awarded its first master's degree in 1951 and its first doctoral program in Educational Leadership in 1979, and added a Ph.D. degree program in Computer Science and Engineering in 2006. Two terminal, professional, alternative medicine programs in Chiropractic and Naturopathic Medicine were established in 1991 and 1996 respectively. The naturopathic medicine program was discontinued in 2019.
=== Affilitation with the Unification Church ===
In 1990, after severe endowment losses, discussion began about affiliating or possibly merging the university with either the University of New Haven or Sacred Heart University.
The university was approached by the Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA), an affiliate of the Unification Church, but its offer to bail out the university was spurned by the trustees who said the school was "not going to have anything to do with the offer" and were concerned that such an affiliation would damage the university's reputation.
Problems continued to plague the university; enrollment …
