Columbia College Chicago

Columbia College Chicago is a private art college in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1890, it has 4,200 students (as of fall 2025) pursuing degrees in more than 40 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.

As of July 1, 2025, Shantay N. Bolton is the president and CEO of Columbia College Chicago.

Columbia College Chicago is the host institution of several affiliated educational, cultural, and research organizations, including the Center for Black Music Research, the Center for Book and Paper Arts, the Center for Community Arts Partnerships, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP).

Columbia College Chicago is not affiliated with Columbia University, Columbia College Hollywood, or any other Columbia College in the United States. However, Columbia College Hollywood was originally founded as a branch campus of Columbia College Chicago from 1952-1957.

Columbia College Chicago was founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory by Mary A. Blood and Ida Morey Riley, both graduates of the Monroe Conservatory of Oratory (later Emerson College), in Boston, Massachusetts. Anticipating a strong need for public speaking at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas, Blood and Riley were inspired to open their school in the exposition city, Chicago, and adopt the exposition's name. Blood and Riley became the college's first co-presidents, until Riley died in 1901; Blood served in this capacity until her death in 1927. The women established a co-educational school that "should stand for high ideals, for the teaching of expression by methods truly educational, for the gospel of good cheer, and for the building of sterling good character" in the Stevens' Art Gallery Building, 24 East Adams Street.

The school ran as a sole proprietary business from 1890 to 1904, when the school became incorporated by the state of Illinois. On May 5, 1904, the school incorporated itself again in order to change its name to the Columbia College of Expression, adding coursework in teaching to the curriculum.

When Blood died in 1927, George L. Scherger assumed the office of presidency after serving as a former member of the board of directors. Under his leadership, Scherger signed the paperwork at the board's annual meeting on April 14, 1928, to change the school's name to the Mary A. Blood School of Speech Arts. However, by April 30, 1928, the school reverted its name to the Columbia College of Expression by the board of directors, George L. Scherger, Herman H. Hegner, and Erme Rowe Hegner. During Scherger's presidency, the college became an official sister institution with the Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College, a family-run school centered on training its students for teaching kindergarten. As the president of the Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College, Bertha Hofer Hegner assumed the role as the fourth president of Columbia College of Expression in 1929 when Scherger resigned to become an assistant pastor of St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Hegner served as the institutions' head, although due to illness, her son, Herman Hofer Hegner served as acting president of the institutions from 1930 until 1936. By 1934, college curriculum also focused on the growing field of radio broadcasting. In 1934, Herman Hofer Hegner hired Norman Alexandroff, a radio programmer, to develop a radio curriculum for the colleges as both institutions were suffering financially. When Bertha Hofer Hegner retired in 1936 for health reasons, she was made president emeritus of the institutions and Herman Hofer Hegner became the institutions' official president.