The origins of Central Philippine University dates back in 1901 when the American Northern Baptists, through its foreign mission board, the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, laid a plan to establish mission schools following the comity agreement of the division of the islands for the evangelical mission and through a benevolent grant given by John D. Rockefeller, an American industrialist and philanthropist. John D. Rockefeller himself was a devoted Northern Baptist with numerous church related philanthropy works throughout his life, that is why he gave a grant to the Northern Baptists that resulted in the establishment of Central.