Marygrove College

Marygrove College is an independent, Catholic, liberal arts college located in Detroit, Michigan. The college is sponsored by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.HistoryThe College grew out of a postgraduate tutorial offered to one young woman graduate of St. Mary's Academy in Monroe, Michigan, in 1899. By 1905 it had grown to a two-year college for women, and in 1910 it was a four-year college chartered to grant degrees. It was then known as St. Mary's College. The College moved to its current location in Detroit in 1927, and at that time became known as Marygrove College. When it moved to Detroit its president was George Hermann Derry, who was the first lay person to serve as a president of a Catholic women's college in the United States.In the decades after World War I, Marygrove College was an important local center of Catholic social action. Faculty members were chosen for their education, character, and faith, and President Derry encouraged each student to look beyond the prospect of eventual marriage and to become capable of "doing her part in the world's work in whatever sphere of life she may be placed". By 1936, the college catalog spoke in far more emphatic terms of female independence. In 1937, Sister Honora Jack became the College's first woman president. The College accepted its first black student in 1938.Marygrove College was originally a women's college. It became co-educational in about 1970 during the presidency of Arthur Brown.Glenda D. Price was appointed as the college's first African-American woman president in 1988. Dr. Price retired in 2006 and continues to be active in Detroit's community revival, most recently with her appointment to the city's financial advisory board.