City: Austin, TX

Category: Education

Telephone: (512) 448-8400

Address: 3001 South Congress Ave.

Description: A private Roman Catholic liberal arts university that celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2010, St. Edward’s offers undergraduate and graduate degrees to more than 5,000 students from across the United States and abroad. Located in South Austin on 180 acres of rolling hills, the university was founded in 1885 as a college but got its start 12 years earlier when it opened as a school with just 3 farm boys enrolled the first year. As the school grew and began boarding students, Austin residents started referring to St. Edward’s as the Catholic Farm due to the fact that it fed its faculty and staff by raising beef, grain, vegetables, and fruit on its own land. The Main Building, the imposing Gothic Revival–style building made of Texas white limestone, was dedicated in 1889—a grand structure for sure in the early Southwest. Rebuilt after a fire destroyed it in 1903, the Main Building was designated a Texas Historic Landmark in 1973. Today, St. Edward’s confers undergraduate degrees in more than 50 areas of study in 5 pre-professional programs, as well as 11 master’s degrees in business administration, counseling, human services, computer information sciences, liberal arts, and others. The undergraduate curriculum has been recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as among the most rigorous in the nation. In addition to awarding degrees, the university is recognized for its tradition of producing graduates with strong values, both through required course work in ethics, philosophy, or religious studies and through its community outreach programs. It also gets high marks for its adult education program and for its efforts on behalf of Hispanic students, who make up 26 percent of the student body. The university is home to the fine performance space Mary Moody Northern Theatre, the hub St. Edward’s Theater Arts program, one of the only pre-professional undergraduate programs of its kind in the country.