Seton Hall University:  Institutional Description

Founded in 1856, Seton Hal University is the oldest and one of the largest diocesan universities in the United States.  It has more than 10,000 students from 40 U.S. states and territories.  The university is located 14 miles southwest of New York City on 58 green acres in the Village of South Orange, New Jersey. It is situated adjacent to Newark, New Jersey’s largest city.

 Seton Hall is home to eight schools and colleges.  The College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Education and Human Services, the College of Nursing, the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations, the School of Graduate Medical Education, the W. Paul Stillman School of Business, the Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, and University College are located on the South Orange campus. The Seton Hall School of Law is located in Newark, New Jersey.

Seton Hall offers over 45 degrees at the graduate level and more than 60 majors and concentrations at the undergraduate level, as well as many minors, certificate, and interdisciplinary and other special programs. In 1998, all incoming full-time, first-year students were issued laptop computers as part of the Seton Hall’s innovative mobile computing program.  By 2001, the University had received the No. 13 spot among the most “wired” universities in the nation, by Yahoo! Internet Life, which based its rankings on areas such as hardware, academics, and free services.

Seton Hall has been dedicated to supporting the vision that its founder, Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, described as providing "a home for the mind, the heart, and the spirit." Bishop Bayley, named the University after his aunt, Elizabeth Ann Seton, a pioneer in Catholic education and the first native-born North American to be canonized.  Its Catholic roots have made the University a home that is open to people of all faiths, creeds and colors.  During the 2001 – 2002 academic year, the undergraduate student body consisted of 11% Blacks, 10% Latinos, and 8% Asians.  Furthermore, women constituted 52% of all undergraduate students.

In addition to gaining world recognition for its mobile computing program, Seton Hall has been a pioneer in many areas: naming the first woman dean of law in the United States; gaining world recognition for its mobile computing program; forming a unique alliance with the United Nations Association USA in our School of Diplomacy and International Relations; establishing the Bayley Project, a self-initiated institutional ethics audit; founding SetonWorldWide, an on-line education initiative; and introducing service learning into the curriculum, which integrates academic and community-based learning.

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