The Jackson College for Women, also sometimes known as Jackson College of Tufts University,The College Handbook, p. 442. was established in 1910 as a coordinate college associated with Tufts College, and later Tufts University, and located in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. The Jackson College and the Tufts College of Liberal Arts shared the same courses and faculty but, for much of its existence, Jackson College had its own student activities and student government, separate from that of Tufts, and its own dean. It was a prestigious women's college at its peak; in comparison to the Tufts undergraduate schools that men attended, Jackson College was considered harder to get admitted to and to have an academically stronger group of students. Students of this era were very proud of being associated with Jackson and felt identity with, and loyalty to, the Jackson name.
Over time, things changed, and female students felt more of a belonging to Tufts University itself. Jackson College was subsumed into the Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences in stages in 1980, 1999–2000, and 2002.
Coeducation and origins Tufts College was founded in 1852 by the Universalist Church of America, and while most other such endeavors of the Universalists were coeducational in nature, Tufts admitted male students only.Miller, Light on the Hill, pp. 33, 48, 163. Coeducation in the United States had begun with Oberlin College in 1833 and found the most traction in state universities. Despite the widely publicized views of the likes of Edward Hammond Clarke – who argued that the education of women would come at the expense of their mental and reproductive healthSolomon, In the Company of Educated Women, pp. 56–57. – there was considerable pressure on Tufts College to change this policy.Miller, Light on the Hill, pp. 163–172. This was in the context of similar pushes for collegiate education for women happening in the Boston area, and New England in general, in the years after the Civil War.King, "The Campaign for Higher Education for Women in 19th-Century Boston", pp. 60–61. There were also nearby examples such as Cornell University, which was coeducational from its founding in 1865 and admitted female students soon thereafter. Beginning around 1870, there would be a pronounced increase over the next few decades in the percentage of college students who were women. In 1883, a committee was formed at Tufts to study the question of admitting women; they concluded that doing so would be too expensive.King, "The Campaign for Higher Education for Women in 19th-Century Boston", pp. 66–67. There were also fears among male students that the presence of women in the school would cause social regulations to become more rigid.
The campaign to admit women did not stop and finally, on July 15, 1892, the Tufts Board of Trustees voted "that the College be opened to women in the undergraduate departments on the same terms and conditions as men."Miller, Light on the Hill, p. 176. Tufts thus became coeducational. In terms of academics, women students did very well. But after a while there was substantial pressure in the reverse direction, as it was felt among administrators that Tufts was failing to attract male students given a perception that the college was becoming more female in nature.Miller, Light on the Hill, pp. 187–188. (Nearby Boston University faced a similar issue.Freeland, Academia's Golden Age, p. 32.) In less than two decades, nearly half the students in liberal arts at Tufts were women, and in some years, the matriculating class was well more than half women.King, "The Campaign for Higher Education for Women in 19th-Century Boston", p. 67. As president of Tufts, Frederick W. Hamilton, due to his strong opposition to coeducation, advocated a separate college for women, with a separate faculty and administration.Miller, Light on the Hill, pp. 189–194.
Jackson College for Women was created by the trustees on April 12, 1910,Miller, Light on the Hill, p. 196. with Tufts thusly abandoning full coeducation.B., "In the Massachusetts Legislature", p. 21. The new school was named after Cornelia Maria Jackson (1822–1895) a teacher and wife of a businessman, who had bequeathed a sum of money and half her estate to Tufts in furtherance of women's education – as she put it, to help "remove the disabilities of women".Miller, Light on the Hill, pp. 183–184. The legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts granted charter approval for the creation of Jackson College in that same year, with the motion facing little commentary, and no opposition, within either the Massachusetts House of Representatives or the Massachusetts Senate. An account at the time in the Journal of Education said that under the arrangement, the women of Tufts "are not to be deprived of their privileges ... but granted them under conditions that will be more acceptable to all concerned.""Educational Intelligence: College Notes", p. 444.
Other coordinate colleges began in similar circumstances: as a means to either avoid, or reverse, full coeducation.Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, pp. 54–56. The most prominent coordinate instantiations were Radcliffe College for Harvard College, Barnard College for Columbia College, Columbia University, and Pembroke College in Brown University. Others included the Sophie Newcomb College for Tulane University, the Flora Stone Mather College for Women for Western Reserve University, and a Women's College at the University of Rochester.Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women, pp. 55–56. For a while there was also a special Women's Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.King, "The Campaign for Higher Education for Women in 19th-Century Boston", pp. 63–64. As these instances suggest, coordinate colleges were most frequently seen in the eastern United States.Slocum, "Coeducation and Coördinate Education", p. 306. Colleges in the western United States, in contrast, tended to adopt co-education.Marino, "'We Have the Opportunity to Help Shape a Democracy'", p. 21. In addition to the coordinate colleges, Massachusetts in particular had a number of stand-alone women's colleges, including three of the "Seven Sisters" – Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and Wellesley College – as well as Emmanuel College, Pine Manor College, Simmons College, and Wheaton College.Marino, "'We Have the Opportunity to Help Shape a Democracy'", p. 50n2.
Early history
Initially there was an attempt to have full segregation of the Jackson women from the Tufts men, with separate classes for them, albeit taught by the same professors.Miller, Light on the Hill, pp. 204–206. There were also separate study spaces and chapel services,Sauer, Tufts University, p. 19. and there was a goal to have completely separate buildings for them as well.
But Tufts as a whole was always under financial stress.Gittleman, An Entrepreneurial University, p. 147. (Indeed, Tufts would long have a limited endowment and support from alumni, leading to it relying heavily on tuition payments.Chayes, Kaufman, and Wheeler, "The University's Role in Promoting Minority Group Employment in the Construction Industry", pp. 102–103.) The complete segregation goal soon proved to be infeasible due to these financial constraints and the unnecessary overlapping that it required, a redundancy that the faculty in particular did not appreciate. The push for it lessened after Hamilton left the Tufts presidency in 1912, and dissipated almost completely within the next couple of years.Miller, Light on the Hill II, p. 93. Full segregation of classes was thus abandoned.
By December 1912, the largest schools at Tufts were the medical and dental schools, but outside of those, enrollments were in the Engineering School, 211; the School of Liberal Arts, 155; Jackson College for Women, 93; and Crane Theological School, 7.
Caroline S. Davies was the first dean of Jackson College. In addition, she taught Greek there and was known as an advocate for women's suffrage in the United States.Sauer, Tufts University, p. 49. And Jackson students themselves formed a chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League.Sauer, Tufts University, p. 110.
Davies held the deanship until 1925. She was succeeded by Edith Bush, a mathematician who was the first female professor in Tufts' College of Engineering (and was the older sister of the engineer, inventor, and science administrator Vannevar Bush), who held the position until 1952.
Metcalf Hall, which had opened in 1893 as a women's dormitory, continued to serve in that role after Jackson College was founded."Metcalf Hall, 1893", Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History. Between 1910 and 1915, both Miner and Paige halls became home to Jackson College, until women were integrated into the rest of Tufts in 1915 and the facilities were returned to the Crane Theological School."Paige Hall, 1892", Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History. The two halls were on top of the Hill that dominates the overall Tufts campus.Sauer, Tufts University, p. 33.
In terms of what diplomas read for graduates of Jackson College for Women, for the first three years, from 1911 through 1913, they were given a choice between getting degrees from Tufts College or from Jackson; most chose Tufts.Miller, Light on the Hill, p. 206. Then for the next three years, from 1914 to 1916, the graduates received degrees from Jackson. However, in 1917, this switched to graduates receiving degrees from Tufts, and remained this way for several decades.
In 1925, Jackson College had a limit of 250 female students, and prospective students were officially required to take the Tufts entrance examinations.
Tufts president John Albert Cousens had a goal of elevating Tufts' core schools, including Jackson College, into highly selective, residential institutions, but the financial pressures of the Great Depression meant that Jackson College struggled to maintain its existing enrollment levels and there were no monies available for new dormitory construction.Freeland, Academia's Golden Age, p. 59.
Mid-century history A project to build a new gymnasium for Jackson College was announced in 1945. Completed in 1947 and named Jackson Gymnasium in honor of a conductor on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad unrelated to Cornelia Maria Jackson, it served multiple purposes over the next number of decades."Jackson Gymnasium, 1947", Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History.
During both World War I and World War II, Jackson students engaged efforts to show support for American troops overseas and in fund-raising activities such as for war bonds.Sauer, Tufts University, pp. 109, 115. Economic pressures meant that Jackson women were first allowed to take engineering courses during the first World War, although none graduated with an engineering degree until the second.Sauer, Tufts University, p. 25.
Jackson College grew during the 1950s, beginning from a base of around 500 students. Some of the growth was intended to counteract a decline in male enrollments following the immediate post-World War II boom in college education.Freeland, Academia's Golden Age, p. 183. Hodgdon Hall was built in 1954 as a dormitory for Jackson College; it also contained a dining area that could seat a hundred students. In 1959, a pair of adjacent buildings were opened for Jackson College: Bush Hall, a dormitory, and Dewick Dining Hall. This was part of Tufts' longstanding desire to gain a more selective, residential, non-local student body.Freeland, Academia's Golden Age, p. 202.
Jackson College for Women perhaps reached its greatest prominence by the mid-1960s. Applications to Jackson College more than doubled between 1959 and 1967, and Jackson College accounted for much of the university's increased enrollments.Freeland, Academia's Golden Age, pp. 205–206.