Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was federated in 1967 by a merger between Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 by the Presbyterian Church, and the Case Institute of Technology, founded in 1880. Case Western Reserve University comprises eight schools that offer more than 100 undergraduate programs and about 160 graduate and professional options across fields in STEM, medicine, arts, and the humanities. In 2024, the university enrolled 12,475 students (6,528 undergraduate plus 5,947 graduate and professional) from all 50 states and 106 countries and employed more than 1,182 full-time faculty members. The university's athletic teams, Case Western Reserve Spartans, play in NCAA Division III as a founding member of the University Athletic Association.

Case Western Reserve University is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". According to the National Science Foundation, in 2023 the university had research and development (R&D) expenditures of $553.7 million, ranking it 18th among private institutions and 59th in the nation.

Case alumni, scientists, and scholars have played significant roles in many scientific breakthroughs and discoveries. Case professor Albert A. Michelson became the first American to win a Nobel Prize in science, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics. In total, seventeen Nobel laureates are associated with Case Western Reserve University.

Western Reserve College, the college of the Connecticut Western Reserve, was founded in 1826 in Hudson, Ohio, as the Western Reserve College and Preparatory School by the Presbyterian Church. Western Reserve College, or "Reserve" as it was popularly called, was the first college in northern Ohio. The school was called "Yale of the West"; its campus, now that of the Western Reserve Academy, imitated that of Yale. It had the same motto, "Lux et Veritas" (Light and Truth), the same entrance standards, and nearly the same curriculum. It was different from Yale in that it was a manual labor college, in which students were required to perform manual labor, seen as psychologically beneficial.

Western Reserve College's founders sought to instill in students an "evangelical ethos" and train Christian ministers for Ohio, where there was an acute shortage of them. The college was located in Hudson because the town made the largest financial offer to help in its construction. That town, about 30 miles southeast of Cleveland, had been an antislavery center from the beginning: its founder, David Hudson, was against slavery, and founding trustee Owen Brown was a noted abolitionist who secured the location for the college. The abolitionist John Brown, who would lead the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, grew up in Hudson and was the son of co-founder Owen Brown. Hudson was a major stop on the Underground Railroad.

With Presbyterian influences of its founding, the school's origins were strongly though briefly associated with the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement; the abolition of slavery was the dominant topic on campus in 1831. The trustees were unhappy with the situation. The college's chaplain and Bible professor, Beriah Green, gave four sermons on the topic and then resigned, expecting that he would be fired. President Charles Backus Storrs took a leave of absence for health, and soon died. One of the two remaining professors, Elizur Wright, soon left to head the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Western Reserve was the first college west of the Appalachian Mountains to enroll (1832) and graduate (1836) an African-American student, John Sykes Fayette. Frederick Douglass gave the commencement speech in 1854.

In 1838, the Loomis Observatory was built by astronomer Elias Loomis, and today remains the second oldest observatory in the United States, and the oldest still in its original location.