St. Norbert College (SNC) is a private Norbertine liberal arts college in De Pere, Wisconsin. Founded in October 1898 by Abbot Bernard Pennings, a Norbertine priest and educator, the school was named after Saint Norbert of Xanten. In 1952, the college became coeducational. , the school's enrollment is 1,939 students. History St. Norbert College was established when Abbot Bernard Pennings, a Dutch immigrant priest from the Premonstratensian Berne Abbey of Heeswijk, the Netherlands, founded the college to train young men for the priesthood. Francis Ignatius Van Dyke, a seminarian, was the first and, at the time, the only student. St. Norbert is the first and only institution of higher learning in the world sponsored by the Premonstratensian order. Abbot Pennings later started a commerce program at the college for lay students before retiring in 1955. St. Norbert's second president, the Rev. Dennis Burke, expanded the college, anticipating the student population would eventually reach 2,000. Robert Christin, who became president in 1968, implemented the current course system and the academic divisional structure. In 1973, Neil Webb, a former faculty member and vice president, became president. Webb established the first permanent endowment for the school. Serving as the college's president from 1983 to 2000, Thomas Manion led the expansion of facilities and the development of additional academic programs. Enrollment topped 2,000. Thomas Kunkel, former dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park, became the seventh president of the college in 2008. Since then, the college has constructed the Mulva Family Fitness & Sports Center, the Gehl-Mulva Science Center, the Cassandra Voss Center, Michels Commons, Schneider Stadium, the Mulva Library, Gries Hall, Ariens Family Welcome Center and Todd Wehr Hall. Brian J. Bruess, a 1990 graduate of St. Norbert College and former executive vice president and chief operating officer of St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, became president in 2017. Although he announced on November 1, 2019, that he would not continue in his position as president after the end of the 2019–2020 academic year, uproar from the college community led to further discussion between Bruess and the SNC Board of Trustees that resulted in a multiyear contract. Four members of the board, including the chair, resigned shortly thereafter. In March 2022, Bruess announced his appointment as the inaugural president of the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University, beginning in July 2022. Kunkel,