Allen University

Allen University is an academic community which provides students an opportunity to obtain baccalaureate and graduate degrees in liberal arts and professional programs. The University has a strong unalterable commitment to teaching in delivery of its baccalaureate and graduate programs.

Allen University is a Christian Liberal Arts institution whose purpose is to prepare leaders who are skilled in communication, critical thinking, and who demonstrate high moral character. Our aim is to provide an environment of academic excellence in order to heighten our students’ chances of succeeding in a culturally diverse and economically global world. Allen University desires to follow a Total Life Curriculum model, which addresses preparation of the whole person for life service.

We seek to develop the intellect, the spirit, and the body as we bring our students into a climate designed for success. Successful development of each student is our goal. Allen believes that faith plays a major role in developing one’s character. Therefore, our curriculum includes principles and practices of the historical beliefs of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Allen University’s core values are selected principles that govern our behavior and operation as an organized body:

Integrity: Allen University seeks to practice truth and propriety in our personal and corporate practices and relationships.

Accountability: Allen University accepts its responsibility to be consistent in sound practices, loyal in reference to duties, agreements, obligations and relationships.

Respect: Allen University aspires for its faculty, staff and students to live and work in harmony with peers, by respecting each individual’s right to exist, think and speak in an appropriate manner. The dignity of each one will be honored by all.

Excellence: Allen University is committed to the vigorous pursuit of excellence in our educational endeavors.

Faith: Allen University is a Christian liberal arts institution of higher learning under the auspices of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Allen University story begins seven years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and five years after the end of the American Civil War. The end of that conflict saw significant expansion of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the former Confederate States. Allen University grew out of the church’s desire to educate newly freed slaves and to ensure a well-trained clergy for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Right Reverend John Mifflin Brown and the assembled clergy of the Columbia District of the AME Church, on July 29, 1870, agreed to raise funds to purchase a 150-acre farm in Cokesbury, South Carolina. They did so in hopes of locating a school there that would be the “FIRST INSTITUTION OF LEARNING CONSECRATED TO NEGRO SELF ACTIVITY AND NEGRO MANHOOD,” in the state of South Carolina.