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Providence College

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Providence College is a Catholic college in Providence, Rhode Island, the state's capital city. With a 2004-2005 enrollment of about 3,800 undergraduate students and about 900 graduate students, the college is known for its programs in the liberal arts and sciences. Founded in 1917, Providence College has been ranked by US News and World Report as one of the top two Regional Colleges in the Northeast for the past nine consecutive years. Furthermore, it is the only college or university in North America administered by the Dominican Order of Friars (Dominican College of California and St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York both have Dominican heritage, but neither are administered on a day-to-day basis by the Dominicans).

The Providence College campus is located near River Avenue about two miles (3.3 km) northwest of downtown Providence.

Providence College offers fifty majors and twenty-four minors and is one of the few schools in the country that requires all its students to complete 20 credits in the Development of Western Civilization, which serves as a major part of the college's core curriculum. As put forth on the college website:

"Widely hailed by educators as one of the finest and most academically ambitious programs in the country, the Development of Western Civilization Program is the cornerstone of the Providence College Core Curriculum. The required two-year interdisciplinary program is taken during the freshman and sophomore years.
Civ is taught chronologically and each course covers the areas of history, philosophy, literature, theology, and the fine arts, throughout all of the most prominent Civilizations in History. It is team-taught by four faculty members from each of these disciplines sharing their thoughts and perspective on the events, art, literature, thoughts, and religious ideals of the time.
Setting high academic standards and featuring intense discussions and frequent writing assignments, the program has become an intellectual rite of passage for Providence College students."
Despite a familial atmosphere on campus, the college has recently come under fire for the lack of diversity among its student body. For two consecutive years, The Princeton Review has ranked Providence College among the Top 10 Schools for "Homogeneous Student Population." However in recent years, the admission office is making a great effort to bring foreign students from around the world.

Contents

School History

Providence College was founded as an all-male school in 1917 through the efforts of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence and the Dominican Province of St. Joseph, and with the blessing of Pope Benedict XV. The leading figure in the college's incorporation was Biship Matthew Harkins, D.D. The school opened its doors at the corner of Eaton Street and River Avenue in 1919 with only one building, Harkins Hall, which currently serves as the home of the school's administration and a classroom building. The school's first president was Dennis A. Casey, O.P. The school gradually expanded throughout the years, with their first dormitory, the "first" Guzman Hall (named for St. Dominic de Guzman, the founder of the Dominican Order) (which was later remodeled back into its original Italian villa-style form, and now houses the school's vice-president), opened in 1926. The territory eventually reached the boundary of Huxley Avenue (the current "upper campus," so named because it is the high ground) by the 1950s. By that time, Providence was blossoming as a school. The first true on-campus gymnasium, Alumni Hall, was dedicated in 1955. This, as well as the arrival of Joe Mullaney as basketball coach, catapulted the Friars to national prominence, as they won the 1961 and 1963 NIT tournament titles.

In 1970, the school made its most controversial decision ever. Prior to that time, Providence College had served as the primary men's Catholic college in the state, and its sister school, Salve Regina College in Newport, served as the state's women's Catholic college. This all changed in 1970 when the school, faced with dropping attendance rates (partially provoked by the Vietnam War), voted to admit women to the undergraduate programs. This created a firestorm of protest, which eventually subsided, and the next year saw women on the campus for the first time.

The college continued to grow in the 1970s and 1980s, but not without struggle. In order to accommodate the growing number of students on campus, the school purchased the former Chapin Hospital property across Huxley Avenue from the main campus. This became the "Lower Campus," and has since become the site of some of the college's largest expansion projects ever. It was during the early 1970s that football was finally dropped at the college, both for financial reasons and due to the birth of Title IX, which would play a role in the school's history later. It was also during this time that the women's athletic programs came to fruition.

Tragedy struck the campus on an early February morning in 1977, when fire broke out in the Aquinas Hall dormitory, the oldest coninuously used dorm on campus. The fire claimed ten female students, and led to much stricter fire codes on campus.

1979 and 1984 would be proud years in the history of Friar Athletics, as two conferences, the Big East Conference and Hockey East respectively, would be formed in the city by former members of the Providence commmunity. Former men's basketball coach Dave Gavitt was a leading proponent of the Big East, and became its first commissioner. Hockey East would be founded and led by former athletic director and hockey coach Lou Lamoriello, and would see the Friars hockey team have their best year in school history.

In 1988, the school opened their first apartment-style dorms on campus. In 1993, the school received a $5 million grant from the Alan Shawn Feinstein Foundation to create the Feinstein Institute for Public Service and the Public Service Management Program, making Providence the first school to offer a comprehensive degree in public service.

The Campus

The school lies on 105 acres atop Smith Hill, the highest point in the city of Providence, in the city's Smith Hill neighborhood. The school consists of forty-four buildings on campus. There are twenty-one academic and administrative buildings, nine dormitories, six suite-style apartment buildings, five Domincan residences (including the St. Thomas Aquinas Priory, a residential tower near the main gate) and three athletic buildings, as well as six outdoor athletic facilities, including a new "turf field." The buildings are as follows:

Academic, Administrative and Dominican

The site of the chapel is the former site of the War Memorial Grotto of Our Lady of the Rosary, a large grotto which was built in 1948 as a site for worship and a memorial to the seventy-nine alumi who died in World War II. It served for many years as the site of commencement exercises and ROTC commissionings, but was closed to make way for the chapel. There is a smaller grotto on the side of the chapel which was built with some of the materials from the original.
Residential Halls and Apartments Athletic Facilities Other Buildings

Athletics

The school's men's and women's sports teams are called the Friars, after the Dominican order that runs the school. They are the only collegiate team to use the name. All teams participate in the NCAA's Division I and in the Big East Conference, except for the hockey program, which competes in Hockey East and the men's lacrosse program, which competes in the MAAC. Providence College is the smallest college in the nation to feature NCAA Division I programs.

PC has one national championship, the 1996 Cross Country championship. The school has won several Big East, Hockey East, ECAC and MAAC titles. Individual team honors include: 

  • The school's cross country team has been a consistently successful team.  In fact, they have participated in the NCAA championships 17 straight years (as of 2005).  They won the 1996 Cross Country championship, and Kim Smith '05 was the first Friar woman to win the individual national championship in the sport.
    • 
The school formerly also sponsored football and basketball, both of which played at Hendricken Field to the north of Harkins Hall.  The football team was disbanded in the early 1970s due to dwindling attendance and budget.  Baseball met the same fate in 1999, amid controversy, as it fell victim to the budget constraints and the limitations put in place due to Title IX. At the time, the student ratios for men's to women's athletes versus the same ratio for overall students was skewed towards the men.  Rather than attempt to sponsor another women's sport, the school opted to eliminate baseball, the school's original sport (1920).  They would later drop men's golf and men's tennis as well for the same reasons, and the incident indirectly lead to the resignation of former athletic director John Marinatto.  
    

The school's current athletic director is Robert Driscoll.  The team colors are black and white, the same as the Dominicans, with silver as an accent color.  The school's current logos and identity marks were released in 2002, and feature the profile of a friar wearing the black cappa (hood) of the Dominicans, above the word mark.  All teams use the primary logo except the hockey teams, which have used the famous "skating Friar" logo since 1973.  In addition to the Friar mascot, the school's animal mascot is a dalmatian named "Friar Boy."  (Dalmatians are known as "the watchdogs of the Lord," and was the animal seen in the vision of St. Dominic.)
    


    Marks and seals
    
The college's graphic identity represents the shape of a window in Harkins Hall with a flame inside, representing Veritas, or Truth, the College Motto.  
    

The official seal of Providence College is an ornate triangle, representing the trinity, with the flame of learning and a scroll with the College Motto, Veritas, superimposed on it.  The seal is surrounded by a ring with the words Sigillum Collegii Providentiensis ("Seal of Providence College") inside it.
    


    Notable Alumni
    
Business and Law

Entertainment and Communications

    

Athletics
    

Men's Basketball

    
Hockey

Baseball


    References
    


    External links
    

    


    


    


    


    



     
    

    

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