Pacific University
Pacific University is a private university in Forest Grove, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1849 as the Tualatin Academy, the original Forest Grove campus is west of Portland. The school maintains one other campus, in Hillsboro, and an office in Portland, and has an enrollment of more than 3,000 students. The university has Oregon's only optometry school, and offers doctorates in 14 programs. Pacific competes in NCAA Division III as part of the Northwest Conference, with its teams known as the Boxers.
History
immigrated to the Oregon Country over the new Applegate Trail in 1846. She and Harvey L. Clark started a school and orphanage in Forest Grove in 1847 to care for the orphans of Applegate Trail party. In March 1848, Tualatin Academy was established from the orphanage, with Clark donating to the school. George H. Atkinson had advocated the founding of the school and with support of the Presbyterians and Congregationalists helped start the academy. Although the university has long been independent of its founding affiliation with the United Church of Christ, it still maintains a close working relationship with the church as a member of the United Church of Christ Council for Higher Education.Tualatin Academy was officially chartered by the territorial legislature on September 29, 1849. Clark was the first president of the board of trustees and later donated an additional to the institution. In 1851, what is now Old College Hall was built and in 1853 Sidney H. Marsh became the school's first president. The current campus was deeded in 1851. In 1854, when the first college classes were added, Pacific University was established. Tualatin Academy continued to operate until 1914 as a private high school separate from but affiliated with the university.
The first university commencement occurred in 1863, with Harvey W. Scott as the only graduate. In 1872, three Japanese students, Hatstara Tamura, Kin Saito, and Yei Nosea, started at the university as part of Japan's modernization movement. All three graduated in 1876. Marsh died in 1879 and was replaced by John R. Herrick.
Marsh Hall was built in 1895, serving as the central building on Pacific's campus. Carnegie Library opened in 1912 after Andrew Carnegie's foundation helped finance the brick structure. Portland architecture firm Whidden and Lewis designed the library. In 1915, the preparatory department, Tualatin Academy, closed due to the proliferation of public high schools in Oregon. By 1920, the school had grown to five buildings on and had an endowment of about $250,000.
Marsh Hall was gutted by fire in 1975, but its shell was preserved, and the structure reopened in 1977. Phillip D. Creighton became Pacific's 16th president in 2003 and retired in 2009. Tommy Thayer, lead guitarist of the band Kiss, was elected to the university's board of trustees in 2005. Pacific's 17th president, Lesley M. Hallick, was named on May 19, 2009. She retired in 2022.
On February 9, 2022, Jenny Coyle was named the 18th president of Pacific University. She is the first alumnus to serve as president, having earned her bachelor's degree, master's degree and Doctor of Optometry from the university. Coyle previously served as a faculty member and dean of Pacific's College of Optometry.
Mascot
In 1896, alumnus J.E. Walker, who had been a missionary to China, and his mother gave the university a bronze Chinese statue. Qilin is a mythical Chinese creature with a leonine stance, a unicorn-like horn, and deer or ox hooves from the Qing dynasty. During this period, qilin were often represented with a dragon head, fish scales, ox hooves and a lion's tail. Said to be a good omen of wisdom and prosperity, the Pacific qilin was nicknamed Boxer by its Chinese and Japanese students as an embodiment of the community's cultural diversity.In the first half of the 20th century, the original mascot was the center of informal "Boxer Toss" events, where different clubs and groups scrimmaged for the statue as a tradition of passing its care from one group to another. In 1968, Boxer became the university's official mascot, replacing Benny Badger.
In 1969, the statue went missing and remained so for the next 55 years. Various pieces of Boxer were returned to the university over the years, including the statue's tail in 2012. In 2024, the original statue was returned to the university, largely intact.
Two recasts of Boxer were created in the original statue's absence. In the 1980s, the statue was recast as Boxer II; after supposedly enjoying an epic road trip across America, it too disappeared in the mid-2000s.
In 2006, the university commissioned a 12-foot sculpture to replace the missing Boxers, which now stands in a central park welcoming students to Vandervelden Court residence hall. In 2018, alumni funded the design and casting of Boxer III by artist Pat Costello, unveiled during Homecoming weekend. Kept in trust as part of the university's art collection, the statue and exhibits on its cultural and community history are on display in the Tran Library.
Academics
Pacific is home to five colleges, offering undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs.College of Arts & Sciences
Organized into 3 schools—Arts & Humanities, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences—the college offers over sixty undergraduate degree options, including unique options in Asia-Pacific studies, communication sciences & disorders, creative writing, editing and publishing, music therapy, outdoor leadership, nonprofit leadership, social work, and a suite of sustainability-centered art and science programs. The low-residency Masters of Fine Arts in Writing program, one of the earliest in the nation having begun in 2004, has been ranked by Poets & Writers magazine as one of the nation's top five low-residency MFA programs every year in which rankings were established. Pacific also opened a Master of Social Work program, based in Eugene, in 2014.College of Business
The College of Business was founded in 2013. It offers undergraduate degrees as well as the Master of Business Administration at the Hillsboro campus. The college is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs.College of Education
In 1994, the School of Education, now the College of Education, was established through reorganization of the professional teacher education programs that had been part of the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2004, the College of Health Professions was formed, now including four undergraduate programs and seven graduate programs.College of Health Professions
Founded in 2006, the College of Health Professions includes 13 different degree programs as well as a certification in gerontology. Most courses and clinics are on the Hillsboro campus, where the curricula focuses on interprofessional cooperation, and students gain practice in caring for underserved populations.College of Optometry
The university's College of Optometry is one of the university's oldest colleges and one of 21 schools in the U.S. and Canada offering a doctorate in optometry. Pacific's program dates back to 1945, when it merged with the North Pacific College of Optometry. Pacific's College of Optometry also offers a master of vision science degree and operates eye clinic and eyeglass dispensaries in communities throughout the Portland area.Campuses
Pacific University has two Oregon campuses, in Forest Grove and Hillsboro. It also maintains satellite locations in Portland and Honolulu, Hawai'i.Forest Grove
The Forest Grove campus features several historic buildings. Old College Hall is the oldest educational building west of the Mississippi and today serves as Pacific University's museum. The Forest Grove campus opened a new residence hall, Cascade Hall, in 2014.The Forest Grove campus is home to a number of sustainability initiatives in its infrastructure, earning a Silver Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System rating in 2019. Several buildings have Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, including the Tim and Cathy Tran library, built in 2005 and remodeled with more study rooms and makers space in 2019. The LEED-certified Berglund Hall houses a community preschool, Burlingham and Gilbert residence halls are LEED Gold-certified.
The Bill & Cathy Stoller Center is home to the university's intercollegiate athletic teams, athletic offices, and the department of exercise science. It features more than 95,000 square feet of floor space, including team rooms, locker rooms, classrooms, a wood-floor gymnasium, a weight and fitness center and the Fieldhouse, the first indoor practice area in the Northwest Conference and the only one with FieldTurf.
Outside the Stoller Center is the entrance to Hanson Stadium, which includes a FieldTurf soccer, lacrosse and football surface, a nine-lane track and grandstands. The stadium is part of the City of Forest Grove Lincoln Park Athletic Complex, built in 2008. Lincoln Park houses the baseball complex, Chuck Bafaro Stadium at Bond Field, the softball complex, Sherman/Larkins Stadium, and natural grass fields for soccer and track throwing events. Lincoln Park is also home to a fitness trail, playground equipment, a BMX course, a skateboard park and picnic areas.
Hillsboro
Just 10 miles west of Forest Grove, the Hillsboro Campus houses many of Pacific's graduate and professional programs. In the heart of Portland's largest suburb, the Hillsboro Campus is on the MAX light rail line in Hillsboro's Health and Education District. The campus has state-of-the-art classroom and labs for the College of Health Professions and MBA programs, as well as community healthcare clinics.The Hillsboro campus opened in 2006 with its first building, a five-story LEED Gold-certified building, which was dedicated as Creighton Hall. A second building, known as HPC2 and also LEED-certified, opened in 2010. The campus is part of the Hillsboro Health & Education District and is adjacent to the MAX light rail line. Primarily home to Pacific University's College of Health Professions, the campus houses several master's- and doctorate-level programs in health professions, as well as clinics, open to the public, for audiology, dental hygiene, physical therapy and professional psychology, as well as an interdisciplinary diabetes clinic and an eye clinic run by the Pacific University College of Optometry. The Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center also has a clinic and pharmacy on site.