Gustavus Adolphus College

Founding Swedish-American minister Eric Norelius (pictured) led efforts to establish the college in 1862 in 1862, Eric Norelius founded the college's predecessor, a Lutheran parochial school in Red Wing . It offered classes for grade-school children; collegiate courses were not offered until nearly a decade later, but the college uses the earlier date as the year it was founded. [ 7 ] Originally named Minnesota Elementarskola ( elementary school in Swedish ), it moved the following year to East Union, an unincorporated town in Dahlgren Township . In 1865, on the 1,000th anniversary of the death of St. Ansgar , known as the " Apostle of the North", the institution was renamed and incorporated as St. Ansgar's Academy. [ 7 ]

View of the campus c. 1905 In April 1873, the college was to be renamed Gustavus Adolphus Literary & Theological Institute in honor of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden once the final location and buildings were secured. A delegation of residents from St. Peter won favor from the founders to relocate there as a result of an economic crisis and the town's offer of $10,000 and donation of acreage for a larger campus. Courses were initially to start in 1875, but slow progress on constructing the first campus building, Old Main, delayed the opening. On October 16, 1876, Gustavus Adolphus College opened at the location it has today. It is the oldest of several Lutheran colleges founded in Minnesota. It was founded as a college of the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church . In 1962, it became affiliated with the Lutheran Church in America when the Augustana Synod merged into that body. The Lutheran Church in America merged in 1988 to create the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America .

During World War II, Gustavus Adolphus College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program , which offered students a path to a Navy commission. [ 7 ]

The annual Nobel Conference was established in the mid-1960s when college officials asked the Nobel Foundation for permission to name the new science building the Alfred Nobel Hall of Science as a memorial to the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel . Permission was granted, and the facility's dedication ceremony in 1963 included officials from the Nobel Foundation and 26 Nobel Laureates . Following the 1963 Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm, college representatives met with Nobel Foundation officials, asking them to endorse an annual science conference at the college and to allow the use of the Nobel name to establish credibility and high standards. The foundation granted the request at the urging of several prominent Nobel laureates, and the first conference was held at the college in January 1965.