Grove City College

Founding Founded in 1876 by Isaac C. Ketler , [ 10 ] the school was originally chartered as "Pine Grove Normal Academy". It had twenty-six students in its first year. In 1884, the trustees of Pine Grove Normal Academy in Grove City amended the academy charter to change the name to "Grove City College". [ 11 ] By charter, the doors of the College were open to qualified students "without regard to religious test or belief." Isaac Ketler served as president until 1913. [ 12 ] Grove City was also supported by Joseph Newton Pew , founder of the Sun Oil Company . Pew and Ketler's sons, Weir C. Ketler and John Howard Pew, later went on to become Grove City president and president of the board of trustees, respectively. [ 13 ] [ 14 ] During the summer of 1925, J. Gresham Machen gave the lectures that formed the basis of his book, What Is Faith? [ 15 ]

As World War II began, Grove City College was one of six schools selected by the United States Navy to participate in the highly unusual Electronics Training Program (ETP). Starting in March 1942, each month a new group of 100 Navy and Marine students arrived for three months of 14-hour days in concentrated electrical engineering study. ETP admission required passing the Eddy Test , one of the most selective qualifying exams given during the war years. [ 16 ] Professor Russell P. Smith was the program's Director of Instruction. By the fall of 1943, there were only 81 civilian men in the student body; thus, the presence of 300 or so servicemen contributed greatly to sustaining the College. This training at Grove City continued until April 1945; library records show that 49 classes were graduating 3,759 persons. [ 17 ] [ 18 ]

Main article: Grove City College v. Bell Under President Charles S. MacKenzie, the college was the plaintiff-appellee in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in 1984, Grove City College v. Bell . The ruling came seven years after the school refused to sign a Title IX compliance form, which would have subjected the entire school to federal regulations, even ones not yet issued. The court ruled 6–3 that acceptance by students of federal educational grants fell under the regulatory requirements of Title IX, but it limited the application to the school's financial aid department. In 1988, new legislation subjected every department of any educational institution that received federal funding to Title IX requirements. In response, Grove City College withdrew from the Pell Grant program entirely beginning with the 1988–1989 academic year, replacing such grants to students with its own program, the Student Freedom Fund. [ 19 ] In October 1996, the college withdrew from the Stafford Loan program, providing entering students with replacements through a program with PNC Bank . [ 20 ] Grove City is one of a handful of colleges (along with Hillsdale College , which did likewise after the aforementioned 1984 case [ 20 ] ) that does not participate in federal financial aid, including grants, loans, and scholarships. [ 21 ]

From 1963 until 2016, the American Association of University Professors placed Grove City under censure for violations of tenure and academic freedom because of the dismissal of Professor of History and Political Science Larry Gara, at the direct behest of the then Chairman of the Board, J. Howard Pews. [ 22 ] [ 23 ] By the end of this period, Grove City's administration was on the AAUP's list of censured administrations longer than any other college on the list. In its report, the AAUP Investigative Committee at Grove City concluded that "the absence of due process [in the dismissal of professors at Grove City] raises... doubts regarding the academic security of any persons who may hold an appointment at Grove City College under existing administrative practice. These doubts are of an order of magnitude which obliges us to report them to the academic profession at large." In 2013 Grove City started working to remove itself from the censure list. Two years later, the school admitted that they would have handled Gara's case rather differently under their current procedures. This led the AAUP to lift its sanction on the school at its annual meeting in 2016. [ 24 ] [ 25 ] [ 26 ] Gara received an apology from the school in October 2015. [ 27 ] In 2005, Grove City founded the conservative think-tank the Center for Vision and Values [ 28 ] In April 2019, it was renamed the Institute for Faith & Freedom, saying that it "more clearly aligns it with the historic values of the College." [ 29 ] In recent years, the college has engaged in many new construction projects, including an expansion to its music and arts center in 2002, a new academic building in 2003, a new student union/bookstore in 2004, and new apartment-style housing in 2006. Grove City's Student Union building was honored with the International Masonry Institute's Golden Trowel Grand Prize for excellence in masonry design and construction in 2005.