Wellesley College 1875 1975

Author : Jean Glasscock
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331296461
Total Pages : 520 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (964 download)

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Download or read book Wellesley College, 1875-1975 written by Jean Glasscock and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-13 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Wellesley College, 1875-1975: A Century of Women This centennial history has a special authoritative quality because it has been written by people who have had personal experience, in most instances extending over a period of many years, with the subjects they discuss here. It also has significance for anyone interested in higher education and in the history of women because Wellesley College has pioneered and continues to pioneer in providing opportunities for women. It is appropriate that Wellesley will celebrate the centennial of its opening in 1975. which has been designated by the United Nations as the International Women's Year, and that the publication of this volume in March will coincide with the official opening at Wellesley of the Center for the Study of Women in Higher Education and the Professions. Although Henry Fowle Durant's views about the capabilities of women were regarded as radical and, indeed, revolutionary a century ago, our perspective enables us to appreciate even more fully than his contemporaries could the full extent of his daring and of the problems which he confronted in making his vision a reality. He said. "Women can do the work. I give them the chance." If this statement were made today, it probably would still be considered newsworthy, but there are enough well-qualified women scholars and administrators to enable a modern Mr. Durant to achieve the objective with relative case. In the 1870s there was no such reservoir from which to draw. Of the first faculty, only one member, Latin Professor Frances E. Lord, had had experience in college teaching - this at Vassar, which had opened in 1865 and was one of the very few institutions of higher education in which women could teach (It should be noted, however, that Miss Lord had not attended college.) Part of Mr. Durant's genius lay in his ability to find women who could "do the work." Mary E. Horton, the first professor of Greek, a fine scholar who was self-trained, lived with her family directly across the street from the college gates. In no other instance was he so fortunate in having talent so near at hand; sometimes he even provided the necessary training. On the recommendation of Louis Agassiz and Asa Gray, he appointed as professor of natural history Susan M. Hallowell, a high school teacher from Bangor, Maine, whose first year at Wellesley was spent studying the most up-to-date methods of teaching biology in colleges in this country, and who later was the first woman admitted to botanical lectures and laboratories at the University of Berlin. Another high school teacher he sent to study instruction in science at men's colleges and universities was Sarah Frances Whiting. With Mr. Durant's encouragement, she established a student laboratory for experimentation in physics that was preceded in the United States only by that at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.