About
St. Lawrence University (SLU) is a private liberal arts college in Canton, New York, United States. It has roughly 2,100 undergraduate and 100 graduate students.
Though St. Lawrence today is nonsectarian, it was founded in 1856 by leaders of the Universalist Church, who were seeking to establish a seminary west of New England and were enthusiastically courted by the citizens of Canton. The church almost did not place the school in Canton, however, as they felt students might be exposed to too much "excitement" within the village limits in 1856. The denomination, which has since merged with the Unitarian faith, was part of the liberal wing of Protestantism, championing such ideas as critical thinking and sex equality — attributes that surfaced in the new Theological School of St. Lawrence University, which was progressive in its teaching philosophy and coeducational from the beginning.