The story
Founded by Philip Schuyler on Feb 25, 1795.1
Founding
Chartered in 1795, Union was the first non-denominational institution of higher education in the United States, and the second college established in the State of New York.
Only Columbia University, founded in 1754 as King's College, preceded Union in New York state. Twenty-five years later impetus for another institution grew.
Schenectady was founded and populated by people from the Netherlands. With about 4,000 residents, it was the third largest city in the state, after New York City and Albany. The local Dutch Reformed Church began to show an interest in establishing an academy or college under its auspices there. In 1778, it invited the Rev. Dirck Romeyn of New Jersey to visit. Returning home, he authored a plan in 1782 for such an institution and was summoned two years later to help found it.
The Schenectady Academy was established in 1785 as the city's first organized school. It immediately flourished, reaching an enrollment of about 100 within a year. By at least 1792 it offered a full four-year college course, as well as one of elementary and practical subjects taught mainly to girls. Attempts to charter the academy as a college with the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York were initially rejected,
but in 1794 the school reapplied as "Union College", a name chosen to reflect the resolution of its founders that the school should be free of any specific religious affiliation. The resulting institution was awarded its charter on February 25, 1795 – still celebrated by the college as "Founders' Day".
Nineteenth century
In 1836, the year of its founding, the Union College Anti-Slavery Society claimed 51 members. It published its Constitution and Preamble, with an address to students—not just those of Union—calling on them to join the abolitionist cause. Phi Beta Kappa addresses were often published before the Civil War. A number of them were anti-slavery and others were progressive addresses.
Union College was sometimes called Schenectady College in this period.
Seals, mottos, and nickname
Union chose the modern language French—France was then the most revolutionary of countries—rather than Latin for its motto. The resulting tone of the entire seal is both historically aware and distinctly modern in outlook.
Read the full text
The head of the Roman goddess Minerva (Greek goddess Athena) appeared in the center of an oval. Surrounding it in French was "Sous les lois de Minerve nous devenons tous frères" (English: Under the laws of Minerva, we all become brothers). This was expanded to "et soeurs" (English: "and sisters") in 2015.
Minerva was originally patroness of the arts and crafts, but had over time evolved to become an icon of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. By the late 18th century she had indeed come to represent all of those qualities that might be wished for in a rational, virtuous, prudent, wise, and "scientific" man.
In 2023, the college changed the school's nickname from "Dutchmen" and "Dutchwomen" to "Garnet Chargers" as part of a branding update. Garnet has been the school's official color for 150 years, and the name "chargers" is a reference to "Schenectady's legacy as a leader in electrical technologies."
Presidents
Union College has had nineteen presidents since its founding in 1795. The school has the distinction of having had the longest serving college or university president in the history of the United States, Eliphalet Nott (62 years).
On September 9, 2024, David Harris, Union's first Black president, announced he would be resigning on June 30, 2025. During Harris's tenure as president, Union experienced financial strain, and the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights initiated an investigation in response to a complaint that Union had not appropriately handled reports of harassment against Jewish students.
Union hired former Rhodes Trust CEO Elizabeth Kiss as its first woman president in its 230-year history on February 25, 2025. Kiss assumed office on July 1, 2025.
Development of the curriculum
During the first half of the 19th century, students in American colleges would have encountered a very similar course of study, a curriculum with sturdy foundations in the traditional liberal arts. But by the 1820s all of this began to change.
Although Latin and Greek remained a part of the curriculum, new subjects were adopted that offered a more readily apparent application to the busy commercial life of the new nation. Accordingly, French was gradually introduced into the college curriculum, sometimes as a substitute for Greek or Hebrew.
One approach to modernization was the so-called "parallel course of study" in scientific and "literary" subjects. This offered a scientific curriculum in parallel to the classical curriculum, for those students wishing a more modern treatment of modern languages, mathematics, and science, equal in dignity to the traditional course of study.
Union College commenced a parallel scientific curriculum in 1828. Its civil engineering program, introduced in 1845, was the first of its kind at an American liberal arts college. So successful were Union's reform efforts that by 1839 the college had one of the largest faculties in American higher education and an enrollment surpassed only by Yale.
From Wikipedia’s article on Union College, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5