The Athenaeum of Ohio is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada.

When it reopened, Purcell decided to create a separate preparatory school, St. Gregory's Seminary, which was opened in Mount Washington in 1890.

The next year, the archbishop accepted a donation of 16 acres (6 ha) in Norwood, some eight miles north of downtown Cincinnati.

The Athenaeum of Ohio was chartered to grant degrees for Mount St. Mary's of the West and St. Gregory seminaries, a teachers’ college and a graduate school of science, the Institutum Divi Thomae.

The Norwood site now houses Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Center, a retreat facility, for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.