 In 1851, Dominican missionary Francis Sadoc Vilarrasa and six Dominican novices arrived in Monterey, California, and established a school to prepare the young men for the priesthood.In 1854, the school moved to Benicia, but the traditional Dominican attraction to universities led the Order to seek a location closer to the University of California, Berkeley.In 1932, the Dominicans incorporated the school as the College of St. Albert the Great in Oakland, just a couple miles from the UC Berkeley campus.