John McCoy and Bishop Thomas Beaven of the Springfield diocese purchased property in Chicopee and it became St. Joseph's Normal College.

To meet the needs of the surrounding community, Elms developed undergraduate programs in nursing, business management, and communication sciences and disorders during the 1960s and 1970s.

The Elms College board of trustees voted 23–5 to begin admitting men, starting with the 1998–1999 school year, on October 7, 1997.

[3] In 2014, Elms College completed construction on the Center for Natural and Health Sciences, its first academic building in more than 30 years.

The new softball field was built in for the 2008 season, it featured newly-added covered dugouts and a batting cage and extended the homerun wall a few feet.