Vassar College

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Vassar College
Vassar College Logo
Motto None
Established 1861
Type Private coeducational
Endowment $885 million
President Catharine "Cappy" 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, highly selective 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

[edit] Overview

Originally founded as a women's college, Vassar was 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.

Closeup of the Vassar Main Building
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Closeup of the Vassar Main Building

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.

Vassar was also 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]

Roughly 2,400 students attend Vassar. About 60% come from public high schools, and 40% come from private schools (both independent and religious). 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. The overall female-to-male ratio is about 55:45, although in recent classes it has been closer to 50:50. 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. She retired in the spring of 2006, and was replaced on July 1 by Catharine Bond Hill, former provost at Williams College. Her retirement was marked by a campus-wide celebration known as Fran-Fest, as well as a campus walkway, which is lined with marble benches crafted by renowned contemporary artist Jenny Holzer inscribed with the poetry of Vassar alumna Elizabeth Bishop.

[edit] Academics

Vassar confers the A.B. degree in more than 45 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 an open curriculum intended to promote breadth in studies by requiring for graduation only 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.

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

[edit] Ranking and reputation

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The Vassar library
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The Vassar library

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. In 2006, it accepted 25% of its applicants. The Princeton Review gave Vassar a selectivity rating of 98 out of 100 in its 2006 edition. The most recent freshman class had a mean SAT score of 1455. The median (25%-75%) SAT scores are 690-750 in the verbal section and 680-740 in the mathematics section. The average high school GPA of the student body is 3.8 on a 4.0 scale.

All classes are taught by members of the faculty, and there are no graduate students or 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.

[edit] Presidents of Vassar College

[edit] Faculty

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

[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

Basketball plays in the new Walker Fieldhouse. 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] Architecture

Vassar College in an engraving from 1862.
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Vassar College in an engraving from 1862.

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] Famous Alumni/Alumnae

[edit] Writers

[edit] Drama, Film, and Television

[edit] Music

[edit] Science

[edit] Business

[edit] Politics

[edit] Attended, but did not graduate

[edit] Fictional Alumni/Alumnae

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[edit] Trivia

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  • The original colors of the college were gray and rose, intended to symbolize "the rose of dawn breaking through the gray of women's intellectual situation," or "the dawning of women's education out of the grayness of its former state." In the late 1970s, the pinkish-rose was darkened to burgundy. However, pink is used instead of maroon for the graduation hoods. The official colors are rose and gray.
  • Vassar has a world-class art collection. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is run as an independent museum and is open to the public.
  • The campus is a registered arboretum. There are over 200 tree species spread over 1,000 acres (400,000 m²) of forest land.
  • Except for Strong House, an all-female dormitory, all of the student residence halls at Vassar are co-ed. All dormitory bathrooms are co-ed.
  • New England building, one of the many academic buildings on campus, displays a piece of Plymouth Rock above the entryway.
  • Immediately following World War II, Vassar accepted a very small number of male students on the G.I. Bill, while still remaining formally all-female. The male graduates were given diplomas to the University of the State of New York. The diplomas were reissued under the Vassar title after the school went co-ed.
  • In 1920, in thanks for Vassar student's participation in the war effort, the French government gave the college an army tank. The tank was deposited behind Josselyn Dorm, and removed when it inevitably rusted.
  • The opening flyby in the movie The Muppets Take Manhattan is over the Vassar campus. Kermit and his friends graduate from “Muppet University” in a scene filmed in Taylor Hall. The opening scene of The Time Machine (2002) was filmed at Vassar and all the extras for that scene are Vassar students.
  • Vassar is also mentioned in:
  • The halls in Main Building were built wide enough to accommodate two hoop skirts side by side when the girls did their exercises during poor weather. [citation needed]
  • Vassar was host to the first baseball game played by two completely female teams in 1867. It was an amateur game.
  • The confection we know as "fudge" was first made at Vassar by students.
  • Jane Fonda never rode her motorcycle into a Vassar dorm.
  • In the early 1970s, a descendant 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).
  • In the bonus features disk of the Donnie Darko (2001) DVD, Brian Matherly of Daily-Reviews.com writes:

"in a commentary track by “Cunning Visions CEO Linda Connie” and “infomercial director Fabian Van Patten" has been included along with the actual video. The two humorously discuss stuff like the centering of the participants names on the screen and the fact that the young bed-wetter featured in one of the clips is now going to Vassar as part of their outreach program. They also get into an argument about a chocolate-sprinkled doughnut that was stolen from the craft services table during the infomercial shoot and, at one point, Van Patten gets into a coughing fit that sounds as if he is dislodging a hairball. It's an absolutely silly inclusion, but one that certainly makes the extra feature that much more enjoyable."

[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).
  1. ^ Vassar Firsts. Retrieved on 2006-05-19.
  2. ^ Baltzell, E. Digby (1994). Judgment and Sensibility: Religion and Stratification. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-048-1., p. 8

[edit] External links


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
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