| Goucher College | |
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| Motto | Gratia et Veritas |
| Established | 1885 |
| Type | Private |
| Endowment | U.S. $149.4 million[1] |
| President | Sanford J. Ungar |
| Academic staff | 146 |
| Undergraduates | 1,475 |
| Postgraduates | 900 |
| Location | Towson, Maryland, USA |
| Campus | Suburban 287 acre (1.2 km²) |
| Athletics | 17 varsity teams |
| Colors | Blue and Gold |
| Mascot | Gopher |
| Website | www.goucher.edu |
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Goucher College
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Haebler Memorial Chapel, a non-denominational chapel in the heart of Goucher College
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| Location: | 1021 Dulaney Valley Rd., Towson, Maryland |
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| Area: | 287 acres (116 ha) |
| Built: | 1921 |
| Architect: | Moore & Hutchins; Sasaki, Hideo, et al. |
| Architectural style: | Modern Movement |
| Governing body: | Private |
| NRHP Reference#: | 07000885[2] |
| Added to NRHP: | August 28, 2007 |
Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre (1.2 km²) campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary programs and about 900 students studying in graduate subjects. It was one of the first colleges to embrace internships and allow its students to take a more individualized approach. In 2004, Newsweek called Goucher the college with the happiest students.[3]
Recently, Goucher College has instituted a study-abroad requirement—each undergraduate must complete at least one study-abroad experience. To help students fulfill this requirement, the college offers a wide range of three-week "intensive courses abroad," as well as semester and year-long programs, in concert with vouchers of $1,200 to subsidize the costs.
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The school was founded in 1885 as a women's college, by Methodist ministers Dr. John Goucher and John B. Van Meter, with the assistance of Goucher's wife Mary Cecilia Fisher Goucher. Originally called The Woman's College of Baltimore, the school was renamed in 1910 in honor of its founding members and benefactors.[4]
The original campus was in the southern part of what is now the Charles Village neighborhood in Baltimore City. Goucher moved to its present suburban location in 1953. The college has been co-educational since 1986. Its former home, known as the Old Goucher College Historic District, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.[2]
Female students still predominate on the undergraduate level at about 70%. This number is higher at the graduate level, where almost 81% of the students are female. About 11.5% of the undergraduate population are either African-American, Asian, Hispanic or Native-American. At the graduate level, the number is about 8.5%. Goucher has the 15th highest percentage of Jewish students in the country with 30% identifying as Jewish.[5]
Two of the most popular majors are communications and psychology.
The Goucher College campus is proximate to downtown Towson, though the 287-acre (1.16 km2) campus is separated from it by surrounding woods owned by the school. The academic buildings appear generally at the north side of campus, and the residential buildings are located to the south. Most buildings are clad in tan-colored stone called Butler Stone. As a part of a recent expansion plan, a new residence hall, Welsh (a.k.a The "T"), was built in 2005. The Athenaeum, a 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m2) multipurpose facility featuring an expansive modern library that was constructed in 2009. The grounds are slightly hilly and include hiking and riding trails in the woods. Newsweek magazine described the campus as "unusually bucolic".[6]
In a marked shift away from traditional collegiate layout characterized by symmetry and quadrangles, the designing architectural firm Moore and Hutchins elected to group buildings together into informal zones based on function and took a departure from the Romanesque design of the previous campus. The notion that the design of individual buildings was less important than their interrelationships was progressive at the time. Consequently, over the years, the architecture and development of the campus has won many awards,[7] and in 2007 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[8]
In a fenced area with no natural predators, 200 deer roamed the wooded campus. In 2007, a biologist for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources estimated the 287-acre (1.16 km2) woods as only being able to support 40 deer. Goucher's response that winter was to hire bowmen to thin the population by about 50 deer, and success of this approach has resulted in a yearly culling of the population since then. Reasons cited are to maintain the health of the remaining deer and other animals, reduce the risk of car crashes, protect landscaping and prevent the spread of Lyme disease, and the meat of the deer has been donated to local homeless shelters. Some students and community members, however, have objections to the population reduction.[9]
In 2009, U.S. News and World Report ranked Goucher college #105 in its annual rankings of national liberal arts colleges. The college's ranking has fluctuated from #93 to #111 in recent years. Its most well-known faculty members include Jean H. Baker and Julie Roy Jeffrey of the History Department; President Sanford J. Ungar; and authors Madison Smartt Bell and Elizabeth Spires, who oversee the college's Kratz Center for Creative Writing. Goucher is one of 40 schools profiled in the book Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope. In 2009, Goucher College suspended visiting French Professor Leopold Munyakazi for his alleged involvement in the 1994 genocide perpetrated in his home country of Rwanda. Even after his suspension, Munyakazi and his family were allowed to remain in official Goucher housing for the remainder of the Spring Semester. According to INTERPOL, Munyakazi is still at large and wanted for charges of genocide. An international warrant for his arrest has been issued by KAGALI/Rwanda.
In fall 2006, the college launched an education curriculum that outlines requirements that reflect the core values that underpin a liberal-arts education. These include: an international experience; proficiency in English composition and in a foreign language; and solid foundations in history, abstract reasoning, scientific discovery and experimentation, problem-solving, social structures, and environmental sustainability. There are special introductory courses for freshmen to orient them to the campus, as well as college life at Goucher. Undergraduate students are expected to fulfill an off-campus learning requirement either through an internship or a study-abroad experience. A popular choice among many Goucher students is to participate in a "three-week intensive" course abroad made up of an on-campus classroom component followed by three weeks abroad during the winter or spring. Goucher also allows students to participate in semester and yearlong study-abroad programs offered by other schools. Goucher recently announced that starting with the class of 2010 all students will be required to have at least one study-abroad experience to graduate, thus making it the first college to require such an experience of its students. Goucher is also well-known for its creative writing, dance, and pre-med departments.
Goucher has a small but vibrant graduate program, which is run by the Welch Center for Graduate and Professional Studies. The following graduate programs are offered at the college:
Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability
Goucher's new Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability program brings together tools from anthropology, history, communications, business and management, linguistics, and activism to teach students how to identify, protect, and enhance important cultural traditions.
The coursework is conducted as a limited-residency distance-learning program, meaning classes are primarily held online and are complemented with two one-week residencies on the college's suburban Baltimore campus.
Master of Arts in Digital Arts (MADArts)
The college’s new Master of Arts in Digital Arts (MADArts) is a limited-residency online degree for students who are interested in music, digital culture, and media. The curriculum focuses on giving students real-world experiences and teaching them about the business of digital art so they can learn how to finance, advertise, and manage their careers.
The limited-residency MADArts program gives students opportunities to travel with faculty and peers to events in the music, multimedia, and digital-arts world to meet with people who can help them advance creatively and professionally.
Master of Arts in Historic Preservation (MAHP)
Begun in 1995, the Master of Arts in Historic Preservation (MAHP) was Goucher’s first distance-learning program, as well as the first limited-residency preservation program in the country.
The MAHP program has attracted many experienced preservation practitioners and educators in the country as faculty, including a former senior research fellow with the American Planning Association, the former chief preservation architect for the National Park Service, and a regional director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
MAHP graduates are employed as preservation officials in local, state, and federal government agencies; as practicing architects, planners, preservation contractors, and preservation consultants; and as directors of preservation, historic, and community organizations.
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction
Faculty of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program, which began in 1997, include a winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, a former executive editor of Atlantic Monthly, and a former 20-year staff writer for the New Yorker. Other faculty distinctions include a Whiting Award, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for creative nonfiction, and an Academy Award nomination in the documentary division.
The limited-residency program’s students and alumnae/i have published about 30 books since the program began, with several more under contract. These books have won such honors as the 2003 Southern Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, the 2008 New York Book Festival Award for best historical memoir, USA Book News’ Best Book Award of 2007 in world history, and the Atlantic Book Awards’ 2003 Dartmouth Nonfiction Award.
Master of Arts in Arts Administration (MAAA)
The limited-residency Master of Arts in Arts Administration (MAAA) Program emphasizes the role of the arts in the community and the contribution the arts make to society. The core curriculum covers all key fields of arts administration, including strategic planning, marketing, development, financial management, and law and the arts. The Goucher faculty are leaders in the field of arts administration from all over the country.
Master of Education (M.Ed.)
The Master of Education (M.Ed.) Program is a joint program of Goucher College and mental health experts from the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Health Systems. The M.Ed. Program is divided into the following areas of specialization:
Each of the specializations addresses how societal forces affect student development and success and examines social and ethical issues, curricular and management strategies, and relevant research. Wherever possible, a clinical perspective is offered through workshops, direct observation, and field and practical experience.
Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.)
The Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) Program is designed to prepare college graduates who wish to earn state certification, but who have not had the requisite undergraduate preparation for teaching. Participants can acquire the knowledge and skills needed for teaching general and/or special education in the elementary, middle, and high schools. A yearlong internship or supervised conditional year is included in the program for students in both regular and special education and those who have not yet met certification requirements.
Goucher offers many student-run clubs in different areas such as the Chem Club (the oldest continuously-operating club on campus) the French club, the theater club the philosophy club, Prism: The Queer Student Union, and a student-labor action committee. It has a bi-weekly school newspaper called The Quindecim, and a literary arts journal called Preface. Also notable is Goucher Student Radio, which contains a host of student, staff, and faculty programming and expands each year. It is accessible through Goucher's website as streaming media. Students from the college are also credited with founding Humans vs. Zombies, a game similar to tag that is played generally on college campuses.
Goucher competes in NCAA Division III, fielding men's and women's teams in lacrosse, soccer, basketball, track and field, cross country, swimming, and tennis, as well as women's teams in field hockey, volleyball, and coed equestrian sports(Intercollegiate Horse Show Association Zone IV Region I/American National Riding Commission). In 2007 the college joined the Landmark Conference after competing as a member of the Capital Athletic Conference from 1991 to 2007.
Goucher has served as a campus for the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth summer program for gifted students.
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