About the Newman Center

History of the Newman Center

Thirty-six students formed the Catholic Students Club at North Dakota Agricultural College Fargo in 1928, their aim was to provide a way to get better acquainted and promote "religious interests." Today, hundreds of Catholic students annually participate in the various programs offered by St. Paul's Newman Center at North Dakota State University.

The Center derives its name both from one of the greatest of all saints - The Apostle St. Paul - and also from Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th -century English convert and theologian, who thought it important to foster the religious development of young Catholics attending secular schools: "The Idea of a University". No two better patrons could be found for modern-day university students striving to live holy lives in the reality of Christ Jesus.

Fr. James Cheney is the fourteenth in a line of Newman Center directors stretching back to Fr. Leo Dworschak, an assistant at St. Anthony's Church in Fargo who started the club in 1928. It was the first religious organization formed at what later became NDSU: Fr. Dworschak would go on to become the fourth bishop of Fargo.

For years, the Newman Club had no resident chaplain. Local parish priests advised and guided the group in addition to their regular duties, and an old white house on the side of the present Center served as a meeting place. In 1948 a new chaplain, Fr. Edward Arth, directed the building of a Quonset hut next door to the old house to give the Newman Club its first permanent home, but, the simple Quonset Chapel, which sat about 200 people, was destroyed by the F-5 tornado of June 1957.