Columbia College Chicago (Campus History)

Columbia College Chicago was founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory, a coeducational institution teaching methods of physical culture, expression, elocution, public reading, and dramatic action. From the 1930s onward, the college focused on the growing fields of radio, television, and other mass communication. By the 1960s, the school had created a liberal-arts curriculum with a hands-on approach to arts and media education and a progressive social agenda. In the 1970s, the college relocated to its permanent home in the South Loop. Today, with deference to its past, the college encourages students to author the culture of their times, to produce a body of work, and to realize their abilities according to the school's original motto "esse quam videri" (to be rather than to seem).