Wilkes University

Wilkes University is a private, non-denominational American university located in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, with branch centers in Mesa, Arizona, and Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. It has over 2,200 undergraduates and over 2,200 graduate students (both full and part-time). Wilkes was founded in 1933 as a satellite campus of Bucknell University[3], and became an independent institution in 1947, naming itself Wilkes College, after English radical politician John Wilkes after whom Wilkes-Barre is named.The school was granted university status in January 1990. A doctoral university classification was granted by Carnegie Classification Institutions of Higher Education in 2019 - one of only 14 private institutions in Pa. to have this distinction.Wilkes University is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

Wilkes University was first established in 1933 by Bucknell University under the name Bucknell University Junior College (BUJC) in Wilkes-Barre.[Frank G. Davis, chair of the Education department at Bucknell, first developed the idea of BUJC and served as an early liaison between BUJC and Bucknell. BUJC attracted many students who were the first members of their families to benefit from higher education as the need for junior colleges arose in urban areas.The college opened in downtown Wilkes-Barre where the first classes were held on the third floor of the Wilkes-Barre Business College building. By 1934, the business college moved out of the building and BUJC had taken it over and continued to grow over the years acquiring old mansions for student housing, classrooms, and administration offices along the streets of South River and South Franklin. By 1945, the Board of Trustees formally moved to develop the junior college into a four-year institution.