University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
The University of Saint Francis traces its roots to eighteen ninety, when the Sisters of Saint Francis of Perpetual Adoration founded Saint Francis Normal School in Lafayette, Indiana, to train teachers. The school grew steadily, adding degree programs in education, nursing, and the arts. Then in nineteen forty-four came a dramatic change of address: the sisters relocated to Fort Wayne and moved onto the sprawling estate of industrialist John H.
Bass, whose mansion became the heart of a new campus. Graduate programs followed in nineteen sixty, and in nineteen ninety-eight the school took its current name. Today the university enrolls around two thousand students and remains one of the few Catholic Franciscan institutions in the Midwest, still shaped by the values those sisters carried north from Lafayette more than a century ago.
