The story
In 1877, a group of exiled Italian Jesuits established a small college in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The Jesuits named this institution Las Vegas College which would ultimately become known as Regis University.
In 1884, the Bishop of Denver invited the Jesuits to create a college in Morrison, Colorado, where Sacred Heart College was opened. In 1887, Las Vegas College and Sacred Heart College merged and moved to the present location of Regis University. At the time of the merger, the school was then called the College of the Sacred Heart. Later, in 1921, it adopted the name of Regis College in honor of John Francis Regis, a 17th-century Jesuit who worked with prostitutes and the poor in the mountains of Southern France. The preparatory section was separated to become the present-day Regis Jesuit High School.
In 1991, Regis College was renamed Regis University.
Regis University played host to the rock musician Jimi Hendrix in 1968, as well as the British rock band Queen, who played their first concert in the United States at Regis, on April 16, 1974.
In 2011, Regis academic programs expanded with partnerships with the National University of Ireland, Galway, and with ITESO, the Jesuit University of Guadalajara, Mexico, for the first online bilingual joint MBA degree program.
The university's president is Shawna Cooper Whitehead, the first woman to hold the role.
In 2023, Regis University was designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), meaning that more than 25% of its student population is Hispanic or Latinx.
Papal visit
On August 12, 1993, Pope John Paul II visited the Northwest Denver Campus of Regis University, where he met with President Bill Clinton for the first time. They greeted about 150 visitors, who had been chosen through a lottery system, and met privately for an hour in the President's Dining Room of Carroll Hall.
From Wikipedia’s article on Regis University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5