Vassar College

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Vassar College
Motto	None
Established	1861
Type	Private coeducational
Endowment	$885 million
President	Catharine Bond Hill (2006-)
Undergraduates	2,475
Location	Poughkeepsie, NY, USA
Campus	Urban, suburban, park; 1,250 acres (4 km²)
Annual Fees	$41,700 (2006–2007)
Mascot	Brewer
Website	www.vassar.edu info.vassar.edu

Vassar College is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college situated in Poughkeepsie, New York. Founded as a women's college in 1861, it was the first member of the Seven Sisters to become coeducational. U.S. News & World Report ranks it #12 among liberal arts colleges in the United States.^[1]

Contents 1 Overview 2 Academics 3 Admissions rankings 4 Presidents of Vassar College 5 Faculty 6 Athletics 7 Theatre 8 Architecture 9 Frances Lehman Loeb Art Gallery 10 Famous Alumnae/Alumni 10.1 Writers 10.2 Activists and Philanthropists 10.3 Adventurers 10.4 Artists and Architects 10.5 Drama, Film, and Television 10.6 Music 10.7 Science and Medicine 10.8 Business 10.9 Politics and Law 10.10 Attended, but did not graduate 10.11 Fictional Alumni/Alumnae 11 Trivia 12 References 12.1 Notes 13 External links

[edit] Overview

Originally a women's college, Vassar is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States. It was founded by its namesake, brewer Matthew Vassar, in 1861 in the Hudson Valley, about 70 mi (100 km) north of New York City. The very first person appointed to the Vassar faculty was the astronomer Maria Mitchell, in 1865. Vassar adopted coeducation in 1969 after declining an offer to merge with Yale University.

Vassar's campus, also an arboretum, is 1,000 acres (4 km²) marked by period and modern buildings. The great majority of students live on campus. The renovated library has unusually large holdings for a college of its size. It includes special collections of Albert Einstein and Elizabeth Bishop.

In its early years, Vassar was associated with the social elite of the Protestant establishment. E. Digby Baltzell writes that "upper-class WASP families ... educated their children at ... colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Vassar, and Smith among other elite colleges."^[2] In recent freshman classes, minority students have comprised up to 27% of matriculants. International students from over 45 countries comprise 8% of the student body.

Roughly 2,400 students attend Vassar. About 60% come from public high schools, and 40% come from private schools (both independent and religious). The overall female-to-male ratio is about 60:40 according to Vassar's FAQ. More than 85% of graduates pursue advanced study within five years of graduation. They are taught by more than 270 faculty members, virtually all of whom hold terminal degrees in their fields.

Vassar president Frances D. Fergusson served for two decades, longer than almost any other president of a comparable liberal arts college.^{[verification needed]} She retired in the spring of 2006, and was replaced on July 1 by Catharine Bond Hill, former provost at Williams College.

The Miscellany News has been the weekly paper of the college since 1866, making it one of the oldest college weeklies in the United States. It is available for free most Thursdays when school is in session. All article content can be accessed at http://misc.vassar.edu.

[edit] Academics

Vassar confers the A.B. degree in more than 50 majors, including the Independent Major, in which a student may design a major, as well as various interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary fields of study. Students also participate in such programs as the Self-Instructional Language Program (SILP) which offers courses in Hindi, Irish/Gaelic, Korean, Portuguese, Swahili, Swedish, and Yiddish. Vassar has a flexible curriculum intended to promote breadth in studies. While each field of study has specific requirements for majors, the only universal requirements for graduation are proficiency in a foreign language, a quantitative course, and a freshman writing course. Students are also strongly encouraged to study abroad, which they typically do during one or two semesters of their junior year.

All classes are taught by members of the faculty, and there are almost no graduate students and no teachers' assistants. The most popular majors are English, political science, psychology, and economics. Vassar also offers a variety of correlate sequences, or minors, for intensive study in many disciplines.

Vassar also confers the M.A. degree in Biology.

[edit] Admissions rankings

Vassar College is a leading undergraduate institution in the United States and the world. Barron's has placed Vassar in its "most competitive" category for admissions. It is ranked #12 among liberal arts colleges by U.S.News & World Report. For its class of 2011, it had an acceptance rate of 28.6%. The Princeton Review gave Vassar a selectivity rating of 97 out of 100 in its 2006 edition. The most recent median SAT score for accepted students is 2110 and 1432 (counting only math and critical reading scores.) The average high school GPA of the student body is 3.7 on a 4.0 scale, with over three quarters of the students ranked in the top 10% of their classes.

[edit] Presidents of Vassar College

• Milo P. Jewett, 1861–1864
• John H. Raymond, 1864–1878
• Samuel L. Caldwell, 1878–1885
• James Monroe Taylor, 1886–1914
• Henry Noble MacCracken, 1915–1946
• Sarah Gibson Blanding, 1946–1964
• Alan Simpson, 1964–1977
• Virginia B. Smith, 1977–1986
• Frances D. Fergusson, 1986–2006
• Catharine "Cappy" Bond Hill, 2006—

[edit] Faculty

Vassar has had a number of distinguished faculty over the years. Some former and current members include:

• Gustav Dannreuther, Karen Holvik, Quincy Porter, Ernst Krenek, Richard Wilson, Drew Minter and Annea Lockwood in the Music department
• Walter Fairservis, archaeologist
• David Kelley, Uma Narayan, Giovanna Borradori and Mitchell Miller in the Philosophy department
• Sterling Brown, Michael Joyce, Eamon Grennan, and Donald Foster in the English department
• Ken Livingston and John Long in the Cognitive Science department
• E.H. "Rick" Jarow and Deborah Dash Moore in the Religion department
• Margaret Mead, anthropologist
• Jamie Meltzer in the Film department
• Jean Arthur in the Theater department
• Maria Mitchell in the Physics and Astronomy department
• Grace Hopper in the Mathematics department
• Gabriela Mistral Nobel Prize winner in Literature
• Hallie Flanagan Director of the Federal Theater Project, in the English department
• Lucy Maynard Salmon and James Merrell in the History department
• Linda Nochlin in the Art History department.
• Colin Turnbull, anthropologist, author of The Forest People

[edit] Athletics

Vassar is a NCAA Division III college.

Vassar College currently offers the following varsity athletics: - Baseball (Men only) - Basketball - Cross-Country - Fencing - Field Hockey (Women only) - Golf (Women only) - Lacrosse - Rowing - Soccer - Squash - Swimming/Diving - Tennis - Volleyball

Club Sports which compete in NCAA competition - Rugby - Track and Field

Other club sports - Ultimate Frisbee (Men's and Women's) - Equestrian Team

Basketball plays in the new Athletics and Fitness Center. Volleyball plays in Kenyon Hall, reopened in 2006. Soccer, Baseball, Field Hockey and Lacrosse all play at the Prentiss Fields by the Town Houses, which will be completely renovated starting in November 2006 to include new fields for all teams and a new track.

[edit] Theatre

Vassar College has a strong reputation in theater through its Drama Department and its multiple student theater groups. The oldest theater group on campus is Philaletheis, which was founded in 1865 as a literary society. It has now become a completely student run theater group. Others include Unbound, Woodshed, and the Shakespeare troupe. Performances are done all over campus including in the Susan Stein Shiva Theater which is an all student run black box theater.

[edit] Architecture

The Vassar campus has several buildings of architectural interest. Main Building formerly housed the entire college, including classrooms, dormitories, museum, library, and dining halls. The building was designed by Smithsonian architect James Renwick Jr. and was completed in 1865. It is on the registry of national historic landmarks. Many beautiful old brick buildings are scattered throughout the campus, but there are also several modern and contemporary structures of architectural interest. Ferry House, a student cooperative, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1951. Noyes House was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. A good example of an attempt to use passive solar design can be seen in the Mudd Chemistry Building by Perry Dean Rogers. More recently, New Haven architect César Pelli was asked to design the Lehman Loeb Art Center, which was completed in the early 1990s. In 2003, Pelli also worked on the renovation of Main Building Lobby and the conversion of the Avery Hall theater into the $25 million Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film, which preserved the original 1860s facade but was an entirely new structure.

[edit] Frances Lehman Loeb Art Gallery

The art collection at Vassar dates to the founding of the College, when Matthew Vassar provided an extensive collection of Hudson River School paintings to be displayed in the Main Building. Referred to as the Magoon Collection, it continues to be one of the best in the nation for Hudson River School paintings. The Frances Lehman Loeb Gallery displays a selection of Vassar's 15,000 articles of art in the building designed by Cesar Pelli (see Architecture). Today, the gallery's collection displays art from the ancient world up through contemporary works. The collection includes work by European masters such Brueghel, Doré, Picasso, Balthus, Bacon, Vuillard, Cézanne and Bonnard.

[edit] Famous Alumnae/Alumni

[edit] Writers

• Elizabeth Bishop, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
• Lucinda Franks Morgenthau, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
• Michael Specter, Award-winning journalist for [[The New Yorker]] and [[The New York Times]]
• Evan Blass, Senior Editor, Engadget.com (highest trafficked blog)
• Elizabeth Williams Champney, author of Three Vassar Girls series
• Peter Ian Cummings, editor, XY magazine
• Thomas Dean Donnelly, screenwriter
• Geri Doran, award-winning poet
• Aimee Friedman, author
• Joe Hill, Novelist, Heart-Shaped Box (novel), son of author Stephen King
• Matthew Kauffman, Hartford Courant journalist
• Mary McCarthy, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, critic
• Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
• Margaret Mitchell, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gone with the Wind
• Greg Rucka, author
• Rachel Simmons, writer
• Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist
• Curtis Sittenfeld, author (attended)
• Jean Webster, author of Daddy Long Legs
• Christina Weir and Nunzio DeFilippis, husband and wife comic book writing team
• Evan Wright, journalist

[edit] Activists and Philanthropists

• Belle Skinner, philanthropist who rebuilt the village of Hattonchatel after WWI
• Emily Jordan Folger, cofounder of the Folger Shakespeare Library
• Mary Conover Mellon, cofounder of the Bollingen Foundation
• Elizabeth Titus-Putnam, founder of the Student Conservation Association
• Elinor Coleman Guggenheimer, founder of the Child Care Action Campaign
• Sylvia Cranmer McLaughlin, cofounder of the Save San Francisco Bay Association
• Ellen May Galinsky, cofounder of the Families and Work Institute
• Susan Wadsworth, founder of Young Concert Artists
• Adam Green, founder of Rocking the Boat
• Urvashi Vaid, political activist
• Susan V. Berresford, President of the Ford Foundation
• Ann Hendricks Bass, philanthropist

[edit] Adventurers

• Louise Larocque Serpa, Cowgirl Hall of Famer rodeo photographer
• Alice Huyler Ramsey, first woman to cross the continent behind the wheel of a car
• Ethan Zohn, Survivor:Africa winner and philanthropist

[edit] Artists and Architects

• Brian Corll, painter and photographer
• Nancy Graves, first woman to solo at the Whitney
• Adam Kalkin, designer of the Quik House, built from shipping containers
• Linda Nochlin, pioneer in the field of feminist art theory

[edit] Drama, Film, and Television

• Erika Amato, singer, actress
• Noah Baumbach, writer, director
• Lloyd Braun, Media Executive
• Dan Bucatinsky, actor
• Erin Daniels, actress
• Hope Davis, actress
• John Gatins, writer, director
• Angela Goethals, actress
• Lecy Goranson, actress
• Kerri Green, actress, director
• Lisa Kudrow, Emmy Award-winning actress
• Stacy London, television host (What Not to Wear)
• Marguerite Moreau, actress
• Jay Severin, commentator and talk radio host
• Frances Sternhagen, Tony Award-winning actress
• Meryl Streep, Academy Award-winning actress
• Jon Tenney, actor
• Jonathan Togo, actor
• Ethan Zohn, Survivor: Africa winner and philanthropist
• Paula Madison, president and general manager of KNBC-TV, Los Angeles
• Jane Fonda, Academy Award-winning actress

[edit] Music

• Erika Amato, singer (Velvet Chain)
• John Conway, keyboardist (The Bravery)
• Sam Endicott, singer (The Bravery)
• Baroness Uriu (Shige Nagai), introduced Western Music to Japan
• Drew Zing, guitarist (Steely Dan)
• Genghis Tron
• David Greenhill, (The Double)
• Jeff McLeod, (The Double)

[edit] Science and Medicine

• Ruth Benedict, anthropologist
• Mary Calderone, physician and public health advocate, "Grandmother" of sex education
• Grace Hopper, computer scientist and inventor of the Compiler
• Vera Rubin, astronomer, discoverer of "Dark Matter"
• Ellen Swallow Richards, chemist, founder of Ecology
• Sau Lan Wu, high-energy particle physicist, codiscoverer of Gluon
• Barbara Barlow, MD, founder of the Harlem Hospital Injury Prevention Program
• June Jackson Christmas, MD, founder of the Harlem Rehabilitation Center
• Helen Putnam, MD, one of the nation's first gynecologists
• Ellen Kovner Silbergeld, first to document neurological problems caused by lead
• Christine Ladd-Franklin, logician who solved the problem of reduction of syllogisms
• Bernadine Healy, cardiologist, former head of the American Red Cross and National Institutes of Health
• Patricia Goldman Rakic, neuroscientist who mapped the prefrontal lobe
• John Carlstrom, astrophysicist who codesigned DASI, Degree Angular Scale Interferometer
• Eben Otsby, codeveloper of the Marionette Three-Dimensional Computer Animation System

[edit] Business

• Caterina Fake, Founder of Flickr
• Geraldine Laybourne, creator of Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite, CEO of Oxygen Media
• Scott Kauffman, notable CEO
• Judith Regan, CEO of ReganBooks (a division of Harper Collins)
• Jeff Fligelman, cofounder of Gotham Writers' Workshop, NYC's largest private creative writing school
• Lurita Doan, founder of New Technology Management, Inc.
• Lee Zalben, founder of Peanut Butter & Co.
• Lori Granger Leveen, cofounder of Levenger, "tools for serious readers"
• Paco Underhill, founder of Envirosell
• Mark S. Ordan, President and CEO of Mills Corporation
• Ian and Stefan Gerard, cofounders of Gen Art, showcasing high-profile art, film, fashion, and music
• Louise Bechtel, head of the first children's book department in an American publishing house (Macmillan Co.)

[edit] Politics and Law

• Anne Armstrong, diplomat, politician
• Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch, suffragette and daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Steven A. Cook, Council on Foreign Relations analyst
• Crystal Eastman, coauthor of the Equal Rights Amendment
• Rick Lazio, Congressman (Long Island), Executive Vice President (J.P. Morgan Chase Bank)
• Barbara Coombs Lee, coauthor of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act
• Jean McKee, 5 presidential appointments
• Vicki Miles-LaGrange, first African-American female to become a United States Attorney
• Inez Milholland, suffragist
• Marc Thiessen, deputy assistant to the President & deputy director of speechwriting
• Benson Whitney, Ambassador to Norway
• Catherine Bauer Wurster, urban housing reformer

[edit] Attended, but did not graduate

• Anthony Bourdain (graduated from Culinary Institute of America), chef, writer
• Mike D (Michael Diamond), rapper (The Beastie Boys)
• Jane Fonda (graduated from The Actors Studio), actress
• Katharine Graham (graduated from the University of Chicago), publisher of the Washington Post
• Anne Hathaway (graduated New York University), actress
• Justin Long, actor
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (graduated from George Washington University), First Lady
• Curtis Sittenfeld (graduated from Stanford University), author
• Neil Strauss (graduated from Columbia College), author and journalist
• Rachael Yamagata (graduated from Northwestern University), singer

[edit] Fictional Alumni/Alumnae

This section does not cite its references or sources. Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) Any unsourced material that has been or is likely to be challenged may be removed at any time. This article has been tagged since July 2006.

• Tara, of the book The Tiger's Daughter.
• Characters from the 1963 novel, The Group, by alumna Mary McCarthy.
• Dr. Holly Goodhead from the James Bond feature film Moonraker. After she incapacitates two men, Bond asks, "Where did you learn how to fight like that, NASA?" She replies, "No, Vassar."^{[citation needed]}
• Two old ladies in The Dark Tower, the seventh and final book of the series of the same name, by Stephen King.^{[citation needed]}
• Principal Willoughby, from the Nickelodeon cartoon Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.^{[citation needed]}
• Heidi Holland, main character of The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein
• Ruth Morrison, from the 1948 film noir, "The Naked City" [1].
• In the 1990 book American Psycho the character Timothy Bryce tells a story about a sexual encounter he had with a "Vassar girl."^{[citation needed]}
• In Miss Congeniality, Benjamin Bratt introduces Sandra Bullock to "Beth," an undergrad at Vassar, doing a paper on law enforcement.^{[citation needed]}
• Selena St. George, from the 1993 film, "Dolores Claiborne" [2].
• Lilly Kane from Veronica Mars, if she hadn't been murdered.

[edit] Trivia

This section does not cite its references or sources. Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) Any unsourced material that has been or is likely to be challenged may be removed at any time. This article has been tagged since July 2006.

• The campus is a registered national arboretum.
• With the exception of Strong House, all residential dormitories and dorm bathroom facilities are co-ed.
• Immediately following World War II, Vassar accepted a small number of male students under the G.I. Bill. The male students were awarded degrees from the States University of New York.
• Vassar is mentioned in:
  • the films Moonraker, Sabrina, Police Academy, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Dolores Claiborne, Kingpin (1996), Miss Congeniality, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Some Like it Hot, Kate and Leopold, In the Bedroom, and Igby Goes Down
  • the television series The Simpsons, Law & Order, Ed (TV series),Thursday, Spin City, Friends, Dharma & Greg, Gilmore Girls and numerous other television shows and movies.
• Vassar was host to the first baseball game played by two all-female teams, in 1867.
• In the early 1970s, a grandson of Charles Correll of "Amos 'n Andy" radio fame was a student at Vassar and was known for his ability to do the voice of "The Kingfish" (which was actually done by Freeman Gosden on radio).
• The Comedy Group "Olde English" posted a fake protest at Vassar claiming Vassar had an army and was evil.
• The New England building of Vassar college is the set of the intro scene to the movie "Time Machine", although the film begins at what is supposed to be Columbia University.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

• Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 (2nd edition).

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Vassar Firsts. Retrieved on May 19, 2006.
2. ^ Baltzell, E. Digby (1994). Judgment and Sensibility: Religion and Stratification. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-048-1. , p. 8

[edit] External links

• Official website
  • The Vassar College Encyclopedia
  • Vassar College Infosite (news and events)
  • Campus tour
  • The college catalogue, with a complete listing of all available concentrations
  • Vassar innovators
  • History of Vassar College
  • Vassar in popular culture
  • The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

Seven Sisters Colleges
Barnard College • Bryn Mawr College • Mount Holyoke College • Radcliffe College • Smith College • Vassar College • Wellesley College

Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association
East Stroudsburg • George Mason • Harvard • Juniata • New Haven • NJIT • NYU • Penn State • Princeton • Queens College • Rutgers–Newark • Sacred Heart • Saint Francis • Springfield • Vassar

Women's colleges that became coeducational

Beaver College • H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College • Washington College of Law • Chowan College • Carlow University • Florida State University • Shorter College • LaGrange College • Andrew College • University of North Carolina at Greensboro • Ohio Dominican University • James Madison University • Georgia College & State University • Bennington College • Connecticut College • Elmira College • Sarah Lawrence College • Silver Lake College • Vassar College • Hunter College • University of Mary Washington • Viterbo University • Drexel University College of Medicine • Radford University • Texas Woman's University • Trocaire College • Longwood University • Cazenovia College • Mississippi University for Women • Albertus Magnus College • Goucher College • Lake Erie College • Tift College • Wheaton College • University of Saint Mary • Emmanuel College • Notre Dame College • Hood College • Seton Hill University • Chestnut Hill College • Hartford College for Women • Immaculata University • Lesley College • Wells College • Randolph College • Regis College

Liberty League
Clarkson • Hamilton • Hobart • RPI • Rochester • St. Lawrence • Skidmore • Union • Vassar • William Smith Associates: U.S. Merchant Marine (football) • Susquehanna (football) • WPI (football)