About us

We’re An Independent Non-Profit Institution with a Century of Time-Tested Results
Established in 1915 by the Sisters of Loretto, who sought to make education accessible to all, Webster has an extraordinary history reflecting a determination to equalize higher education.

Recognizing the growing interconnectedness of our world, for 40 years we have been building an action-oriented global network of faculty, staff, students, and alumni who forge powerful bonds with each other and with their communities around the globe. Today, we serve more than 10,000 students across 50 residential, metro, military, and international locations.

Webster University is a private university with its main campus in Webster Groves, Missouri. It has multiple branch locations across the United States and countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs in various disciplines, including the liberal arts, fine and performing arts, teacher education, business and management. In 2019, Webster enrolled 9,966 students. The university has an alumni network of around 170,000 graduates worldwide.

It was founded in 1915 by the Sisters of Loretto as Loretto College, a Catholic women's college, one of the first west of the Mississippi River.[9] One of the early founders was Mother Praxedes Carty. The college's name was changed to Webster College in 1924. The first male students were admitted in 1962. The sisters transferred ownership of the college to a lay Board of Directors in 1967; it was the first Catholic college in the United States to be totally under lay control. In 1983, Webster College's name was changed to Webster University.

Webster was involved in the early racial integration battles in St. Louis. During the early 1940s, many local priests, especially the Jesuits, challenged the segregationist policies at the city's Catholic colleges and parochial schools. The St. Louis chapter of the Midwest Clergy Conference on Negro Welfare arranged in 1943 for Webster College to admit a black female student, Mary Aloyse Foster, which would make it the city's first Catholic college to integrate. However, in 1943 Archbishop John J. Glennon blocked that student's enrollment by speaking privately with the Kentucky-based Superior General of the Sisters of Loretto. The Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper with national circulation, discovered Glennon's actions and ran a front-page feature on the Webster incident in February 1944. The negative publicity toward Glennon's segregationist policies led Saint Louis University to begin admitting African American students in summer 1944. In the fall of 1945, Webster College responded to pressure by admitting Irene Thomas, a Catholic African-American woman from St. Louis, as a music major.