Barry University is a private, Catholic university, which was founded in 1940 in Miami Shores, Florida, a suburb north of Downtown Miami. It is part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. Barry offers business, nursing, health sciences, teacher education, and liberal arts programs. It currently has more than 9,300 students, a faculty of 871, a campus of 54 buildings, and 39,922 alumni. Student to faculty ratio is 14:1. "In its 2011 Edition of America's Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report Barry University remained as unranked for academic quality and as a second tier university." "For the sixth year in a row, U.S. News and World Report 2006 Best Colleges Edition ranked Barry as number one for campus diversity among schools of our size in the South. Students are drawn from 49 states and 80 countries." Initially, Barry was a women's Catholic college. The construction of what was then the Barry College for Women began in 1940, in what had previously been "a tract of tropical vegetation." The empty lot was soon transformed into the main campus, in Miami Shores, FL. The original campus consisted of five buildings. The college was named for Mother Mary Gerald Barry.