Vassar College

Vassar College is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college situated in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. Founded as a women's college in 1861, it became coeducational in 1969. It is ranked #11 among liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report.

Overview

Originally a women's college, Vassar was the first of the Seven Sisters established from inception as a college for women. It was founded by its namesake, brewer Matthew Vassar, in 1861 in the Hudson Valley, about 70 mi (115 km) north of New York City. The 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. However, immediately following World War II, Vassar accepted a very small number of male students on the G.I. Bill. Because Vassar's charter prohibited male matriculants, the graduates were given diplomas via the University of the State of New York. These were reissued under the Vassar title after the school formally became co-ed.

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, Mary McCarthy, 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. Before becoming President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Trustee.

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. In May 2007, falling in with its commitment to diverse and equitable education, Vassar returned to a need-blind admissions policy wherein students are admitted by their academic and personal qualities, without regard to financial status.

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, slightly above the standard for a liberal arts college. 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.

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.

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, Turkish, 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. Students (usually juniors) may apply for a year or a semester away either in the U.S. or abroad. Vassar sponsors programs in China, England, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Spain and Russia; students may also join preapproved programs offered by other colleges. Students may also apply for approved programs at various U.S. institutions, including the historically Black colleges and members of the Twelve College Exchange.

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.

Admissions rankings

Vassar is considered one of the most prestigious colleges in the United States. Vassar was named the 1999 Time Magazine/Princeton Review “College of the Year”; Barron's has placed Vassar in its "most competitive" category for admissions. It is ranked #11 among liberal arts colleges by U.S.News & World Report, tied with Claremont McKenna College. The class of 2012 had an admissions rate of 23.9%, Vassar's most selective year to date. 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.

Libraries

Vassar is home to one of the largest undergraduate library collections in the world. The library collection today - which actually encompasses eight libraries at Vassar - contains over 1.6 million volumes and 7,500 serial, periodical and newspaper titles, as well as an extensive collection of microfilm and microfiche. [1]

Presidents of Vassar College

Name	Dates
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—

Athletics

Vassar competes in Division III of the NCAA, as a member of the Liberty League.

Vassar College currently offers the following varsity athletics: - Men's and Women's Basketball - Baseball (Gender Neutral) - Cross-Country - Fencing - Field Hockey (Women only) - Golf (Women only) - Lacrosse - Rowing - Soccer - Squash - Swimming/Diving - Tennis - Volleyball - Track and Field Team sports - Rugby (Men's and Women's)(treated like varsity) Club sports - Ultimate (Men's and Women's) - Equestrian Team - Cycling Team (Competes in ECCC) - Co-ed USFSA Synchronized Skating 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 have been completely renovated in 2007 to feature a lighted turf, four grass fields, a baseball field and a track surrounding the turf. Also in 2007 a Varsity Weight-Room was opened in the basement of Kenyon Hall, exclusively for the training of varsity athletes.

On April of 28th and 29th, the Vassar Cycling Team hosted the Eastern Conference Championships in Collegiate Cycling in Poughkeepsie and New Paltz, NY. The competition included a road race over the Gunks in New Paltz as well as a Criterium in Poughkeepsie just blocks from the school's campus.

Extra-curricular organizations

The Vassar Student Association (VSA) includes all students as members. The VSA Council certifies and provides funds to all student organizations on campus. The Council is the legislative body of the student government. The VSA Executive Board oversees the VSA system and advocates on behalf of students. Students elected via VSA election processes take active roles in governance by participating on College committees.

The Miscellany News: Founded in 1866, The Miscellany News is the oldest publication of Vassar College, and one of the oldest college weekly newspapers in the United States. Widely Known as The Misc among students, the paper comes out each Thursday. The paper has twice won the coveted Pacemaker Award given by the Columbia University School of Journalism.

Matthew's Minstrels: Founded in 1978, Matthew's Minstrels was Vassar's first co-ed a cappella group. The Minstrels repertoire includes a large, forever increasing variety of songs spanning from the smooth, polished doo-wop of the 50's, to many 80's tunes, to today's chart topping hits. In 1990, Matthew's Mintsrels were featured on MTV's Head of the Charles weekend special.

Philaletheis: 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, Idlewild (an all-female ensemble), and two Shakespeare-specific troupes. Performances are done all over campus including in the Susan Stein Shiva Theater, which is an all student run black box theater. The college also hosts the Powerhouse Summer Theater workshop series.

ViCE (Vassar Campus Entertainment): ViCE books outside entertainers for on-campus performances, with the College Campus Activities staff acting as facilitators.

Architecture

The Vassar campus has several buildings of architectural interest. Main Building, sometimes known as Old Main, 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 was preceded on campus by the original observatory. Both buildings are 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.

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

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 17,000 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, Braque and Bonnard, as well as examples from leading twentieth-century American painters Jackson Pollock, Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keefe, Charles Sheeler, and Ben Shahn. The Loeb's works on paper represent a major collection in the United States, with prints by Rembrandt (including important impressions of the "Hundred Guilder Print" and the "Three Trees") and Dürer as well as photographs by Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, and others.

After Vassar

70% of Vassar graduates plan to pursue advanced study within 5 years of graduation. Of the seniors who applied to medical school, 85% were accepted. Of the seniors who applied to law school, 88% were accepted. Vassar offers a database of 3,000 volunteer alumni where students may seek career advice and opportunities.

Future

Davison, one of Vassar's nine residence houses, will be renovated during the 2008-2009 school year. The dorm will go offline for that year and its residents will be absorbed into the college's remaining residence houses. This is the second dorm to be renovated as part of the school's master plan to renovate all dorms, following Jewett a few years earlier. Lathrop is scheduled to be renovated during the 2010-2011 school year.

The interior and exterior of the Van Ingen Art Library will be renovated from June 2008 - May 2009 in an effort to restore its original design and appearance. This will be the library's first major renovation since its construction in 1937.

The school's bookstore, currently located on campus and operated by Barnes and Noble, will be moved during the 2009-2010 school year to an off-campus location. The expanded bookstore is expected to carry a wider range of merchandise and will serve as a venue for appropriate entertainment. There are also preliminary plans for a new science building. Mudd, the chemistry building, may be demolished to make room for the new construction.

Notable faculty and alumni

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).

Notes

External links

• Official website
• Official Athletics website
• The Vassar College Encyclopedia