As Chesterfield Grew, So Did One of the Chamber’s E Logan University joined the Chesterfield Chamber of Commerce in 1981
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his year, the Chesterfield Regional Chamber celebrates its 45th anniversary. The Chamber was established in 1976. It was the year of America’s Bicentennial. Jimmy Carter was president, Rocky was smashing box office records, Happy Days was the number one show on TV, and Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci earned the first perfect 10 in Olympic history. Five years later, in 1981, as the world turned its focus to the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer to Charles, Prince of Wales, the Chamber quietly grew to six members. One of them was Logan College of Chiropractic. Dr. Clay McDonald, current Logan University President, was a student at what was then Logan College Chiropractic and graduated with a chiropractic degree in 1982. “When I came here as a student in 1979, there was just the original building. That was it. There were roughly 400 students here at the time,” McDonald recalled. Although the building was still relatively new — Logan had purchased it from Maryknoll Junior Seminary in 1973 — McDonald remembers the sprawling 112-acre campus feeling “pretty rural” much like Chesterfield did at the time. “The campus was pretty isolated,” he said,
1980 groundbreaking of Montgomery Health Center.
“and Chesterfield felt like a kind of vague place. It didn’t have boundaries. It didn’t have an identity. Ballwin and Manchester probably had more of an identity to the students.” Chesterfield was only incorporated as a city in 1988. “But now Chesterfield is a powerhouse in West County, and very dynamic and expanding rapidly,” said McDonald. “And I think the growth of the university is mirrored in the growth of the city and the Chamber. Chesterfield and the school have both grown, in some ways exponentially — they’ve both matured a lot during that time.” The Chamber has certainly grown — from the Chesterfield Chamber of Commerce with a handful of members to the expanded Chesterfield Regional Chamber of Commerce with 712 members. McDonald joined Logan as its seventh president in 2013, the same year Logan College of Chiropractic became Logan University. “At that time, we had about 750 doctor of chiropractic students and two master’s degrees that were complementary to the doctor of chiropractic degree,” he said. “This fall, we have 930 doctor of chiropractic students and 900 students in the College of Health Sciences. The degrees we offer now are pretty extensive.” The chiropractic students earn their degrees in traditional in-person programs. All eight degrees in the College of Health Sciences are currently online offerings. “Next summer we’ll have a new master’s degree in athletic training here on campus. That’s pertinent because the rest of the College of Health Sciences
