About Wilkes University

Wilkes University is a private university in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It has on pinnacle of 2,200 undergraduates and on summit of 2,200 graduate students (both full and part-time). Wilkes was founded in 1933 as a satellite campus of Bucknell University, and became an independent institution in 1947, naming itself Wilkes College, after English militant politician John Wilkes after whom Wilkes-Barre is named. The moot was granted university circles status in January 1990. It is classified among “Doctoral/Professional Universities”. Wilkes University is accredited by the Commission upon Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

The university mascot is a Colonel and the official colors are blue and yellow. The campus metaphor is a letter “W” known as the “flying W” by students and alumni.

Wilkes-Barre (/ˈwɪlksˌbɛər/ or /-bɛəri/) is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Luzerne County. Located at the middle of the Wyoming Valley, it had an estimated population of 40,766 in 2019. It is the second-largest city (after Scranton) of the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a population of 563,631 as of the 2010 Census and is the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania. Wilkes-Barre and the surrounding Wyoming Valley are framed by the Pocono Mountains to the east, the Endless Mountains to the north and west, and the Lehigh Valley to the south. The Susquehanna River flows through the middle of the valley and defines the northwestern be stifling to of the city.

Wilkes-Barre was founded in 1769 and formally incorporated in 1806. The city grew hurriedly in the 19th century after the discovery of nearby coal reserves and the initiation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who provided a labor force for the local mines. The coal mining fueled industrialization in the city, which reached the peak of its riches in the first half of the 20th century. Its population peaked at exceeding 86,000 in 1930. Following World War II, the city’s economy declined due to the collapse of industry. The Knox Mine industrial accident accelerated this trend after large portions of the area’s coal mines were flooded and could not be reopened. Today, the city has on the order of half of its culmination population of the 1930s, making it the largest city in Luzerne County and the 13th-largest city in Pennsylvania.