Ohio Wesleyan University | About OWU

About OWU

Academics

Campus/Facilities

The Conrades♦Wetherell Science Center, with its state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms, and instrumentation.

THE OWU CAMPUS FACILITIES range from the original mid-19th-century collegiate buildings to the state-of-the-art Conrades•Wetherell Science Center. A number of buildings on campus have national landmark status. The campus is extensive and attractive and also borders on the downtown area. There are some 1.7 million square feet of campus space as well as attractive campus quadrangles and outdoor facilities. Student housing is concentrated in one section of the campus with the academic and athletic facilities in other areas. One building is currently unoccupied and slated for renovation using receipts from the upcoming capital campaign. A street through a portion of the campus was closed in order to create the JAYwalk, a beautifully landscaped pedestrian walkway. The Hamilton-Williams Campus Center and central dining facility is a welcoming campus meeting place. A president’s residence (Pritchard House) with space for entertaining was built in 1959.

Major progress has been achieved with the renovation of several facilities made possible by the last campaign. More than 90% of the student body lives in University housing. The housing options include six large residence halls with incorporated dining facilities and some special-interest corridors. There are also nine Small Living Units—or SLUs (pronounced “slews”)—which are theme houses for 10 to 15 students each, such as the Creative Arts House, the Woman’s House, and the House of Thought, as well as 10 residential fraternity houses.

The centrally located Beeghly Library houses 503,000 volumes, one of the largest collections in the country for a college of Ohio Wesleyan’s size. The library’s federal document depository is among the nation’s oldest and largest with an additional 200,000 reference documents. The collection is further enhanced by memberships in OhioLINK and CONSORT. The new science buildings house a wide variety of state of the art equipment including a scanning electron microscope and scanning and transmission electron microscopes co-owned by USDA labs. The science center also includes its own green house. Two university wilderness preserves cover a total of 100 acres. OWU also has two observatories—one, the historically significant Perkins Observatory, containing a 32-inch reflecting telescope.

Gray Chapel in University Hall houses the impressive 4,500-pipe Rexford Keller Memorial Organ, the largest of only six Klais concert organs that exist in the United States. The new R.W. Corns Building houses the Woltemade Center for Economics, Business, and Entrepreneurship; the Economics Department; the Sagan Academic Resource Center; and Information Systems. The recently renovated Edgar Hall provides top-notch design workspaces for the Fine Arts Department, while—across Sandusky Street—the equally new Richard M. Ross Art Museum has quickly become a well-known regional gallery. Ohio Wesleyan also has a state-of-the-art Geographic Information Systems (GIS) computer laboratory. OWU takes justifiable pride in the beauty and quality of its campus.