ith its beginnings on a plantation in the forest of Wake County, North Carolina, Wake Forest Institute was established in 1834 by the Baptist State Convention. Four years later, the school was rechartered as Wake Forest College, and it is one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the state. Until 1894, when the School of Law was established, it was exclusively a liberal arts college for men. The School of Medicine was founded in 1902, and in 1942 Wake Forest began to admit women as regular undergraduate students.

Relocation to Winston-Salem

In 1946 the Wake Forest College trustees and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina accepted a proposal by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to relocate the nonmedical divisions of the College to Winston-Salem. The late Charles H. Babcock and his wife, the late Mary Reynolds Babcock, contributed a campus site, and building funds were received from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and other sources. Between 1952 and 1956, the first 14 buildings were erected in Georgian style on the new campus. In 1956 the College moved all operations to the new location. The campus in the town of Wake Forest is now home to the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The decade that followed was the College's most expansive, and in 1967 its augmente d character was recognized by the change in name to Wake Forest University. Today's enrollment in all schools of the University stands at over 6,000.

Educational Programs

The School of Business Administration was established in 1948 and for over two decades offered an undergraduate program of study in business. In 1969 the undergraduate school was succeeded by the Department of Business and Accountancy and the Departme nt of Economics in Wake Forest College. At the same time, the Babcock Graduate School of Management was established. In 1980 the undergraduate program in business and accountancy was reconstituted as the School of Business and Accountancy, now the Callo way School of Business and Accountancy. The Division of Graduate Studies was established in 1961 and is now organized as the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, which operates on both the Reynolda and Hawthorne campuses in Winston-Salem.

WFU Mission and Purpose

ake Forest is a university dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the liberal arts and in graduate and professional education. Its distinctiveness in its pursuit of the mission derives from its private, coeduca tional, and residential character; its size and location; and its Baptist affiliation. Each of these factors constitutes a significant aspect of the unique character of the institution. The character of intellectual life at Wake Forest encourages open a nd frank dialogue and provides assurance that the University will be ecumenical and not provincial in scope. Wake Forest thus seeks to maintain and invigorate what is noblest in its religious heritage.

The University comprises six constituent parts: two undergraduate institutions, Wake Forest College and the Calloway School of Business and Accountancy; the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and three professional schools: the School of Law; The Wake Forest University School of Medicine; and the Babcock Graduate School of Management. It seeks to honor the ideals of liberal learning, which entail commitment to transmission of cultural heritage s; teaching the modes of learning in the basic disciplines of human knowledge; developing critical appreciation of moral, aesthetic, and religious values; advancing the frontiers of knowledge through in-depth study and research; and applying and using knowledge in the service of humanity.

Liberal Arts Emphasis

Wake Forest has been de dicated to the liberal arts for over a century and a half. This means that education is in the fundamental fields of human knowledge and achievement, as distinguished from education that is technical or narrowly vocational. It seeks to encourage habits o f mind that ask "why," that evaluate evidence, that are open to new ideas, that attempt to understand and appreciate the perspectives of others, that accept complexity and grapple with it, that admit error, and that pursue truth. The College and the Grad uate School are most singularly focused on learning for its own sake. They therefore serve as examples of specific academic values in the life of the University.

Professional Education

Beginning as early as 1894, Wake Forest accepted an obligation to provide professional training in a number of fields, as a complement to its primary mission of liberal arts education. This responsibility is fulfilled in the conviction that the humane values embodied in the liberal arts also are centrally relevant to the professions. Professional education at Wake Forest is characterized by a commitment to the application of knowledge to solving concrete problems of human beings. They are strengthen ed by values and goals which are shared with the College and Graduate School, and the professional schools enhance the work of these schools and the University as a whole by serving as models of service to humanity.