The story
After its founding in 1897 as the nation's first Catholic liberal arts college for women by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Trinity educated middle-class Catholic women, who were underrepresented in America's colleges, for more than 70 years. (For more background on women's higher education, see Origins and types of Women's colleges in the United States.)
When many all-male colleges became co-ed, Trinity's full-time enrollment dropped from 1,000 in 1969 to 300 in 1989. The school's 12th president, Donna Jurick, responded in the early 1980s by opening a weekend college for working women from the District of Columbia, a racially diverse population the school had previously not served. The first such program in Washington, it became very popular; within three years, it had more students than the undergraduate program.
Under Patricia McGuire, a Trinity alumna who became college president in 1989, Trinity reached out to the Black and Hispanic women of Washington. McGuire split the college into three schools. The historic women's college became the College of Arts and Sciences; the higher-revenue teacher college became the School of Education; and the continuing education classes were folded into a School of Professional Studies. Trinity began recruiting at D.C. high schools and expanded the professional schools, whose combined enrollment rose from 639 in 1989 to 974 in 1999.
In 2004, the college gained university status and became Trinity Washington University.
From Wikipedia’s article on Trinity Washington University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4