Goucher College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1885 as a nonsectarian women's college in Baltimore's central district, the college is named for pastor and missionary John F. Goucher, who enlisted local leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church to establish the school's charter. Goucher relocated to its Towson campus in 1953, and became coeducational in 1986, after 101 years as a women's college.
Goucher grants BA and BS degrees in a range of disciplines across 31 majors and 39 minors. Since 2006, Goucher has required all undergraduates to complete a study abroad experience. Goucher is a member of the Landmark Conference and competes in the NCAA's Division III in lacrosse, tennis, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and horseback riding. It also offers a postbaccalaureate premedical program, master's programs in the arts and humanities, and professional development courses in writing and education. The Goucher library holds the largest Jane Austen collection in North America, including first and rare editions, period publications, and 20th-century ephemera related to Austen. , Goucher enrolls approximately 1,000 undergraduates and 500 graduate students.
The Princeton Review included Goucher in its 2019 edition of the "Best 384 Colleges" and ranked it No. 5 in "Most Popular Study Abroad Program". Goucher was recognized as a top producer of Fulbright scholars by The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2018. It was also profiled in the book Colleges that Change Lives by Loren Pope as one of forty institutions. The school was one of the first in the country to require a study abroad of all undergraduates, along with Susquehanna University and Soka University of America. Goucher counts notable alumni in law, business, journalism, academia, poetry, and government, including New York Times journalist Erica L. Green, conservative journalist Jonah Goldberg, former first lady of Puerto Rico Lucé Vela, Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the District Court for the District of Maryland, poets Ellen Bass and Edgar Kunz, 27th Vice Commandant of the United States Coast Guard Sally Brice-O'Hara, former president of First Republic Bank Katherine August-DeWilde, and the third president of California State University, San Marcos, Karen S. Haynes.
History
Early in its history, Goucher played an important role nationally in providing women access to higher education. Many ground-breaking women doctors, researchers, and scientists graduated from Goucher in the early 20th century, including Hattie Alexander, Florence B. Seibert, and Margaret Irving Handy. Judge Sarah T. Hughes of Texas, who was famously photographed administering the presidential oath of office to Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One, graduated from Goucher in 1917. A daughter of President Woodrow Wilson, Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre, also graduated Goucher and went on to play a significant role in the women's suffrage movement.
19th century
In 1881, the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church passed a resolution to found a seminary. The proposal was met with some objection, with one member stating, "I would not give a fig for a weakling little thing of a seminary. We want such a school, so ample in its provisions, of such dignity in its buildings, so fully provided with the best apparatus, that it shall draw to itself the eyes of the community and that young people shall feel it an honor to be enrolled among its students." Minister and conference member John B. Van Meter asserted "that the Conference [should] make the foundation and endowment of a female college the single object of its organized effort."
Van Meter was joined by fellow minister John Franklin Goucher (1845–1922) and together they eventually persuaded the conference to found a college, instead. Subsequently, the Woman's College of Baltimore City ("City" was later dropped) was chartered on January 26, 1885. It opened its doors in 1888, and four years later graduated its first class of just five students.
John F. Goucher, despite being the school's namesake and co-founder, was not the college's first president. Although offered the post, he declined, and it went to William Hersey Hopkins, who had served as president of St. John's College in Annapolis. After Hopkins resigned in 1890 to join the faculty, the board of trustees voted unanimously to renominate Goucher. Under pressure from the board, Goucher relented and accepted the position, which he held for nearly two decades. Goucher and his wife Mary Cecilia Fisher made significant financial contributions to the college, including the bequest of a portion of his estate.
20th century During President Goucher's tenure, enrollment grew but the college suffered financial deficits. In 1904, the college became the second in Maryland to establish a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, after Johns Hopkins University. Goucher stepped down in 1908 to resume his international missionary work but remained involved with the school as president emeritus until his death in 1922. In 1910, the school was renamed Goucher College in his honor.
In 1913, the college inaugurated its fourth president, William W. Guth, who oversaw the construction of several new residence halls and a successful million-dollar fundraising campaign. Around this time, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, whose daughter Jessie was a Goucher alumna, expressed support for the college's fundraising efforts in correspondence with the administration, writing in March 1913, "It would, indeed, be ... evidence that our great educational public does not fully understand its own interests if an institution which has served with such faithfulness ... in the cause of woman's education should be allowed to break up for the lack of money." By 1914, Goucher was one of six "Class I" colleges for women in the U.S.
In 1921, Goucher purchased 421 acres of land in nearby Towson that had belonged to the estate of a prominent Baltimore family, for $150,000. The move from Baltimore to the Towson suburbs was completed in 1953. Before 1950, Goucher hosted nearly a dozen sorority chapters on campus including Kappa Kappa Gamma, Kappa Alpha Theta, Gamma Phi Beta, and Pi Beta Phi, but they were disbanded on the move to Towson.
Goucher turned coeducational in 1986 when the board of trustees voted to admit men, citing declining enrollment and reduced national interest by women in single-sex colleges. The decision was controversial among many students and a minority of alumnae. However, it was followed by increased enrollment and sustained support from the school's donors, with Goucher's endowment growing nearly five-fold from $45 million in 1986. President Rhoda M. Dorsey, who also initially resisted the proposal, relented and presided over the transition.
Old Goucher
Goucher's former Baltimore campus became known as Old Goucher. The school maintained no affiliation with the property after its sale. The complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Many of its Romanesque structures have been preserved and re-purposed for commercial, public, and residential use. The school's Towson campus was added to the historic register in 2007.
Campus Goucher occupies a green, wooded campus just northeast of downtown Towson. Surrounding the central campus infrastructure is a dense forest, owned by the school, which features low hills and hiking and jogging trails, some of which are also used by the college's equestrian riders. The non-denominational Haebler Memorial Chapel lies near the center of campus. A walking path, called the Van Meter Highway, connects to most of the college's residential, academic, recreational, and athletic buildings, while one road, the Loop Road, circles campus. Newsweek magazine described the campus as "unusually bucolic". It has also been referred to by CBS Baltimore as one of Baltimore County's most scenic college campuses.
A scene at the fictional Hammond University from the fourth season of the Netflix series House of Cards was filmed on Goucher's campus, with most shots taking place at the Athenaeum and the Rhoda M. Dorsey College Center.
Academic buildings
Goucher's main academic buildings, including Van Meter Hall and Julia Rogers, are located at the northern portion of campus, called the "academic quad". The Hoffberger Science Building houses the school's science departments and is adjacent to the Meyerhoff Arts Building, which contains a theater, photo studio, and several galleries and where the dance, theater, and art departments are based. Student Administrative Services and the admissions office are located in the Rhoda M. Dorsey College Center. Near the center of the campus and opposite Mary Fisher Hall is the Athenaeum, or "the Ath", a modern, multipurpose facility built in 2009 encompassing the main library, a restaurant, classrooms, lecture halls, and an open auditorium. The Athenaeum is where speakers who visit the campus are typically hosted. The Merrick Lecture Hall, a partial amphitheater situated near Van Meter Hall, is also a venue for on-campus recitals, performances, sponsored political debates, and other productions. In April 2025, the college broke ground on the Judy C. Lewent '70 Science Center, a annex to the Hoffberger Science Building slated to open in fall 2027.
Housing
The college's residence halls are concentrated on the south side of campus. They are Heubeck, Froelicher, Mary Fisher, Sondheim, Stimson, and Welsh Hall, known by students as "the T" for its T-shaped design, which was completed in 2005. In 2018, the school completed construction of the "First-Year Village" for freshmen, which includes Pagliaro-Selz Hall, Fireside Hall, and Trustees Hall. Campus housing for students includes singles, doubles, triples, suites, and on-campus apartments. Sondheim Hall, also known as the Wellness House, is the sole residence hall designated as substance-free. In July 2018, Goucher announced a campus-wide ban on cigarettes and smoking devices like electronic cigarettes. In 2025, students living in Welsh Hall were required to move to Froelicher Hall at the beginning of the fall semester due to moisture intrusion, and the residence hall remained closed for the duration of the semester.
Athletic and recreational facilities The campus's outdoor sports facilities include a 107,000 square foot turf stadium field named Gopher Stadium, three grass practice fields, an outdoor track, twelve tennis courts that opened in 2019 as part of the Evelyn Dyke Schroedl '62 Tennis Center, as well as separate courts for racquetball and squash, and an equestrian center. The Decker Sports and Recreation Center contains a six-lane, 25-yard pool, dance studios, a basketball court, gymnasium, varsity locker rooms, a fully equipped weight room, and a cardio fitness center. The equestrian center lies on the northernmost edge of campus and contains two barns, 10 turnout paddocks, indoor and outdoor riding rings, and several riding fields, in addition to wooded trails shared with pedestrians.
Design, layout, and sustainability The architectural design firm responsible for planning the campus, Moore and Hutchins, elected to group buildings together into informal zones based on function, departing from the Romanesque style of the previous Baltimore campus. The buildings on campus are clad in tan-colored Butler stone chosen to reflect a Modernist theme. Over the years, the architecture of the campus has won numerous awards. The campus has also been recognized for its commitment to sustainability and energy efficiency, being called a "Top 25 Green College". In 2009, Goucher announced a goal for all new and existing buildings to achieve at least a Silver rating according to the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification system. In 2007, the campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places.