Mount St. Mary's University, also known as The Mount, is a private, liberal arts, Catholic university in the Catoctin Mountains near Emmitsburg, Maryland. It was founded by French émigré Father John DuBois in 1808 and is the oldest independent Catholic college in the United States. (It is the second oldest Catholic college in the United States, after Georgetown.) The school became co-educational in 1972. In addition to its undergraduate school, the university includes five graduate programs, including a seminary. Dr. Thomas H. Powell is the University's president. The seminary's rector and president is the former vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, Monsignor Stephen P. Rohlfs. Rohlfs's immediate predecessor as rector and president was Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades. The chancellor of the seminary is the former Archbishop William Henry Keeler. In 1805, DuBois laid the cornerstone for a church Saint-Mary's-on-the-Hill and bought land with the intention of constructing a school. In 1809, Pigeon Hall, a seminary of the Society of St. Sulpice was transferred to Emmitsburg and marked the beginning of higher education at Mount St. Mary.