University of Charleston

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The University of Charleston is a private college in Charleston, West Virginia of approximately 1,000 students. Locals usually refer to the school as "UC".

The school was founded in 1888 as the Barboursville Seminary of the Southern Methodist Church. That church had lost control of the institution now known as Marshall University in nearby Huntington, West Virginia, during the Civil War. In 1901 it was renamed Morris Harvey College.

Morris Harvey was an estimable gentleman of olde Virginia, an elected county sheriff before the Civil War, a Confederate soldier & partisan ranger during the Civil War, and elected sheriff again after the Civil War in West Virginia. Harvey went on to make a fortune speculating in coal property and other businesses. He was a serious southern Methodist.

In 1935 the school moved to downtown Charleston and merged with Kanawha Junior College and affiliated with the Mason College of Fine Arts and Music. In 1940 after the Methodist reuinification the school became independent of the Methodist Church. Five years later, the school moved to its present campus in the Kanawha City section of Charleston across the river from the State Capitol.

The college fell on hard economic times in the late 1970s The school then decided to strengthen its ties with the local community and renamed itself the University of Charleston in 1979.

UC's athletic teams, known as the Golden Eagles, compete in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in NCAA Division II. In 2003 the school resumed playing football after abolishing the sport in 1955. In 2005 it entered into a partnership with the local school board to refurbish the school board owned Laidley Field, which was renamed University of Charleston Stadium at Laidley Field.

The school is not related in any way with the much larger College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. That college uses the name "University of Charleston" for its graduate programs.

West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
Football: Charleston • Concord • Fairmont State • Glenville State • Shepherd • West Liberty State • West Virginia State • WVU Tech (until mid–2006) • West Virginia Wesleyan Non-football: Alderson–Broaddus • Bluefield State • Davis & Elkins • Ohio Valley • Salem International • Wheeling Jesuit