Iowa Wesleyan College is a private, fully-accredited four-year college of the United Methodist Church located Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Full-time student enrollment at Iowa Wesleyan is approximately 800.
On February 5, 1842, the Iowa Territorial Legislature passed a bill to incorporate a literary institute in Mount Pleasant. The bill became law on February 17. On March 11, 1843, nine years after the settlement was founded, four Mount Pleasant citizens donated twenty acres (81,000 m²) in four adjoining plots to enable the trustees "to erect a suitable building on some part of the donation, which should be used and forever appropriated as an institution of higher learning." This building, now called Pioneer Hall, is still in use today -- the oldest college building at the oldest coeducational institution of higher learning located west of the Mississippi River.
Among the college's most famous alumni are Belle Babb "Arabella" Mansfield, the first female lawyer in the United States; James Van Allen, world-renowned astrophysicist and discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belt circling the earth, Peggy Whitson, NASA Astronaut and William Andrews Clark, early 20th century business magnate.
Dr. William N. Johnston is the school's current president.