MS in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

In 1634, Jesuit settlers from England founded the Province of Maryland in colonial-era British America. In 1646, the defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War led to stringent laws against Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including missionary Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor. During most of the remainder of Maryland's colonial period, Jesuits conducted Catholic schools clandestinely. Following the end of the American Revolutionary War, plans to establish a permanent Catholic institution for education in the United States were realized.

At Benjamin Franklin's recommendation, Pope Pius VI appointed former Jesuit John Carroll the first head of the Catholic Church in the United States, even though the papal suppression of the Jesuit order was still in effect. Carroll began meetings of local clergy in 1783 near Annapolis, where they orchestrated the development of a new university. On January 23, 1789, Carroll finalized the purchase of the property in Georgetown on which Dahlgren Quadrangle was later built.[14] Future Congressman William Gaston was enrolled as the school's first student on November 22, 1791, and instruction began on January 2, 1792.