USciences is now part of St. Joseph’s University after a merger of the two universities became official Wednesday, writes Susan Snyder for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The merger of the health and sciences university into the Catholic university took about 18 months.

The merger gives St. Joseph’s 26 new programs in pharmacy, physician assistant, physical therapy, and occupational therapy, genomics, cancer biology, and neuroscience. Potential programs could be developed in pharmaceutical marketing, pharmaceutical engineering, and “nutraceuticals” — the combination of food and pharma.

The combined institutions will enroll more than 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students and employ 400 full-time faculty. It will have an endowment above a half-billion dollars, an operating budget over $300 million, assets of $1.2 billion, and an alumni network of nearly 100,000.

USciences loses its Division II sports program to St. Joseph’s Division I, though scholarships already in place will be honored.

Both campuses will stay, with USciences becoming the University City campus and St. Joe’s campus becoming the Hawk Hill campus.

“I’m incredibly optimistic and hopeful that this ultimately will lead to a wave of innovation, creativity, and accomplishments that we can’t even possibly conceive of at this point in time,” said St. Joseph’s president Mark C. Reed.

Read more at The Philadelphia Inquirer about the merger.