Bryn Mawr College ( , )Mackey & Mackey (1922) The Pronunciation of 10,000 Proper Names; also example at e-speech site is a private women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of historically women's colleges in the United States. The college has an enrollment of about 1,350 undergraduate students and 450 graduate students. It was one of the first women's colleges in the United States to offer graduate education through a PhD.
History Bryn Mawr College is a private women's liberal arts college founded in 1885. The Graduate School is co-educational. The name "" is Welsh for big hill. It is named after the town of Bryn Mawr, in which the campus is located. The town of Bryn Mawr had previously been named Humphreysville, after the Humphreys family who had bought the land in 1683. The town was renamed Bryn Mawr in the mid-nineteenth century by the Pennsylvania Railroad Corporation. Bryn Mawr had been the name of an estate granted to Rowland Ellis by William Penn in the 1680s. Ellis named it after his former home, a house near Dolgellau, Merioneth, Wales. The college was largely funded through the bequest of Joseph W. Taylor, and its first president was James Rhoads. Bryn Mawr was one of the first institutions of higher education in the United States to offer graduate degrees, including doctorates, to women. The first class included 36 undergraduate women and eight graduate students. Bryn Mawr was originally affiliated with the Quakers (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 men as graduate students, while remaining women-focused at the undergraduate level.
From 1921 to 1938 the Bryn Mawr campus was home to the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, which was founded as part of the labor education movement and the women's labor movement. The school taught political economy, science, and literature.
The college celebrated its 125th anniversary of "bold vision, for women, for the world" during the 2010–2011 academic year. In September 2010, Bryn Mawr hosted an international conference on issues of educational access, equity, and opportunity in secondary schools and universities in the United States and around the world. Other festivities held for the anniversary year included publication of a commemorative book on 125 years of student life, and, in partnership with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the creation of a mural in West Philadelphia highlighting advances in women's education.
Transgender students On February 9, 2015, the college's board of trustees announced approval of a working group recommendation to expand the undergraduate applicant pool allowing transgender women and intersex individuals identifying as women to apply for admission. This decision made Bryn Mawr the fourth women's college in the United States to accept trans women. Bryn Mawr "recognizes that gender is fluid and that traditional notions of gender identity and expression can be limiting", and has the official policy of accepting nonbinary students who were assigned female at birth as well. All current, past, and future students are fully recognized as members of the Bryn Mawr community, regardless of current gender identity.
Presidents
Campus
The campus is in the municipality of Lower Merion Township. Most of the campus is in the Bryn Mawr census-designated place.
The campus was designed in part by noted landscape designers Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, and has subsequently been designated an arboretum (the Bryn Mawr Campus Arboretum). ()
Student residences The majority of Bryn Mawr students live on campus in residence halls. Many of the older residence halls were designed by Cope & Stewardson (same architects who designed a large part of the University of Pennsylvania, Washington University in St. Louis, and Princeton University campuses) and are known for their Collegiate Gothic architecture, modeled after Cambridge University. Each is named after a county town in Wales: Brecon, Denbigh (1891), Merion (1885), and Radnor (1887), and Pembroke East and West (1892). Rhoads North and South was named after the college's first president, James E. Rhoads; Rockefeller is named after its donor, John D. Rockefeller. Erdman was opened in 1965, designed by architect Louis Kahn. In addition, students may choose to live in Batten House (an environmentally friendly co-op). Perry House, which was originally established as the Spanish language house in 1962, was redefined as the Black Cultural Center in the 1970s. In 2015, Perry House was relaunched by the college in the former French tower of Haffner, which had undergone renovations and reconstruction the previous year. Along with Perry, now known as the Enid Cook '31 Center, a new residence hall was built where the old Haffner Language and Culture House once stood.
Glenmede (formerly graduate student housing) is an estate located about a half mile from the main campus which at one point was available housing for undergraduate students. In 2007, it was sold to a conservation buyer as the annual costs of upkeep were too great for the college.. Save Ardmore Coalition (2005-10-13). Retrieved June 18, 2011.
Blanca Noel Taft Memorial Garden In 1908, John C. Olmsted designed a private garden for M. Carey Thomas adjoining the Deanery. The garden was later modified and renamed as the Blanca Noel Taft Memorial Garden. In its current form, the garden is a small enclosure with two wall fountains, one with a small basin and the other with a sunken reflecting pool. The decorative wall tiles above the smaller wall fountain and basin were purchased from Syria.Bryn Mawr College Campus Plan – John Olmsted . Bryn Mawr College. Retrieved June 18, 2011.
Erdman Hall dormitory
In 1960, architect Louis I. Kahn and Bryn Mawr College president, Katharine Elizabeth McBride, came together to create the Erdman Hall dormitory.
Marjorie Walter Goodhart Theater
The Marjorie Walter Goodhart Theater houses a vaulted auditorium designed by Arthur Ingersoll Meigs of Mellor, Meigs & Howe, two smaller spaces that are ideal for intimate performances by visiting artists, practice rooms for student musicians, and the Office for the Arts. The building's towers and gables, friezes, carvings and ornamental ironwork, designed by Samuel Yellin, were done in the gothic revival style.Bryn Mawr College | Visiting Campus . Bryn Mawr College. Retrieved June 18, 2011.The First 300: The Amazing and Rich History of Lower Merion (Part 18) . Lowermerionhistory.org. Retrieved June 18, 2011. In the fall of 2009, the college completed a renovation of Goodhart.Bryn Mawr Now: To Inaugurate a Reconceived Goodhart, Bi-College Theater Production Probes Language, Space Retrieved April 27, 2010.
Old Library (previously M. Carey Thomas Library and College Hall)
Previously named after Bryn Mawr's first Dean and second president, Old Library was used as the primary campus library until 1970, when Mariam Coffin Canaday Library opened. The Great Hall (formerly the reading room of the library) was designed by Walter Cope (of Cope and Stewardson) in 1901 and built by Stewardson and Jamieson several years later, although M. Carey Thomas played a large part in its construction. Today, it is a space for performances, readings, lectures, and public gatherings. Old Library encloses a large open courtyard called "The Cloisters". The cremated remains of M. Carey Thomas and Emmy Noether are located in the Cloisters. Georgiana Goddard King is also buried in the cloister. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1991. The Great Hall was once the home of an Athena Lemnia statue (damaged in 1997) that is now located in a high alcove in the Rhys Carpenter Art and Archaeology Library. A plaster cast of that Athena now stands in her place at the Great Hall. Students often leave offerings to this statue in the hope that she will intervene on their behalf. In 2018, the board of trustees formalized the use of the name "The Old Library".
Old Library was formerly known as "Thomas Hall" after Bryn Mawr's second president, M. Carey Thomas. The building was informally known as "College Hall" for a year before being officially renamed to "Old Library" in 2018. This renaming was in response to student protests, which claimed that many of M. Carey Thomas's views did not represent the values of the college. Student protesters identified that M. Carey Thomas was a virulent eugenicist, antisemite and racist who strongly opposed the admission of students who were not elite white women. Today, the building houses a plaque explaining the controversy of the former name and affirming the college's current dedication to equity and inclusion, which was unveiled during the 2019 Community Day of Learning.
Rhys Carpenter Art and Archaeology Library
Named for Bryn Mawr's late professor of Classical Archaeology, the Rhys Carpenter Library was designed by Henry Myerberg of New York and opened in 1997. The space is connected to the rear of Old Library. The entrance is a four-story atrium. Names of art and archaeology faculty are displayed on the main wall of the atrium, along with a series of plaster casts of the metopes of the Parthenon. The roof comprises a wide grassy area used for outdoor concerts and picnics. The building won a 2001 Award of Excellence for Library Architecture from the Library Administration and Management Association and the American Institute of Architects. Carpenter Library also houses the college's renowned collections in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, History of Art, and Classics.
The Deanery
The Bryn Mawr College Deanery was the campus residence of the first Dean and second President of Bryn Mawr College, M. Carey Thomas, who maintained a home there from 1885 to 1933. Under the direction of Thomas, the Deanery was gradually enlarged and elaborately decorated with the assistance of the American artist Lockwood de Forest and furnished with art from Thomas' world travels. From 1933 until 1968, the Deanery served as the Alumnae Center and Inn for the college. The building was demolished in the spring of 1968 to make space for the construction of Canaday Library, which stands on the site today. At the time of its demolition, many of the Deanery's furnishings were re-located to Wyndham, an 18th-century farmhouse (with several modern additions) which became the college's new Alumnae Center.
Academics
Bryn Mawr is a small, four year, residential baccalaureate college. Although the college offers several graduate programs, the majority of enrollments are from students enrolled in the undergraduate arts and sciences program.
Students at Bryn Mawr are required to complete divisional requirements in the social sciences, natural sciences (including lab skills) and humanities. In addition, they must complete one year of a foreign language and fulfill a quantitative skills requirement and an Emily Balch Seminar requirement. The Emily Balch Seminars are similar to courses in freshman composition at other institutions, though focus on a specific topic. The seminars stress development of critical thinking skills and are discussion-based, with "intensive reading and writing."
Its most popular undergraduate majors, based on 2021 graduates, were: English Language and Literature (31) Biology/Biological Sciences (27) Psychology (24) Mathematics (23) Computer Science (22)