Bygone DePaul is a series highlighting DePaul’s campus and how it has changed through the years.
Fr. Comerford O’Malley has the distinction of being the longest serving of DePaul’s presidents. His tenure ran from 1944 to 1964. Fr. O’Malley was born in 1902 in Chicago and ordained in 1928. He became the seventh president of DePaul in 1944 upon the retirement of Fr. O’Connell.
O’Malley’s tenure as DePaul’s president saw tremendous growth of the University, partly due to the GI Bill after WWII that sent many former soldiers to college. Enrollment ballooned to 11,500 by 1948. It was during these years that DePaul acquired the Lewis Centerand developed its Loop Campus. Father O’Malley also oversaw the building of Alumni Hall, which allowed sports to take a greater part in campus life. DePaul suffered some uncertainty during this period as well. In 1947 the North Central Association, which accredits universities, recommended that DePaul lose its accreditation due in part to a poor library and a lack of professors with PhDs. DePaul, which had always seen itself as primarily a teaching and training university rather than a research university, initially balked at hiring more professors with doctorates who would then require research leaves. However, these professors were soon hired and the academic standards of the university rose. The library was also centralized and improved under one director. Before O’Malley retired, he announced a $22 million ten-year “Program for Greatness” that would expand the Lincoln Park campus (including adding dormitories for the first time) and further improve academics. When O’Malley began his presidency, enrollment was at about 8,000. During the beginning and middle of his tenure it rose greatly, but when he retired there were fewer former soldiers to enroll. In 1960, enrollment was at around 9,000 students. All of these changes have affected the current academic program and student life of DePaul to a very large degree; in a way, O’Malley’s tenure founded modern DePaul.
Contact DePaul’s University Archives for more information.