Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a highly selective women's
liberal-arts college located in
Bryn Mawr,
Pennsylvania, ten miles northwest of
Philadelphia. Bryn Mawr is located on the Pennsylvania Main Line and is connected to downtown Philadelphia by the SEPTA R5 commuter rail system.
Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sisters and is part of the Tri-College Consortium along with two other colleges founded by
Quakers
Swarthmore College and
Haverford College. The school has an enrollment of about 1300 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students.
Encyclopedia
Bryn Mawr College is a highly selective women's
liberal-arts college located in
Bryn Mawr,
Pennsylvania, ten miles northwest of
Philadelphia. Bryn Mawr is located on the Pennsylvania Main Line and is connected to downtown Philadelphia by the SEPTA R5 commuter rail system.
Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sisters and is part of the Tri-College Consortium along with two other colleges founded by
Quakers —
Swarthmore College and
Haverford College. The school has an enrollment of about 1300 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students.
The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in
Welsh .
There is also a Bryn Mawr School for girls in grades K-12 in
Baltimore,
Maryland that was founded in 1885. The school shared some early supporters with the college , but the two institutions are otherwise unaffiliated.
History
Bryn Mawr College was founded in 1885. It was the first women's higher education institution to offer graduate degrees, including
doctorates. The first class included 36 undergraduate women and eight graduate students. Bryn Mawr was originally affiliated with the
Religious Society of Friends , but by 1893 had become non-denominational.
In 1912, Bryn Mawr became the first college in the
United States to offer doctorates in social work, through the Department of Social Economy and Social Research. This department became the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research in 1970. In 1931, Bryn Mawr began accepting males as graduate students, while remaining women-only at the undergraduate level.
Organization
Bryn Mawr is a self-governed institution. Its Self-Government Association, formed in 1892, is the oldest such organization in the United States. A significant aspect of self-government is the Academic Honor System .
Along with
Haverford College, Bryn Mawr forms the Bi-College Community. Students in the "Bi-Co" enjoy unlimited cross-registration privileges and may choose to major at the other institution. The two institutions join with
Swarthmore College to form the Tri-College Consortium. Free shuttles are provided between the three campuses.
In addition, the group is affiliated with the
University of Pennsylvania through a special consortium. Bryn Mawr students in the Growth and Structure of Cities department may earn a Bachelor of Arts at Bryn Mawr and a master's degree in
city planning at UPenn through the 3-2 Program in City and Regional Planning.
Facilities
Bryn Mawr's library holdings are housed in the Mariam Coffin Canaday Library , the Rhys Carpenter Library , and the Lois and Reginald Collier Science Library . TRIPOD, the online library catalog, automatically accesses holdings at Haverford and Swarthmore.
The majority of Bryn Mawr students live on campus in residence halls. Many of the older residence halls are known for their
Gothic revival architecture, modeled after
Oxford University. Each is named after a county in
Wales:
Brecon, Denbigh ,
Merion , and
Radnor . The exceptions are Pembroke East and West , named for the
House of Pembroke and its importance to
William Shakespeare. Rhoads North and South was named after the college's first president, James E. Rhoads; Rockefeller is named after its donor,
John D. Rockefeller. The newest residence halls are Erdman and the Haffner Language and Culture House . In addition, students may choose to live in Glenmede , Perry House or Batten House .
The campus was designed in part by noted landscape designers
Calvert Vaux and
Frederick Law Olmsted, and has subsequently been designated an
arboretum .
Academics
Students at Bryn Mawr are required to complete divisional requirements in the
social sciences,
natural sciences and
humanities. In addition, they must fulfill a two-year foreign language requirement, a quantitative skills requirement and a College Seminar requirement.
Majors offered include:
...
Minors include:
- Africana Studies
- Computational Methods
- Creative Writing
- Dance
- Education
-
- Gender and Sexuality
- International Studies
- Theater Studies
Concentrations include:
- Creative Writing
- Environmental Studies
- Gender and Sexuality
- Geoarchaeology
- Hispanic and Hispanic-American Studies
- Neural and Behavioral Sciences
- Peace and Conflict Studies
Traditions
The four major traditions are Parade Night, which takes place on the first night of the academic year; Lantern Night, which takes place in late October or early November; Hell Week, which takes place in mid-February; and May Day, which takes place on the Sunday after classes end in the spring semester. The two traditions mistresses of the College, elected by the student body, are in charge of organizing and running traditions.
In addition to events, Bryn Mawr's traditions extend to superstitions around the campus, some of which date back to the opening of the college in 1885.
College presidents
- 1885-1894
- 1894-1922 M. Carey Thomas
- 1922-1942 Marion Edwards Park
- 1942-1970 Katharine Elizabeth McBride
- 1970-1978 Harris L. Wofford
- 1978-1997 Mary Patterson McPherson
- 1997-present Nancy J. Vickers
Noted faculty
- Woodrow Wilson,
- Mabel Lang, Greek
- Richmond Lattimore, Greek
- Emmy Noether, Mathematics
- Frederica de Laguna, renowned anthropologist and founder of Bryn Mawr's anthropology department
- Thomas Hunt Morgan, geneticist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine
- Maria Luisa Crawford, Geology, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient
Noted alumnae
- Renata Adler, writer
- Anastasia Ashman , writer
- Emily Greene Balch , Nobel Peace Prize
- Margaret Ayer Barnes , writer, Pulitzer Prize for fiction
- , CEO Banesto
- Kathy Boudin , Weather Underground alumna
- H.D., modernist poet
- Lee McGeorge Durrell , author, television presenter, zookeeper
- Hanna Holborn Gray , former president, University of Chicago
- Edith Hamilton , Classical scholar
- Katharine Houghton Hepburn , suffragist and family-planning advocate
- Katharine Hepburn , Academy Award-winning actress
- Barbara Marx Hubbard , writer and public speaker
- Sarah Jones, actor, poet, playwright
- Lucy Taxis Shoe Meritt , classical archaeologist
- Marianne Moore , poet
- , writer
- Mildred Natwick , Academy Award-nominated actress
- , anthropologist, professor at Columbia University, MacArthur Genius Grant recipient
- Dorothy Schiff , newspaper publisher
- Allyson Schwartz , Member of U.S. House
- Caroline Stevermer , fantasy writer
- Ellen Kushner , fantasy writer
- Rachel Simon , writer
- Cornelia Otis Skinner, actress and author
- Deborah Spungen , author
- Nettie Stevens , geneticist
- Anne Truitt , minimalist sculptor
- Elizabeth Gray Vining , Newbery medal winner
- , editor, The New Yorker
- Rosemarie Said Zahlan , Palestinian-American historian and writer
Noted fictional alumnae
Popular culture
- I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can: an episode of The Simpsons is an Emmy [i] and Peabody [i]-winning American [i] animated [i] ...
where Lisa Simpson is tempted by the Siren-like representatives of the Seven Sisters , who offer a free ride to the Sister school of her choice if she will throw a Spelling Bee .
External links
-
-
- , Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges' Student Newspaper
- , Bryn Mawr Feminist Newsjournal
Further reading
- Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas. New York: Knopf, 1994.
- --- Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 .
