Linfield University is a private university in McMinnville, Oregon. It also has a campus in Portland and an adult degree program located online and in eight communities throughout the state. Linfield Wildcats athletics participates in the NCAA Division IIINorthwest Conference. There are a combined 2,282 students at Linfield, which employs more than 150 full-time professors. The school officially changed its name from Linfield College to Linfield University, effective July 1, 2020.
History
Linfield traces its history back to the earliest days of Oregon Territory, when pioneer Baptists in Oregon City created the Oregon Baptist Educational Society in 1848. This society was organized to establish a Baptist school in the region, which began as Oregon City College in 1849. In 1855, Sebastian C. Adams began to agitate for a school in McMinnville. Adams and his associates were members of the Christian Church, and so the school became a Christian School. To begin, of property were donated by W. T. Newby and a group was formed to establish the school. The group included William Dawson, James McBride, Newby, and Adams, and they bore the major part of the expenses of starting the school. These men built a building and convinced Adams, who was a teacher, to operate the school. After about a year and a half and because of the difficulty of running the school alone and funding problems, Adams suggested that the school be turned over to the Baptists who were attempting to start up the West Union Institute that had been chartered in 1858 by the Oregon Territorial Legislature. The Adams group imposed the condition that the Baptists keep at least one professor employed continuously in the college department. Other accounts indicate that the Baptist group purchased the land in 1857 in order to start their school. The Oregon Territorial Legislature chartered the Baptist College at McMinnville in 1858. The school later became McMinnville College. In 1922, the name was changed to Linfield College in memory of a Baptist minister, the Rev. George Fisher Linfield whose widow, Frances Eleanor Ross Linfield, gave a substantial donation to the college to promote Christian education and as a memorial to her late husband. Mrs. Linfield served as Dean of Women from 1921 to 1928, and sat on the Board of Directors from 1922 to her death in 1940. Her gift included real estate in Spokane, Washington, valued at $250,000. In his 1938 book, Bricks Without Straw: The Story of Linfield College, Professor Jonas A. "Steine" Jonasson quotes from the minutes of the college's board of trustees to explain Mrs. Linfield's motivation for her large land gift to the college: "Mrs. Linfield's dual purpose in making the gift to McMinnville College was to 'perpetuate the name, scholarly attainments and Christian influence of her late husband, Rev. George Fisher Linfield, and to promote the cause of Christian education. The Linfield Division of Continuing Education began in 1975. Today it serves eight communities in Oregon as well as online degree programs giving working adults the opportunity to complete a bachelor's degree or certificate program. In 1982, the Linfield College-Portland Campus was established when the college entered into an affiliation with Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital & Medical Center and began offering a bachelor's degree program in nursing. The school officially changed its name to Linfield University, effective on July 1, 2020.
For six consecutive years, as of 2006, Linfield was named the No. 1 college in the western region by US News & World Report for the Comprehensive Colleges-Bachelor's category. In the U.S. News and World Report College Rankings for 2007, Linfield University was recategorized and ranked as a Liberal Arts College in a restructuring of rankings. In 2011, it was ranked 121st among liberal arts colleges. Linfield has been named by The Princeton Review as one of the Best Colleges in the Western Region. 93 percent of Linfield professors have the highest degree in their field. In 2009, Language Professor Peter Richardson was awarded Oregon Professor of the Year. In 2010 the Chronicle of Higher Education named Linfield a top producer of Fulbright Scholars; as since 1999, 36 graduates have won Fulbright grants. A 2015 study from The Economist ranked Linfield 27th nationally out of 1,275 colleges and universities when it came to the economic value of a degree. Also in 2015, Linfield was ranked among the best in the Pacific Northwest when it comes to admitting students from disadvantaged families and helping them move up the economic ladder. The study, "The Equality of Opportunity," was conducted by researchers from University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Brown University and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Linfield also ranked as the top liberal arts college in Washington and Oregon in Washington Monthly's "Best Bang for the Buck" list in 2016 and 2017. Washington Monthly also identifies Linfield as one of the top liberal arts colleges nationally, ranking it 81st out of 240 liberal arts colleges overall Linfield has a dual enrollment agreement with Portland Community College.
Athletics
The Linfield Wildcats football team has the longest streak of consecutive winning seasons across all levels of college football., the team has had 64 consecutive winning seasons. Linfield has won four national college football titles and have played in a total of seven college football national championship games. In addition, the school has won three national titles in baseball. The Linfield Softball team won two NCAADivision III Softball Championships in 2007 & 2011, and were runner-up in 2010 & 2012. Top athletics alumni include former New York YankeeScott Brosius, who was the head baseball coach at the college for eight years until 2015; former San Diego ChargerBrett Elliott, the quarterback of the 2004 championship team; and former Miami Dolphins general manager, Randy Mueller, quarterback of Linfield's 1982 NAIA Championship squad. Linfield offers varsity sports in Baseball, Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, Cross-Country, Football, Men's Golf, Women's Golf, Women's Lacrosse, Women's Soccer, Men's Soccer, Softball, Swimming, Women's Tennis, Men's Tennis, Track & Field, and Women's Volleyball. Linfield also offers thirteen intramural sports opportunities.
Student life
Linfield University offers over 40 organizations on campus and over 300 leadership positions. The Associated Students of Linfield University or the Linfield University Activities Team sponsor all clubs and student-led activities.
Campus media
In addition to clubs and organizations, there is an active media presence on campus, in the form of a college radio station and newspaper, both of which include student involvement.
''KSLC''
is an entirely student-run college radio station with reception throughout town and the immediate vicinity. The full-time student-staff consists of ten members, who work under the guidance of one faculty advisor. All work for KSLC is on a volunteer basis, but credit is also available through the electronic media practices and broadcast practices courses at Linfield. It plays a wide variety of music and also broadcasts Linfield Wildcat sporting events and there are specialty shows every weeknight. The station was housed in Pioneer Hall until 2007 when a new facility was completed in the basement of Renshaw Hall. Additionally, the radio station promotes its student ran shows as podcasts.
''The Linfield Review''
The Linfield Review is Linfield's student-run weekly campus newspaper. The newspaper is staffed only by students of the college and funded mostly through the Associated Students of Linfield University. According to the March 16, 2007, issue of the newspaper, the Linfield Review took third place in the Best in Show contest at the Associated Collegiate Press national college newspaper convention in Portland.
Greek organizations
, there are four fraternities and four sororities at Linfield University. The sororities are Alpha Phi, Zeta Tau Alpha, Sigma Kappa Phi, and Phi Sigma Sigma. The fraternities include Delta Psi Delta, Kappa Sigma, Pi Kappa Alpha, and Theta Chi. Sigma Kappa Phi and Delta Psi Delta are both local organizations and have no national affiliation. The sororities at Linfield Universitydo not have housing.
