Social Science

Vassar College was founded in 1861, two miles from the banks of the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie by Matthew Vassar, a self-made businessman.

The college grew to confirm its founder's precedent-breaking vision that women would profit from intellectual opportunities in the liberal arts similar to those that Ivy League institutions had long offered the other gender. The college has grown and changed with the times, first countering Victorian prejudices that women were not suited for serious study, always leading the way as opportunities to broaden the spectrum of women's education developed. In the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, Vassar College again broke precedent, turning itself from a single-sex institution into one in which true coeducation exists. After 139 years, Vassar is poised for the changes under way and yet to come in the twenty-first century.

On May 1, 1837, Episcopal bishop George Washington Doane welcomed
52 young women from eight states to his new school, St. Mary's Hall, in
Burlington, New Jersey. Bishop Doane's radical innovation of giving young
women the same mental training as young men motivated people from far
and wide to send their daughters to this new school. Doane's visionary
efforts soon turned many heads and changed many hearts, and the school
grew accordingly. Today, as a coeducational school known as Doane
Academy, the institution carries forward Bishop Doane's passion to push
the boundaries of education. Located along the banks of the Delaware
River, Doane Academy builds and instills character and a sense of duty into
its students and prepares and guides them as they move "Right Onward"
to change the world.

Western Female Seminary, the first daughter institution of Mount Holyoke College, opened its doors in 1855 as a Christian institution. The seminary, which became Western College for Women, was founded on the Mt. Holyoke plan, with a strong emphasis on academics. Many of its graduates in the 19th century served as home and foreign missionaries, and by the 20th century, young women from many foreign countries attended Western. In the 1950s, the curriculum was expanded to include a strong international emphasis. Western was the first college in the country to have an artist-in-residence, when composer Edgar Stillman Kelley was invited to live on campus. Western attracted national attention when it hosted civil rights training for Freedom Summer 1964. In the 1970s, independent study programs were developed, and the college became coeducational. With its diverse architecture and the early emphasis on landscaping on its rolling campus, the college was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.