Wikipedia

Furman University is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, United States, slightly north of Greenville, the city it is normally associated with by campus address and brand identity. Furman is South Carolina's oldest private university. Founded in 1826, Furman enrolls approximately 2,700 undergraduate students on its 750-acre (304 ha) campus. The university was named for Richard Furman of Charleston, a prominent minister and president of the Triennial Convention, the first Baptist convention in America.

Furman offers majors and programs in 42 subjects. Most of Furman's 2,700 undergraduates are from the South Atlantic region, but 46 states and 53 foreign countries are represented in its student population. Furman is a member of the Associated Colleges of the South.

Furman Academy and Theological Institution was established by the South Carolina Baptist Convention and incorporated in December 1825 in Edgefield, but was moved to the High Hills of the Santee (now Stateburg, South Carolina) in 1829 because of financial difficulties. When the school was threatened with financial collapse again in 1834, the Reverend Jonathan Davis, chairman of the Board of Agents, urged the board to move the school to his native Fairfield County, South Carolina. It was not until 1851 that South Carolina Baptists were able to raise the necessary funds for the removal of the school to Greenville, South Carolina.

The Furman Institution Faculty Residence serves as a visible reminder of the early history of Furman University and its brief establishment in Fairfield County.

The first school building from the downtown Greenville campus was transported to the current campus, where it still stands. In 1933, students from the Greenville Women's College began attending classes with Furman students. Shortly thereafter, the two schools merged to form the present institution.

As of the late 1950s, separate but equal laws had continued to allow Furman to not admit African Americans as students, part of the South's history of racial segregation in the United States. Soon after Brown v. Board of Education integrated public schools, some Furman students began to press for change. In 1955, some students wrote short stories and poems in The Echo, a student literary magazine, in support of integration; school administrators destroyed all 1,500 printed copies. In 1956,[citation needed] Furman began construction on its new campus, five miles (8 km) north of downtown Greenville. Classes on the new campus began in 1958.

By 1963, enough faculty were siding with the students over racial segregation that Furman's board of trustees voted for an open admission policy. The trustees' decision was postponed and later overturned by South Carolina's Baptist Convention; open admissions weren't established at Furman until its incoming president, Gordon Blackwell, a past president of Florida State University, made open admissions a condition of his acceptance of the new position. Joe Vaughn, a graduate of Sterling High School, became Furman's first black undergraduate in February 1965.

After the 1991-92 academic year, Furman ended its affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention and became a private, secular university, while keeping Christo et Doctrinae (For Christ and Learning) as the school's motto. Furman's "heritage is rooted in the non-creedal, free church Baptist tradition which has always valued particular religious commitments while insisting not only on the freedom of the individual to believe as he or she sees fit but also on respect for a diversity of religious perspectives, including the perspective of the non-religious person."

Between 1996 and 2003, 308 Furman graduates received Ph.D. degrees, the most by any Southern liberal arts college, according to a survey by the National Opinion Research Center.

Furman has been part of The Duke Endowment since 1926. As of 2007, it has given Furman $110 million,

Notable Alumni