degree in 1880.

In November 2021, the American Association of University Professors sanctioned Illinois Wesleyan for violating standards of academic governance when it discontinued the anthropology, French, Italian, and religious studies programs and announced plans to fire six tenured faculty members.

Research

The university publishes several different undergraduate research journals in the fields of political science, economics, history, and English. Perhaps the first of its kind, the Undergraduate Economic Review is a student-managed, open access journal that has published original undergraduate content from students in the U.S. and at least 15 other countries.

The John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference was established in 1990 to provide opportunities for students to present research projects and findings in a public and interactive manner. The Action Research Center was established in 2004 to partner student research and service projects with the wider Illinois community.

Division III NCAA National championships

Men's

Basketball – 1997