The Luoyuan Academy (Chinese: 泺源书院; pinyin: Luoyuán Shūyuàn) was established in Jinan in 1733 by an imperial edict from the Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty.

[9] Five years later (in 1901) it was replaced by the newly founded Imperial Shandong College which took over its campus[7] (today the site of the Provincial Bureau of Statistics on Spring City Road (Chinese: 泉城路; pinyin: Quán Chéng Lù)).

The earliest precursor institutions that would later be fused into Shandong University were founded by American and English mission agencies: In early January 1864, Calvin W. Mateer, an American Presbyterian missionary, and his wife Julia Brown Mateer, arrived in the recently opened treaty port of Dengzhou (Chinese: 登州; Wade–Giles: Tengchow, now Zhifu, Yantai) in the area of the present-day city of Penglai on the north-eastern coast of Shandong Peninsula.

Yuan Shikai was the chief military modernizer of the late Qing Dynasty whose control over a powerful army combined with his personal ambition played a key role in the birth of the Republic of China as well as its descent into warlordism in the early 20th century.

The original charter document for Shandong University is now kept in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan where it had been taken during the retreat of the Kuomintang at the end of the Chinese Civil War.

[20] The appointment of the Presbyterian missionary W. A. P. Martin as inaugural president of the Imperial Capital University three years earlier[21] had set a precedent for this arrangement.

[20] However, by the end of the year, Hayes and six Chinese Christian teachers he had brought with him had resigned already[20] over disagreements regarding the policy of mandatory Confucius worship for students of the imperial university.

[29] Whereas engineering and natural sciences were taught in an entirely "Western mode", the Chinese and European approaches were combined in the teaching of the humanities.

The curriculum of Qingdao University was mainly focused on engineering and business administration[7] and a bachelor's degree was to be awarded after four years of study.

Zhang, an illiterate former bandit[30] who had built a reputation mainly for ruthlessness, brutality, and colorful antics,[31] ordered the fusion of six schools into a provincial Shandong University (Chinese: 省立山东大学; pinyin: Shěnglì Shāndōng Dàxué) in Jinan in 1926.

[7] During this period, Shandong National University hired distinguished scientists, scholars and literary figures such as Lao She, Wen Yiduo, Shen Congwen, Liang Shiqiu, the nuclear physicist Wang Ganchang (faculty member from 1934 to 1936), and the embryologist Tong Dizhou.

[7] Poet Zang Kejia, who later co-edited the "Selected Poems of Chairman Mao" (Chinese: 毛主席诗词讲解, 1957), was a student of Wen Yiduo from 1930 to 1934 in Qingdao.

In November 1937, a few months after Marco Polo Bridge Incident that had marked the outbreak of a fully-fledged war in July of the same year, National Shandong University was evacuated from Qingdao.

[32] In 1947, the Su Mingcheng Incident, in which an American seaman had killed a rickshaw puller after an argument, caused protests of the university students.

[citation needed] Starting from early June 1966, schools in Jinan were closed down by strikes as teachers were "struggled against" in the Cultural Revolution.

[citation needed] In July 2019, the university attracted controversy when it was reported that male foreign students were assigned three generally female Chinese "buddies" to help them with life in China.

[3] A ranking by Mines ParisTech based on the number of alumni holding CEO position in Fortune Global 500 companies placed Shandong University first within China.

Central administrative departments (e.g., for finance, human resources, research, or international affairs) are led by a director (Chinese: 处长; pinyin: Chùzhǎng).

The American architects attempted to include Chinese architectural features into the design of the buildings on the new Cheeloo University campus in Jinan.

The campus site is immediately adjacent to the seashore of Aoshan Bay and the coastal highway (Chinese: 滨海大道; pinyin: Bīnhǎi dàdào).

The campus will be dedicated to advanced science and engineering research, with a special emphasis on interfacing with high-tech industry and international academic collaboration.

[74] An International Laboratory operated in the a partnership with Virginia Tech was inaugurated in the Integrated Research Building on the Central Campus in August 2010.

Construction started in 1914 and was supervised by Harold Balme[4] (1878–1953), a British physician from King's College Hospital in London,[78] who would later serve as the third president of Cheeloo University (from 1921 until 1927).

Today, the Shandong University Qilu Hospital as a total capacity of 1,800 beds[79] and treats more than 1.9 million outpatient treatments per year.

[79] It has departments include cardiology, internal medicine, hematology, gynecology and obstetrics, otolaryngology, general surgery, neurosurgery, and pediatrics.

[citation needed] At the main entrance gate (south gate) to the university's Central Campus, an inscription defines the mission of the university as "Preparing talents for the world; Striving for the prosperity and strength of the country"[82] (Chinese: 为天下储人才为国家育精英; pinyin: Wèi tiān xià chǔ rén cái wèi guó jiā yù jīng yīng).

In March 1964, during the period between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Mao wrote the characters in the address of a thank-you note to Gao Heng, a professor at Shandong University who had sent him literature.

[84] The official anthem of Shandong University (山东大学校歌) was written by lyricist Cheng Fangwu (成仿吾), modified by a group of people, and composer Zheng Lvcheng (郑律成).

我们敬仰高山, Wǒmen jìngyǎng gāo shān 登高望远才知地阔天宽。 Dēnggāo wàng yuǎn cái zhī dì kuò tiān kuān.

The integration of "山" and "海" easily reminds people of "there is a path to the mountain of books, and diligence is the path; there is no end to the sea of knowledge, and hard work is the boat" (Chinese: 书山有路勤为径, 学海无涯苦作舟), which shows the spirit of Shandong University teachers and students who are diligent in seeking knowledge and bravely climbing the peak of science.