History

For more than 130 years, Drake University has been a place for forward-thinking leaders, and it all started with our founders: George T. Carpenter, a teacher and preacher with a fresh educational vision, and Francis Marion Drake, a Union general in the Civil War, a railroad magnate, and a governor of Iowa.

Together they founded a university that expanded traditional study in theology and classics to include science, law, and other fields. Coeducational from the start and welcoming students of all races, we enrolled our first international students within five years of our founding—welcoming arrivals from China, Persia, Armenia, and Japan.