Fairfield University
university located in Fairfield, Connecticut
Fairfield University is a private Catholic university in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States. It was founded by the Jesuits in 1942. In the fall of 2024, the university had about 5,400 full-time undergraduate students and 1,500 graduate students, including full-time and part-time students. It offers bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees through its five schools and colleges and, since 2023, associate degrees.
History
In 1941, James H. Dolan, Provincial for the New England Province of the Society of Jesus, received written permission from Bishop Maurice F. McAuliffe of the Hartford Archdiocese to establish a Jesuit high school and college in the southwestern area of Connecticut. Fairfield University was officially founded in 1942 when the Jesuits acquired the two contiguous estates of the Brewster Jennings and Walter Lashar families. Upon its founding, it became the 26th Jesuit college/university in the United States.
In the same year, Dolan appointed John J. McEleney as the first president of the Fairfield University of St. Robert Bellarmine and Vicar of the Fairfield College Preparatory School. In 1944, Dolan became the second president.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fairfield University” as university located in Fairfield, Connecticut. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as university located in Fairfield, Connecticut. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1393265. VIAF identifies the subject as 151148206. The Library of Congress control number is n82129104. Authority coordinates are 41.181, -73.290. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 2024, 2023 and 1941.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Fairfield University”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Fairfield University primary sources, Fairfield University archive and Fairfield research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fairfield University”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Fairfield 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.