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Wellesley college
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{{Infobox University
|name = Wellesley College
|image =
Image:Wellesley_college_seal.gif 140px|Wellesley College Seal
|motto = Non Ministrari sed Ministrare (not to be ministered unto but to minister)
|established =
1870
|type =
Private school Private
|president =
Diana Chapman Walsh
|city =
Wellesley,_Massachusetts Wellesley
|state =
Massachusetts MA
|country =
United States USA
|campus =
Suburban
|undergrad = Approximately 2,300
|postgrad_label =
|postgrad =
|faculty = Approximately 200
|mascot = Blue
|free_label = Endowment
|free = $1.2 billion (June 2005)
|website = [http://www.wellesley.edu www.wellesley.edu]
}}
'''Wellesley College''' is a
women's college 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, Massachusetts Boston), grants four-year baccalaureate degrees and is one of the original
Seven Sisters (colleges) Seven Sisters. Approximately 2,300 students attend the school. The college has a cross-registration program and a five-year dual degree program with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and houses the Wellesley Centers for Women, which consists of the Center for Research on Women and the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies. 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.
The average class size at Wellesley College ranges from 18 to 21 students, 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 (current president of
Duke University), and most recently Diana Chapman Walsh.
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.
Student life
{{sectstub}}
The College has more than 160 student organizations, ranging from cultural and political organizations to community service,
campus radio, and
college athletics 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
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Olin College of Engineering. To facilitate cross-registration, the College operates a bus to
Harvard University and
MIT campuses in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. This bus is colloquially referred to as the ''fuck truck''. The social aspect of the bus has received
Wellesley College Senate Bus 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.
* Shirley Schmidt (Candice Bergen) on ABC's "Boston Legal" [http://abc.go.com/primetime/bostonlegal/] is a Wellesley alumna.
* In the
The Simpsons Simpsons episode "I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can"[http://snpp.com/episodeguide/season14.html], the character Lisa is offered a scholarship to any of the Seven Sisters colleges. In response to a woman representing
Radcliffe College who said "Come to Radcliffe and meet Harvard men," a woman representing Wellesley said "Or come to Wellesley and marry them."
* 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.
Notable alumnae
*
Katharine Lee Bates (
1880) (author of the words to the anthem ''
America the Beautiful'')
*
Annie Jump Cannon (
1884) (astronomer)
*
Marjory Stoneman Douglas (
1912) (conservationist and writer)
*
Soong May-ling Madame Chiang Kai-shek (
1917) (former First Lady of the
Republic of China)
*
Bing Xin (
1926) (Chinese poet, essayist, short-story writer)
*
Carolyn Gold Heilbrun (
1947) (professor of English literature at
Columbia University, and mystery novelist under the name "Amanda Cross")
*
Nayantara Sahgal Nayantara Pandit Sahgal (
1947), novelist, niece of
Jawaharlal Nehru and cousin of
Indira Gandhi
*
Virginia Abernethy (
1955) (anthropologist)
*
Judith Martin (
1959) (newspaper columnist:
Miss Manners)
*
Madeleine Albright (
1959) (former
U.S. Secretary of State)
*
Nora Ephron (
1962) (movie screenplay writer: ''
When Harry Met Sally...''; Writer and Director: ''
Sleepless in Seattle'' and ''
You've Got Mail'')
*
Lynn Sherr (
1963) (journalist)
*
Cokie Roberts (
1964) (journalist)
*
Diane Sawyer (
1967) (journalist)
*
Hillary Rodham Clinton (
1969) (U.S. Senator; Former
First Lady of the United States First Lady of the U.S.)
*
Anne W. Patterson (
1971) (former Acting
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations)
*
Patricia J. Williams (
1972) (law professor at
Columbia University, recipient of the
MacArthur Foundation MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as the "genius award")
*
Pamela Melroy (
1983) (astronaut)
*
Lisa Kleypas (
1986) (novelist)
*
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz (historian)
*
Jean Kilbourne (educator)
*A number of Wellesley alumnae have received
Rhodes Scholarships,
Fulbright Grants, and
Marshall Scholarships.
Fictional alumnae
*''Katharine Parker'', from the 1988 film ''
Working Girl''
*''
Mona Lisa Smile'' , film in 2003.
*''Shirley Schmict'', from ''
Boston Legal
Notable faculty
*
Edith Abbott - a social worker, educator, and author
*
Frank Bidart - poet
*
Annie Jump Cannon - astronomer
*
Harriet Boyd-Hawes - archaeologist
*
Mary Lefkowitz - classical scholar
*
Tom Lehrer - American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician
*
Julián Marías - philosopher
*
Vladimir Nabokov - author
*
Richard Rorty - philosopher
*
Sarah Frances Whiting - astronomer
*
Alan Schechter - political scientist
*
Alice Walker - author
External links
-
Wellesley College
References
*{{cite book | author=Converse, Florence | title=The Story of Wellesley | publisher=Boston: Little, Brown, and Company | year=1915}}
*{{cite book | author=Glasscock, Jean et al. (Eds.) | title=Wellesley College 1875-1975: A Century of Women | publisher=Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College | year=1975}}
*{{cite book | author=Hackett, Alice Payne | title=Wellesley: Part of the American Story | publisher=New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. | year = 1949}}
*
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz 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).
*{{cite book | author=Kingsley, Florence Morse | title=The Life of Henry Fowle Durant | publisher=New York: The Century Co. | year=1924}}
*{{cite web | title=Wellesley College Public Information | work=Wellesley College | url=http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Media/facts.html | accessdate=April 16 | accessyear=2005}}
{{Seven_Sisters}}
{{Colleges and universities in metropolitan Boston}}
Category:Universities and colleges in Massachusetts
Category:New England Association of Schools & Colleges
Category:Liberal arts colleges
Category:Women's universities and colleges in the U.S.
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Wellesley College
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