St Josemaria with students from Kenya in Rome in 1973

Strathmore's journey to a chartered university is 50 years old this year. Soon after taking up his assignment in 1957 as Apostolic Delegate for the British dominions in Eastern and Western Africa, Monsignor Gastone Mojaisky-Perrelli wrote to the founder of Opus Dei, St Josemaría Escrivá, requesting him to start a Catholic University in Kenya. At that time Makerere College, the only institution offering degree programmes in East Africa was planning to stop accepting students with School Certificates. There were no Higher Certificate Schools for Africans in Kenya with the exception of the Royal Technical College in Nairobi that offered GSC Advanced levels.

Nationalist Tom Mboya said that when they were planning the first airlift of students to the USA, there were only seventy-four Kenya-Africans taking post-school certificate courses in Britain and seventy-five in India and Pakistan. The Founder of Opus Dei was aware of the apostolic reasons urging the Apostolic Delegate and expressed his interest in starting an A-level college that could constitute the basis of a future university.

St Josemaria gave the following guidelines to start Strathmore College:

1. The College had to be interracial; the various races had to have a common life, and be able to relate to one another and love one another.
2. The College had to be open to non-Catholic and non-Christian students and entry had to be on academic merit.
3. The secular character of Opus Dei members had to be made clear from the very start: Strathmore was not a missionary College and its academic staff was not made up of missionaries but of lay professionals.
4. Even if it was only a nominal amount, students should pay part of their fees, "for men" — the Founder said— "do not appreciate almsgiving or take it seriously; besides it humiliates them and it is the origin of complexes".

Strathmore College began as an A-level college in 1961.  Its first Principal and Deputy Principal were respectively David Sperling and Kevin O'Byrne, who are still lecturing at Strathmore University. To operate without discriminations and sustain itself financially in 1966 the Board of Trustees introduced a School of Accountancy, which in 1982 started offering part-time programmes. In 1986, with the introduction of the 8-4-4 system of education, the Lavington campus became crowded and the Trustees asked the Government to donate land for the construction of a new campus to house the post-secondary courses.  The Government donated 5 acres of land along Ole Sangale Road, Madaraka Estate, Nairobi, and several other donors committed their financial and technical support to the project.

In 1991 the Information Technology Centre was started in the Lavington campus, and in 1992 a Distance Learning Centre was opened to offer correspondence courses in Accountancy.  Strathmore College moved to the Madaraka campus in 1993 where it merged with Kianda College.

St Josemaría died in 1975. Knowing that his original dream was that Strathmore should be a university, his intense prayer and sacrifice for this intention, his love for Africa and his apostolic zeal, the members of Strathmore Educational Trust always had a university as their long-term goal. In 1998, seeing the demand in Kenya for university education and the number of Kenyans procuring it overseas, Strathmore College decided to expand its courses so as to include degrees. In 2000, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology by which the two institutions would jointly offer two university level programmes leading to the degrees of Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Business Information Technology.  The programmes started in 2001 and the following year the Commission of Higher Education granted Strathmore College a Letter of Interim Authority (LIA) to operate as Strathmore University. The first undergraduate students to enrol in these faculties completed their 4-year degree courses in December 2004.

Strathmore University Chancellor Bishop Javier Echevarria, and Vice-Chancellor Prof John Odhiambo

In the same period, it has introduced another two undergraduate degree programs namely Bachelor of Hospitality and Tourism (BHT) and Bachelor of Science in Leadership and Management (BLM) bringing the total number of its undergraduate degrees to four.

Strathmore University strives to respond to training needs in the country. During the period it has operated under LIA, it has introduced three diploma programs namely: Diploma in Business Information Technology (BDIT), the Micro Finance Diploma (MFD), and Diploma in Leadership and Management (DLM). It has also introduced three professional programs namely: Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) bringing the total number of professional courses it offers to four.

In 2005, the University established Strathmore Business School to offer executive business education that meets world-class standards. The school offers the Advanced Management Program (AMP), Program for Management Development (PMD), Advanced Healthcare Management Program, Micro Economics of Competitiveness (MOC), Applied Research Training, and Strategy in Action (SIA).

Strathmore has expanded its physical facilities in the period to meet the growing demand. Since 2002, it has finalized the purchase of additional 23 acres of land in and around Madaraka, initiated and completed the building of a new library, an auditorium, sports fields, halls of residence, lecture rooms and cafeteria. It has also implemented a wireless network and now students and staff can access internet from any point in the campus.

To enhance service delivery, the University has implemented an integrated IT system which includes an academic management system, a library management system, an e-learning system, a help desk management system, a financial system, and a human resource management system embarked on automating its processes. It has also obtained the ISO 9001:2000 quality certification and prepared a strategic development plan for the next 10 years. In 2007, ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) a global body for professional accountants approved the University's School of Accountancy as a platinum tuition provider, the highest level of approval the world body of professional accountants gives to tuition providers.  Strathmore is one of the institutions in Africa that have been granted such approval.

Philosophical basis

The educational philosophy of Strathmore University is based on the following principles:

1) "The University believes that a university must strive to serve society by making its students more human through the provision of quality academic and professional training, as well as human and moral training." Education has always been considered a necessary part of personal development, but today it is also seen as an essential component of progress and development at individual, family and social level.  Strathmore University aims at being part of this personal and social progress and development.

2) "The University firmly believes that a university should provide the best means of improving the moral, social and economic conditions of a person and of a people." Every aspect of education is necessarily rooted in a notion of man, his nature and his end. Directly or indirectly, education always makes reference to human perfection, which is the result of a process requiring human interaction and influence.  Since education is an intentional action carried out upon another person, there will always be a need to consider its purpose. Although the terms 'end' and 'objectives' are used in a variety of ways, the educational end is the intended purpose and synthesis of all the goals of the educational process. Just as it is possible to distinguish in man different aspects and functions without losing sight of his unity, so too the University intends to address a variety of objectives that should all be subordinated to the final aim of education.

3) "The University recognises and upholds that there are two orders of knowledge, faith and reason, and that these orders of knowledge can develop without opposing each other." A complete vision of man requires keeping in mind that he has been gratuitously elevated by God to the supernatural order: this is the Christian perspective which, while keeping and assuming all that contributes to the natural perfection of man, elevates this natural perfection to the order of grace.  The Christian perspective allows to know man's real situation in his totality, composed of matter and spirit, of body and soul, and endowed with powers and faculties; fallen but redeemed by Christ; re-integrated again into the condition of a son of God by grace, but with the consequences of original sin, principally the weakening of the will, the darkening of the intelligence and the disorder of the sensible appetites ('Divini illius Magistri, 34, Pius XI). The end towards which education ought to be directed, directly or indirectly, is a supernatural end and therefore "no complete and perfect education can exist, if education is not Christian" (Pius XI, idem No 5).

4) "The University recognises the fact that development trends of the twenty first century are fully dependent on the status of emerging technologies, and in particular, information and communication technology, and that universities have a role to play in such trends." Technology can assist the educational process by facilitating methods that make education specific, observable and subject to evaluation. At the same time, at its most practical level, technology turns the connection between ends, objectives and techniques more indeterminate.  This means that technology may lead universities into developing techniques at the service of observable objectives, while overlooking the end of education.  A clear understanding of human nature, the end of man, and of the nature and end of education are essential to make proper use of technology and knew knowledge generated through research.

Finally, it should be stressed that although Strathmore has a Christian ethos, this ethos is based on freedom and responsibility, respectful of the freedom of conscience of staff and students. Christianity is not a philosophy or an educational system equivalent to any other; neither it sponsors any fixed methodology.  It is rather a supernatural religion, which also has been and continues to be a source of human progress and development.