Merrimack College - Merrimackan Yearbook (North Andover, MA)

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ness Administration, Liberal Arts and Pre-medical studies. Women were admitted to the Merrimack student body in September, 1950 with the entrance of nine co-eds. The year 1951 marked the first commencement in Merrimack Col- lege history, with one hundred and twelve graduates receiving de- grees. In the years since that first commencement, Merrimack Col- lege has continued it’s expansion in many fields: educational stature, student enrollment, cultural activities and physical expansion. Enrollment in the full time day sessions has increased in the past decade from eight hundred and fifty to two thousand one hundred and thirteen students, including representatives from foreign coun- tries. In addition, one thousand three hundred students attend eve- ning and summer courses at the college. The number of faculty and administration personnel has risen in the past eleven years from six- ty two to one hundred and forty seven. Concurrent with it’s educational development and it’s increased student enrollment, Merrimack has expanded it’s cultural activities to bring forth a more integral relationship between the college and the surrounding community. The Fine Arts Department has been expanded and includes extra-curricular dramatics and music as well as courses in the arts. The Cultural Affairs Committee instituted the celebrity series in 1966 to present a wide variety of cultural talent to the campus and community. In keeping pace with the rising student enrollment and the need for total student living in a collegiate environment, the Board of Trustees last year approved plans for a two million dollar Physical Education Facility and Convocation Center to be completed by Sep- tember, 1972. The ground breaking ceremony for this complex marked not only the beginning of construction of the eighteenth building on the North Andover campus, but also the beginning of a new era for Merrimack College. 3

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1947 Very Rev. Vincent A. McQuade, O.S.A. 1909-1971 Merrimack College was founded in 1946 by the priests of the Au- gustinian Order. The Very Reverend Vincent A. McQuade, O.S.A., was appointed the first president of the college in December, 1946. Located in the towns of Andover and North Andover just outside the city of Lawrence on the Salem Turnpike, Merrimack College re- ceived it’s charter on April 27, 1947 from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, empowering it to confer degrees customarily granted by a lleges and universities. The first building of the college, a)mpleted in the summer of 1947, was a one story, E-shaped cinderblock structure containing seven classrooms, a library, a chapel, two laboratories and adminis- tration offices. Merrimack College now encompasses seventeen buildings on a two hundred and twenty acre campus. Eight different buildings have been constructed since 1957: O’Reilly Hall, the Busi- ness Administration building in 1958; Tagastan Hall, the student union building; and two dormitories Austin and Monican Centres were completed in 1961. In 1967 a new library, named after Fr. McQuade, the college’s first president, was opened for use by Merri- mack College students and Merrimack Valley residents. The McQuade Library, valued in excess of two million dollars when con- structed presently contains sixty-eight thousand volumes and has a projected capacity for two hundred and fifty thousand volumes. A different concept in dormitory living was initiated on the campus in 1970 with the construction of three towne house com- plexes. With the addition of these towne houses, Merrimack College is now able to provide campus residence facilities for eight hundred and fifty two students. The first academic year commenced on September 29, 1947 with a faculty comprised of eight Augustinian priests and five lay instruc- tors. One hundred and sixty five men constituted the student body. These first students were divided among three areas of study: Busi- 2

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isiiiimiim Dedication Of O’Reilly Hall by Richard Cardinal Cushing