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Wellesley College is a women's liberal arts college that opened in 1875, founded by Henry Fowle Durant and his wife Pauline Fowle Durant. Today, the mission of the college is to "provide an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world." The college's motto, "Non Ministrari sed Ministrare" (not to be ministered unto but to minister), reflects this purpose.

Overview

The private college, located in Wellesley, Massachusetts (13 miles west of Boston), grants four-year baccalaureate degrees and is one of the original Seven Sisters. Approximately 2,300 students attend the school. Based on rankings by U.S. News & World Report, Wellesley consistently ranks among the top five liberal arts colleges in the United States, and is the highest ranking women's college in this category.

The current president of Wellesley College is Diana Chapman Walsh, class of 1966. Throughout its history, the college has always had female presidents. When the trustees appeared about to name a man as president in 1911, the Wellesley Club of Minneapolis protested that they did not want a man in their "Adamless Eden," and they prevailed. Rumor has it that during the brief period when a man served as interim president, Galen Stone Tower (a belltower and the college's tallest building), was struck by lightning.

According to admissions literature, classes at Wellesley range from 12 to 24 students in size, and there are approximately 9 students for every faculty member. Wellesley's libraries contain over 1.5 million catalogued books, journals, media recordings, maps, and other items. As of 2002, the endowment for the college was about $1 billion. Half of all students receive some form of financial aid. Wellesley's last fundraising campaign, in 2005, set a record for liberal arts colleges with a total of $472.3 million, 18.1% more than the goal of $400 million. According to data compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wellesley’s campaign total is the largest of any liberal arts college.

The college is renowned for the picturesque beauty of its 500-acre (2 km²) campus which includes Lake Waban, evergreen and deciduous woodlands and open meadows. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Boston's preeminent landscape architect at the beginning of the 20th century, described Wellesley's landscape as "not merely beautiful, but with a marked individual character not represented so far as I know on the ground of any other college in the country."

Wellesley and MIT were the two primary institutions Benson Snyder studies in The Hidden Curriculum (1970), in which he concludes that a mass of unstated requirements and expectations thwarts students' ability to think creatively or develop independently.

History

Founded by Henry and Pauline Fowle Durant, the charter for Wellesley College was signed on March 17, 1870 by Massachusetts Governor William Claflin. The original name of the College was the Wellesley Female Seminary, and the renaming to Wellesley College was approved by the Massachusetts legislature on March 7, 1873. Opening day was September 8, 1875.

The first president was Ada Howard. There have been eleven subsequent presidents: Alice Elvira Freeman Palmer, Helen Almira Shafer, Julia Josephine Thomas Irvine, Caroline Hazard, Ellen Fitz Pendleton, Mildred H. McAfee (later Mildred McAfee Horton), Margaret Clapp, Ruth M. Adams, Barbara Wayne Newell, Nannerl Overholser Keohane (later the president of Duke University from 1993-2004), and most recently Diana Chapman Walsh. On April 28, 2006, President Walsh announced that she will be leaving Wellesley as of June 2007.*

The original architecture of the College consisted of one very large building, College Hall, which was approximately 150 meters in length, and up to five stories in height. Until 1914, it was both a principal academic building and a principal residential building. On March 17, 1914 (in the third year of the presidency of Ellen Fitz Pendleton) College Hall was destroyed by fire. The precise cause of the fire was never officially established. The fire was first noticed by students who lived on the fourth floor near the zoology laboratory. It has been suggested that an electrical or chemical accident in this laboratory triggered the fire. In particular, the fire may have been started by an electrical incubator used in the breeding of beetles. A group of student residence halls called the Tower Court Complex (made up of Claflin Hall, Severance Hall, and Tower Court) are located on top of the hill where the old College Hall once stood. Wellesley is also home to Green Hall, the only building bearing the name of famed miser, Hetty Green.

Student life

The College has more than 160 student organizations, ranging from cultural and political organizations to community service, campus radio, and club sports. For more than 30 years, Wellesley has had a cross-registration program with MIT. In recent years, cross-registration opportunities have expanded to include nearby Babson College, Brandeis University, and Olin College of Engineering. To facilitate cross-registration, the College operates a bus to MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The College also operates the Wellesley College Senate Bus between Wellesley, Harvard and MIT on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Some students colloquially refer to the bus as the fuck truck. The social aspect of the bus has received national media attention.

Wellesley in popular culture

  • Wellesley is the college in which the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile was set; some of the outdoor scenes were filmed on campus.
  • The character of Shirley Schmidt (Candice Bergen) on ABC's "Boston Legal" * is a Wellesley alumna.
  • I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can: an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa Simpson is tempted by the Siren-like representatives of the Seven Sisters (and George Plimpton), who offer a free ride to the Sister school of her choice (and a George Plimpton hot plate) if she will throw a Spelling Bee *.
  • In John Irving's novel The World According to Garp, the protagonist's mother, Jenny Fields, attended Wellesley but dropped out in an act of rebellion against her upper-class parents.
  • Mentioned in the movie Girl, Interrupted as the school Winona Ryder's character's former classmate will be attending instead of Radcliffe.

Notable alumnae

Fictional alumnae

Notable faculty

External links

References

  • Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 (2nd edition).

Universities and colleges in Massachusetts | New England Association of Schools and Colleges | Liberal arts colleges | Women's universities and colleges in the United States | Educational institutions established in the 1870s

Wellesley College | Wellesley College | Wellesley College

 

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