Multnomah University

Multnomah University is a diverse community that equips students to love Christ and serve their neighbors through their lives and work.

Multnomah University’s mission is to equip Christian students through higher education to become biblically competent, academically proficient, spiritually formed, and culturally engaged servant leaders, shaped to be a transforming force in the church, community, and world.

On February 14, 1936, Rev. John G. Mitchell called a meeting of Portland-area ministers and Christian businessmen to discuss an idea that consumed his thinking. The Pacific Northwest, he was convinced, needed a school that would faithfully instruct men and women in the truths of God’s Word. Other men at this meeting shared Dr. Mitchell’s vision, and subsequently Multnomah School of the Bible came into existence.

Classes began the following October in a former mortuary with 49 students and a half-dozen faculty. In the spring of 1939, Multnomah granted diplomas to thirty-one students-its first graduating class.

The original campus was located adjacent to the site of the present Lloyd Center Shopping Mall in northeast Portland. In the early 1950s, the administration and trustee board realized Multnomah’s growing student body would require expanded facilities. In 1952 after much prayer, the board decided to purchase the former 17-acre campus of Oregon State School for the Blind, located at the corner of northeast 86th Avenue and Glisan Street. It became the present location for the college and seminary.