Loyola University Chicago

On June 30, 1870, Jesuit priest and educator Arnold Damen established St. Ignatius College. At that time, Chicago was a much smaller, but rapidly growing city just shy of 300,000 people, and as a result, the original campus was much closer to the city center, along Roosevelt Road. In 1909, the school was renamed Loyola University, and in 1912, it began to move to the Lake Shore Campus; the original building is part of St. Ignatius College Prep, adjacent to the University of Illinois at Chicago.

To meet the growing needs of Chicago, Loyola established professional schools in law (1908), medicine (1909), business (1922), and nursing (1935). The Chicago College of Dental Surgery became part of the university in 1923, and closed 70 years later. A downtown campus was founded in 1914, and with it, the School of Sociology. As the predecessor to the School of Social Work, it enrolled Loyola's first female students, though the school did not become fully coeducational until 1966. Loyola Academy, a college prep high school, occupied Dumbach Hall on the Lake Shore Campus, until it moved to Wilmette in 1957.

The Water Tower Campus opened in 1949. In 1962, Loyola opened a campus in Rome, near the site of the 1960 Summer Olympics. In 1969, Loyola established the School of Education and consolidated medical programs at the Loyola University Medical Center, a hospital and health care complex in Maywood, a neighboring suburb of Chicago. The university legally separated from the Jesuits in 1970, and came under lay control governed by a board of trustees. Loyola purchased neighboring Mundelein College in 1991.

The university faced severe financial hardships and dwindling enrollment during the late 1990s. Michael J. Garanzini S.J. was instated as president of Loyola in 2001 and led major capital campaigns to improve Loyola's academic profile and campuses. In 2005, the Loyola University Museum of Art was established on the Water Tower Campus, and the Rome campus was renamed in honor of Director Emeritus John P. Felice. In 2009, the Cuneo Foundation presented the university with the Cuneo Mansion and Gardens, a 100-acre (40 ha) estate with an Italianate mansion and extensive collections of art and furnishings in Vernon Hills. The $50 million gift was one of the largest in Loyola history.

In 2010, Loyola purchased the Resurrection Retreat Center in Woodstock for retreats and ecological study, allowing the site to become the school's fifth campus. In 2012, Loyola alumnus Michael R. Quinlan donated $40 million to the business school, which was renamed in his honor. During this time, over 200,000 square feet of LEED-certified sustainable spaces have been built on the Lake Shore Campus, along with significant mixed-use developments on the Water Tower Campus.

In 2015, the university established Arrupe College, a uniquely structured two-year college designed to give low-income students access to a Loyola education.

On May 23, 2016, Loyola named Jo Ann Rooney its 24th president. She was the school's first female president and served until the end of September 2022, when Mark Reed succeeded her.