Ave Maria University offers four-year bachelor's degrees with majors and minors in biology and chemistry, classics and early Christian literature, economics, history, literature, mathematics and physics, philosophy, politics, sacred music, and theology. The university also offers a Masters of Arts degree in Theology. In addition to its main campus has a branch campus in San Marcos, Nicaragua. Ave Maria University, which opened in 2003, was the first new Catholic institution of higher learning to open in the US in 40 years. Ave Maria is Latin for Hail Mary.