Organizations Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. The college was founded in 1837 as the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary by Mary Lyon, a pioneer in education for women. A model upon which many other women's colleges were patterned, it is the oldest institution within the Seven Sisters schools, an alliance of East Coast liberal arts colleges that was originally created to provide women with education equivalent to that provided in the then men-only Ivy League. Mount Holyoke is part of the region's Five College Consortium, along with Amherst College, Smith College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst: through this membership, students are allowed to take courses at any other member institution. Mount Holyoke Female Seminary opened on November 8, 1837 with 116 students. The first graduating class of three students received diplomas on August 23, 1838. Initially, homemaking, teaching and missionary work were the only occupations open to alumnae. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, increasing numbers of alumnae had entered professions such as social work, librarianship, journalism, medicine, and law. Notable alumnae include poet Emily Dickinson; women's rights advocate Lucy Stone; Olympia Brown, the first woman to become a full-time ordained minister; physician and anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar; playwrights Wendy Wasserstein and Suzan-Lori Parks; Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve as a member of the cabinet of a United States President; and Ella Grasso, the first women elected a state governor in her own right (not as the successor of her husband). A number of these women have been honored on United States postage stamps or with induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame. -- From the guide to the Students and Alumnae Profiles and Statistics Collection RG 23., 1882-present, (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)Read more at Wikipedia...

Inception: 1836

Alternate Names: MHC, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Mt Holyoke College, Mt. Holyoke College
Website:  http://www.mtholyoke.edu 
Associated Place(s): Massachusetts
Associated Subject(s):  Marriage

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