- published: 28 Aug 2015
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The University of Portland (UP) is a private Roman Catholic university located in Portland, Oregon. It is affiliated with the Congregation of Holy Cross, which also founded UP's sister school the University of Notre Dame. Founded in 1901, UP has a student body of about 3,600 students. It is widely known for its women's soccer program, which won the 2002 and 2005 Division I NCAA Women's Soccer Championships. UP is ranked 9th in the west for Regional Universities by U.S. News and World Report.
The campus is located in the University Park neighborhood near St. Johns, on a bluff overlooking the Willamette River. With a college of arts and sciences; a graduate school; and schools of business, education, engineering, and nursing, it is the only comprehensive Catholic University in Oregon. It is the largest corporation in North Portland and has an annual economic impact on Portland of some $170 million. More than 13,000 alumni live in the Portland metropolitan area.
The first institution located on Waud's Bluff was Portland University, which was established by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1891. Amid financial setbacks following the Panic of 1893, Portland University vacated the Bluff Campus to hold classes from 1896 to 1897 in East Portland, where it was joined temporarily by the recently insolvent College of Puget Sound.