The Mount de Chantal Conservatory of Music at Wheeling Jesuit University will be the center for musical activities at WJU - an ideal venue for intimate concerts, lectures, dramatic presentations, rehearsals and classes. Housed in the University's Center for Educational Technologies, it will feature an elegant recital hall, practice rooms, a parlor for students and performance-goers, and classroom and office space. A highlight will be the Sisters of the Visitation Gallery, a museum-like room displaying art, antiques and archival materials from Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy.

The Conservatory will be the home base for the University's choral groups under the leadership of Robert Troeger, and its growing symphonic band under the leadership of Dr. James Gourlay. Maestro Gourlay is the Director of Instrumental Music and University Bands at WJU and General Director and Conductor of the River City Brass - a popular Pittsburgh-based orchestra that performs with the WJU Symphonic Band.

Each year, one incoming female freshman who participates actively in one of the conducted ensembles will receive a $10,000 Mount de Chantal Scholarship, renewable annually, through the Mount de Chantal Fine Arts Education Fund.

Among the Mount de Chantal items on display in the Conservatory will be the school's original front door, along with beveled glass panels that had surrounded it; the 800-pound bell; chandeliers from the entry hall and the parents' parlor; and two bronze historical marker plaques from the front porch - all gifts to Wheeling Jesuit University from the Sisters of the Visitation.

The G.P.A. Healy painting of the 1867 music graduate Romaine Goddard (later Baroness Von Overbeck), familiar to all who passed through the Mount's front hallway, is captured in a reproduction that will hang in the Conservatory. The reproduction was made possible through the generosity of the Mount de Chantal Alumnae Association. Healy, whose daughters also attended Mount de Chantal, painted portraits of Abraham Lincoln that hang in the White House and the National Portrait Gallery.