Founded in 1871, West Chester is a public, regional, comprehensive university and one of the fourteen campuses of Pennsylvania's State System of Higher Education. WCU enrolls in excess of 16,600 students, is supported by 655 full-time and 258 part-time faculty, and is organized into five colleges. The university is located 25 miles west of Philadelphia and strategically located in the center of the mid-Atlantic corridor between New York City and Washington, DC, with easy access to major cultural and commercial institutions and recreational activities.