| St John's University in Shanghai | |
|---|---|
| 聖約翰大學 | |
| Motto in English | Light and Truth |
| Established | 1879 |
| Type | Private university |
| Religious affiliation | Anglican |
| Principal | Francis Lister Hawks Pott (卜舫濟) |
| Location | Shanghai, China |
| Website | www.SJUAA.org |
| Saint John's University, Shanghai | |||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 聖約翰大學 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 圣约翰大学 | ||||||||||||
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St. John's University (simplified Chinese: 圣约翰大学; traditional Chinese: 聖約翰大學; pinyin: Shèng Yuēhàn Dàxué) was an Anglican university located in Shanghai, China. Before the Chinese Civil War it was regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in Shanghai and China. In 1952, the university was broken up and its faculties were joined with similar faculties from other universities to create several specialist universities.
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The University was founded in 1879 as "St. John's College" by William Jones Boone and Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, Bishop of Shanghai, by combining two pre-existing Anglican colleges in Shanghai. Architect for the college's original quadrangle of buildings was Newark, New Jersey architect William Halsey Wood.
St. John's began with 39 students, and taught mainly in Chinese. In 1891 it changed to teaching with English as the main language. The courses began to focus on science and natural philosophy.
In 1905, St. John's College became St. John's University, and became registered in Washington D.C. in the U.S. It thus had the status of a domestic university in the U.S. Graduates of St John's could proceed directly to graduate schools in the U.S. As a result, the university attracted some of the brightest and wealthiest students in Shanghai at the time. It was the first institution to grant bachelor's degrees in China, starting in 1907.
The university was located at 188 Jessfield Road (now Wanhangdu Lu), on a bend of the Suzhou Creek in Shanghai, and was designed to incorporate Chinese and Western architectural elements.
The university survived the Chinese Civil War. However, in 1952 the Communist government adopted a policy of creating specialist universities in the Soviet style of the time. Under this policy, St Johns was broken up. Most of its faculties were incorporated into the East China Normal University and Fudan University. The medical school was incorporated into Shanghai Second Medical College, which became the School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2005. The campus became the site of the East China University of Politics and Law.
St. John's University produced several influential figures in the early half of the 20th Century, including: