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The Spring Hill academic calendar is divided into two semesters, a fall semester of 15 weeks beginning at the end of August and ending before Christmas, and a spring semester of 15 weeks beginning in early January and ending in early May. There are May and June mini-sessions, and summer school is during June and July.
[edit] HistorySpring Hill College was founded by the first bishop of Mobile, Michael Portier. After purchasing a site for the College on a hill near Mobile, Bishop Portier went to France to find teachers and funds for the new college. Portier recruited two priests and four seminarians from France to staff the school. A friend of Portier, Joseph Cardinal Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons, was a major benefactor to the fledgling College, donating his philosophical and theological library and various works of art.  Pauline Jaricot, founder of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith also donated within three years 38,000 francs, an enormous sum in those days . The bishop himself taught theology to the ecclesiastical students, who numbered six the first year. Upon his return he rented a hotel next to the college grounds and started the first semester on May 1, 1830, with an enrollment of thirty students, making Spring Hill the oldest institution of higher education in Alabama.[1] On July 4 of the same year the bishop laid the cornerstone of the first permanent building. It stood on the site of the present Administration Building and opened for classes in November 1831. Spring Hill thus takes its place among the oldest colleges in the South. It is the third oldest Jesuit college in the United States.  In 1836 the governor of Alabama, Clement C. Clay, signed a legislative act which chartered the College and gave it "full power to grant or confer such degree or degrees in the arts and sciences, or in any art or science as are usually granted or conferred by other seminaries of learning in the United States." This power was used in the following year, 1837, when four graduates received their degrees. The first two presidents of the College were called away to be bishops, one to Dubuque, Iowa (Bishop Mathias Loras), the other to Vincennes, Indiana (Bishop John Stephen Bazin), and the third, Father Mauvernay, died after a brief term of office. Bishop Portier then found it necessary to transfer the College, first to the French Fathers of Mercy, and next to the Society of Jesus and Mary, both of whom lacked teaching and administrative experience. He then persuaded the Fathers of the Lyonnais Province of the Society of Jesus to take possession of the College. The new regime was inaugurated with Father Francis Gautrelet, S.J., as president in September 1847. Since that time the institution has continued under Jesuit direction. During the Civil War, the college rolls swelled with names like Semmes, Maury, Taylor, Beauregard, and Bullock, as high officers of the Confederacy tried to shelter their sons approaching draft age.Boys sent to Spring Hill were often separated from their families for the war's duration. Unrest among those who wanted to be part of the war effort was formidable, and eventually the college formed two military companies. Many Jesuit Fathers became chaplains for the Confederacy, and a recruiter tried to conscript all forty of the Jesuit brothers at Spring Hill into the Confederate Army. However, College President Francis Gautrelet, S. J., dispatched an urgent message to the assistant secretary of war in Richmond, who granted a temporary reprieve of the brothers' conscription. In 1869 a fire destroyed the main building and required the removal of students and faculty to St. Charles College, Grand Coteau, Louisiana.  Bishop John Quinlan and other benefactors assisted in rebuilding the College, which reopened at Spring Hill before the year's end. As the enrollment increased, Quinlan Hall, the College Chapel, the Thomas Byrne Memorial Library, and Mobile Hall were erected. In 1935, the high school, which had been a unit distinct from the College since 1923, was discontinued. In the space vacated by the high school, the Jesuit House of Studies was opened in 1937, and the Scholasticate of the Sacred Heart opened on a site adjoining the College a few years later. After World War II, a great influx of veterans taxed the facilities of the College, requiring the erection of a number of temporary buildings on the campus. At the request of Archbishop Thomas Joseph Toolen of Mobile, the College became co-educational in 1952. At present the ratio of male to female students is approximately 1:2. Black students were accepted into all departments of the College for the first time in 1954, before desegregation was mandated by the United States government. Mrs. Fannie E. Motley was the first black graduate from the institution in 1956.[2] In 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed most of the surrounding region, but Spring Hill College luckily survived with minor damage. Nearby Loyola University in New Orleans, a brother Jesuit institute, did not fare so well, and Spring Hill College took on some of Loyola's students for the remainder of the year. Spring Hill College has a number of structures that have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. They include the Sodality Chapel, the Spring Hill College Quadrangle, and Stewartfield. [edit] Student bodyMore than 1400 students study at Spring Hill College each year of which over 70% are from outside Alabama. Student statistics is 38% are male and 62% are female. 90% of the freshman class and 75% of the total student body live on campus. The student-faculty ratio is 13:1, and the average class size is 17. Of faculty members, 87% hold doctorates or the highest degrees in their fields. More than one-third of graduating students continue their education at graduate or professional school. [edit] CurriculumSpring Hill College academics offer undergraduate students Bachelor's degrees through a variety of majors. The available departments include the Division of Business, the Communications/Arts Division, International Studies, Interdivisional Studies, Language and Literature Division, Nursing, Philosophy and Theology, Sciences Division, Social Sciences Division, Teacher Education Division, and lastly, the Pre-Professional Programs. Each of these divisions offers a variety of concentrations that students can choose majors and minors from. The graduate programs at Spring Hill College are not as extensive as the undergraduate programs, offering only five degree programs to choose from. The areas of concentration include Master of Business Administration, Teacher Education, Master of Liberal Arts, Master of Science in Nursing, and Theology and Ministry. Spring Hill College also offers a study abroad program for students. During the summer, students can travel to a variety of destinations to study. Students can go to England, France, Ireland, Italy, Mexico or Spain to study. [edit] CampusesThe main Spring Hill College campus is located in the Spring Hill neighborhood of Mobile, Alabama. The college has remained on the same campus that Bishop Portier purchased in 1830. The campus includes the Avenue of the Oaks, where graduation traditionally occurs. The college building has been placed on the National Historic Register. There is an 18 hole golf course. Classes are offered at off-campus locations in three different cities: Atlanta, Georgia, Birmingham, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi. These classes, aimed at adult education for either undergraduate or graduate degrees and/or certificates, are solely concentrated in Theology and Ministry. In addition to the main campus and the several off-campus locations, an online master's degree program for a Master of Science in Nursing is offered to combine online and offline nursing experience. [edit] Student Life[edit] Clubs and OrganizationsThere are over fifty student-run clubs and organizations at Spring Hill College. There are many community service clubs, ministry organizations, athletic and academic clubs that students can choose to get involved with. For example, academic clubs in the Alpha Sigma Nu club (a Jesuit Honorary club), the English Club, the History Club, the Math Club, the Philosophy Club, and the Sigma Tau Delta club (an English Honorary club), among many other organizations. Involvement in these varying clubs is encouraged by the college, in promoting their mission of fully educating the student's mind, body and soul. [edit] Greek LifeGreek Life on Spring Hill College's campus provides students with five national organizations. For men, the fraternities available are Tau Kappa Epsilon and Lambda Chi Alpha. For women, Delta Delta Delta, Delta Gamma, and Phi Mu are the present sororities. The Greek organizations present on campus participate in a "deferred recruitment" process, meaning that the formal recruiting activities occur at the beginning of the spring semester, as opposed to the more largely followed practice of recruitment at the beginning of the fall semester. [edit] Intramural sportsSpring Hill College has a student-run intramural program. The following sports are offered:
[edit] AthleticsSpring Hill College competes in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference as the Spring Hill College Badgers. Men and women Spring Hill College Badgers field teams in baseball, basketball, cross-country, golf, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball. Spring Hill College has maintained a baseball team for much of its history.[citation needed] Currently, the Spring Hill College baseball team plays its home games at Stan Galle Field ("The Pit"), the oldest continually used college baseball field in the country, first intercollegiate play was in 1889.[citation needed] A number of former major league players have used the field including such legends as Babe Ruth[2] and Hank Aaron.[citation needed] Notable baseball alumni include Blake Stein (former pitcher for the Kansas City Royals) and Jim Hendry (general manager of the Chicago Cubs). In 1900, the Spring Hill football team first played a game. In 1908, the team held its opponents scoreless in every game.[citation needed] The team was disbanded in 1941, so it is commonly said on campus that the Spring Hill College Football Team has been undefeated since 1941. [edit] Facts about Spring Hill College Spring Hill College was the leading institution in Alabama to press for racial equality, which received praise from civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who mentions Spring Hill in his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," citing the College as one of the first Southern schools to integrate. Spring Hill also received hostility and threats by those opposing integration as exmplified by the KKK incident at the College. On the night of January 21, 1957, a dozen or more darkened cars eased down the main avenue of the college. Several members of the KKK attempted to set up a kerosene-soaked cross outside Mobile Hall, a dormitory. The Klan made a tactical blunder, however, in visiting the campus during finals week. Most of the white, male residents were still awake, studying for exams, and several heard the hammering. Once alerted, students streamed from both ends of the building carrying whatever items were handy—golf clubs, tennis rackets, bricks, a softball bat—and put the panicked Klansmen to flight. To save face, the KKK returned the next night and succeeded in burning a cross at the gate of the College before students reacted. The following day, however, a group of students—male and female—hanged a Klansman in effigy at the College gate, with a sign reading, "KKKers ARE CHICKEN."[3] Spring Hill was once again involved in controversy when on July 27, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald spoke at Spring Hill about life in the Soviet Union, just months before assassinating President John F. Kennedy.[4] [edit] Notables[edit] Alumni
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Coordinates: 30°41′39″N 88°08′13″W / 30.69430°N 88.13682°W Categories: Gulf Coast Athletic Conference | Spring Hill College alumni | Spring Hill College | Universities in Mobile, Alabama | Educational institutions established in 1830 | National Register of Historic Places in Mobile, Alabama | Jesuit New Orleans Province | Jesuit universities and colleges in the United States | Roman Catholic universities and colleges in the United States | Council of Independent Colleges | Multi-sport clubs | Southern Association of Colleges and Schools | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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