Clarke University
Private catholic university in Iowa, U.S.
Clarke University is a private Catholic university in Dubuque, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1843 as "St. Mary's Female Academy" by Mother Mary Frances Clarke, foundress of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The campus sits on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and downtown Dubuque. Clarke offers undergraduate degrees in 19 academic departments with over 40 majors and programs. The university also provides graduate master's and doctoral degrees and enrolls approximately 962 students as of fall 2024.
History
What is now known as Clarke University was established in 1843 as "St. Mary's Female Academy" by Irish emigrant Mother Mary Frances Clarke, the founder of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was one of the first such schools for women built west of the Mississippi River.
In 1881, St.
“Clarke University” enters the record as private catholic university in Iowa, U.S. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Clarke, University and Private can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Clarke University” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Clarke, University and Private provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5127510. VIAF identifies the subject as 154236175. The Library of Congress control number is n82010543. Authority coordinates are 42.510, -90.691. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1843, 2024 and 1881.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clarke University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.