Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of historically women's colleges in the United States. It is one of 15 Quaker colleges in the United States. The college has an enrollment of about 1,350 undergraduate students and 450 graduate students. It was the first women's college to offer graduate education through a PhD.
History
Bryn Mawr College is a private women's liberal arts college founded in 1885. The phrase literally means 'large hill' in Welsh. The Graduate School is co-educational. It is named after the town of Bryn Mawr, in which the campus is located, which had been renamed by a representative of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Bryn Mawr was the name of an area estate granted to Rowland Ellis by William Penn in the 1680s. Ellis's former home, also called Bryn Mawr, was a house near Dolgellau, Merioneth, Gwynedd, Wales. The college was largely founded through the bequest of Joseph W. Taylor, and its first president was James Rhoads. Bryn Mawr was one of the first institutions of higher education in the United States to offer graduate degrees, including doctorates, to women. The first class included 36 undergraduate women and eight graduate students. Bryn Mawr was originally affiliated with the Quakers (Religious Society of Friends), but by 1893 had become non-denominational.
In 1912, Bryn Mawr became the first college in the United States to offer doctorates in social work, through the Department of Social Economy and Social Research. This department became the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research in 1970. In 1931, Bryn Mawr began accepting men as graduate students, while remaining women-focused at the undergraduate level.
From 1921 to 1938 the Bryn Mawr campus was home to the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, which was founded as part of the labor education movement and the women's labor movement. The school taught women workers political economy, science, and literature, as well as organizing many extracurricular activities.
The college celebrated its 125th anniversary of "bold vision, for women, for the world" during the 2010–2011 academic year. In September 2010, Bryn Mawr hosted an international conference on issues of educational access, equity, and opportunity in secondary schools and universities in the United States and around the world. Other festivities held for the anniversary year included publication of a commemorative book on 125 years of student life, and, in partnership with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, creation of a mural in West Philadelphia highlighting advances in women's education.
Transgender students
On February 9, 2015, the Board of Trustees announced approval of a working group recommendation to expand the undergraduate applicant pool allowing transgender women and intersex individuals identifying as women to apply for admission. This decision made Bryn Mawr the fourth women's college in the United States to accept trans women. Bryn Mawr "recognizes that gender is fluid and that traditional notions of gender identity and expression can be limiting," and has the official policy of accepting nonbinary students who were assigned female at birth as well. All current, past, and future students are fully recognized as members of the Bryn Mawr community, regardless of current gender identity. Due to the wide array of gender identities represented in both current and past students, the undergraduate population has embraced "historically women's college" rather than "women's college" as a label for their school that more accurately reflects the community. This change has yet to take effect on the administrative level.
Presidents
1885–1894 James Rhoads
1894–1922 M. Carey Thomas
1922–1942 Marion Edwards Park
1942–1970 Katharine Elizabeth McBride
1970–1978 Harris Wofford
1978–1997 Mary Patterson McPherson
1997–2008 Nancy J. Vickers
2008–2013 Jane Dammen McAuliffe
2013–present Kimberly Wright Cassidy
Campus
The campus is in the municipality of Lower Merion Township. Most of the campus is in the Bryn Mawr census-designated place.
The campus was designed in part by noted landscape designers Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, and has subsequently been designated an arboretum (the Bryn Mawr Campus Arboretum).