Thiel College

Thiel College (/tiːl/, /tiːəl/) is a private college in Greenville, Pennsylvania, United States. It is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is one of the smaller colleges in the region with about 100 full-time and part-time faculty members.

Founded in 1866 as a coeducational institution known as "Thiel Hall", the college started as a result of a meeting between William Passavant and A. Louis Thiel. At the Lutheran Church Pittsburgh Synod convention in Greensburg in 1869, it was decided that Thiel Hall would become a college and serve western Pennsylvania from an initial campus in Philipsburg (now known as Monaca). Four years later, on September 1, 1870, the college received a charter from the government of Pennsylvania and relocated to Greenville, where it was incorporated as Thiel College.

On August 1, 2016, Susan Traverso became the 20th and the first female president of Thiel College.

Today, Thiel is home to about 110 full- and part-time faculty members. According to the US Department of Education, the school has just under 1,000 students in attendance.^{[citation needed]}

Thiel College awarded Amelia Earhart an honorary degree in 1932. In his book The Search for Amelia Earhart, author Fred Goerner said, "The most satisfying recognition, however, came from her father's alma mater, Thiel College of Greenville, Pennsylvania in the form of an honorary Doctor of Science degree."

Thiel was also the first institution to grant an honorary degree to Fred Rogers in 1969. Rogers' address at Thiel was titled "Encouraging Creativity". In his address, he admonished educators and society in general for forcing conformity on children and encouraged understanding and tolerance as children endeavored to find their gifts. Thiel College also presented an honorary degree to Richard M. Nixon in 1959 when he was U.S. vice-president.

Thiel is situated on a wooded 200-acre campus in the small western Pennsylvania town of Greenville, which is about halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Thiel has an enrollment of around 920 students, with over 100 of those students in graduate programs. The student body is 48% male and 52% female. 63% percent of students are from Pennsylvania, 33% are from other states and Puerto Rico, and the remaining 4% are international students. 19% of students are minorities. The college has a student:faculty ratio of about 12:1, and 61% of classes have 20 or fewer students.