Founded in 1892, Walla Walla University is a private college in the rural south east of Washington state, just north of its border with Oregon. It is linked to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, a Protestant denomination founded in the 19th century.
Known as Walla Walla College until 2007, the university has been named after the largest city in the county throughout its history, though it is actually closer to the smaller city of College Heights.
Of Walla Walla’s 100-plus courses, engineering, business management and education are among the most popular.
Though it is mostly attended by undergraduates, Walla Walla also runs postgraduate programmes in biology, education, media ministry and social work. Its runs a social work master’s courses in Missoula and Billings, both in the neighbouring state of Montana. The former is on the Clark Fork River, close to the University of Montana, while the latter is further east, north of Wyoming.
Walla Walla is around 250 miles from Seattle, Washington’s largest city, and Portland, where the university’s School of Nursing is located. Since 1955, Walla Walla has also operated a biology field station in north east Washington. Rosario Beach Marine Laboratory is in Anacortes, just south of the Canadian border.
Prominent Walla Walla alumni include Pamela C. Rasmussen, an ornithologist who has studied North American, South American and Asian birds in particular, and Michael Cruz, a surgeon and Republican politician who served as governor of Guam between 2007 and 2011.
