to teach as well as gain new members. Iowa Territory In 1843, Bishop Mathias Loras of the Diocese of Dubuque, Iowa, who had been visiting Philadelphia, invited the sisters to come teach in the Iowa Territory. So the pioneer BVMs, by then nineteen in number, moved to Dubuque, Iowa, and began to teach the children of settlers, lead miners, and farmers. They opened a new boarding school, St. Mary’s Academy, which was the predecessor of the St. Raphael Cathedral school. They were the first women religious in the territory and would soon open many additional schools. During their first years in Iowa, the building was used for another school, Sacred Heart. In 1859, the building again saw new life when the St. Joseph Prairie boarding school moved to the site. During these early years, the number of towns at which there were schools continued to grow. An especially important era of growth began in 1867 when Jesuit Priest Arnold Damen invited the sisters to open a school at Holy Family in Chicago. The Sisters of Charity, BVM opened a number of schools throughout the city, including St. Mary’s and Immaculata High Schools. In 1885, the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, formerly a diocesan community, became a pontifical congregation. Continued growth Since the beginning, education had been the dominant charism of the BVM community. This became no less true as the sisterhood continued to grow. Over the next several decades, community leaders directed significant resources on improving the education of the sisters, who were responsible for teaching a large number of students. In the early 1900s, the superior sent teaching sisters to summer school programs at DePaul, Marquette, and the Catholic University of America, as well as to special institutes run at St. Mary’s, one of the community run high schools in Chicago. This ongoing education was especially important for those sisters who taught at Mt. St. Joseph; in 1901 the school received permission to begin granting three-year college degrees. To honor Mary Frances Clarke, the name of Mt. St. Joseph College was changed to Clarke College in 1928. The following year, construction began for another college, Mundelein College in Chicago. This school remained open until 1991, when it became part of Loyola University. During this time, the community continued to focus on the education of both the students, and the teaching sisters. During the later half of