Jessup University

Jessup University (officially William Jessup University) is a private Christian university in Rocklin, California, United States, with additional sites in San Jose, California, and Portland, Oregon. The university had 1,743 (over 1650 full-time equivalent) students during the 2019–20 academic year. Founded in 1939, it had a total undergraduate enrollment of 1,289 in the fall of 2020 on a 126-acre (51 ha) campus.

The university was founded as San Jose Bible College in 1939, in San Jose by William Lee Jessup, the college's first president. Eugene Claremont Sanderson had originally started Evangel Bible University in San Jose in 1934 but was unable to make it viable. As a result, he recruited Jessup, one of his former students, to take over. By 1951, with the school expanding and the San José State University across the street encroaching, San Jose Bible College moved to a parcel bordered by Coyote Creek, 12th Street and nearly 30 years later by I-280. Spanish-style classroom buildings and several dormitory buildings made up the small campus.

William Jessup retired in 1960 and was succeeded by Alvan L. Tiffin. Later, Woodrow Phillips, an alumnus, was president from 1968 to 1979 and Chuck Boatman was president from 1979 to 1984. Bryce Leroy Jessup, a Pepperdine University alumnus and a son of the original president, was president from 1984 to 2010, when he retired. John Jackson, a former pastor at local megachurch Bayside Church, was selected to be the sixth president in March 2011.

In 1989, the school was renamed San Jose Christian College and regionally accredited by WASC in 2002. As administration was unable to find a new location in the Santa Clara Valley, they decided to move the institution to the Sacramento metropolitan city of Rocklin in April 2003. The college officially moved from its San Jose campus in June 2004. At this time the college was renamed William Jessup University. A branch campus has been retained in San Jose that primarily serves non-traditional and graduate students.

The current location was formerly a Herman Miller Furniture Factory and many of the buildings were designed by Frank Gehry.

Since 2017, William Jessup University has formally partnered with Placer County to address land conservation issues in the county. In 2022, the university and Placer County announced plans for the University to purchase a 487 acre piece of land known as the Clover Valley, with the goal of managing it as an ecological and recreational preserve.

In 2019, the university refinanced roughly $75 million in debt as bonds through the California Municipal Finance Authority. The origin of the debt is unclear, although the financing is earmarked as for the refinancing of "a portion of one or more loans used to acquire, construct, furnish and/or equip educational facilities of the Borrower’s campus." The school made little mention of the action, noting simply in one of its regular publications that "For the first time in our history, we have fixed rate long-term debt financing."

In 2020, the school announced a partnership with Bethel Church to create Bethel Music College. The school, which is accredited through Jessup, allows students to study with Bethel Music leaders and other industry experts while gaining credits that can be used toward a bachelor's degree. It is structured similarly to the university's partnership with another Bethel program known as the Bethel School of Technology, which operates a "nine-month technology bootcamp." Although the impact of the programs is unclear, Jessup, in a press release, noted that, in the fall of 2020, the "partnership program with Bethel brought in 150 students in the first four months of the program."