The Story of Wellesley

Miss Freeman's day, the excellent presidential habit of consulting with the heads of departments was formed, and many of the changes instituted by the young president were suggested and formulated by her older colleagues. In Miss Shafer's day, habit had become precedent, and she w

ces it has necessitated important emendations of the statutes; and that the trustees were willing to alter

at "The College was founded for the glory of God and the service of

r, shall be a member of an Evangelical church, and that the study of the Holy Scriptures shall be

, induced the trustees to alter the religious requirement for teachers; and the reorganization of the D

y teacher shall be of decided Christian character and influence, and in manifest sympathy with the religious spirit and aim with which the College was founded; and that

nd the statutes as printed in 1912 record still another amendment: "And that the study of the Sacred Scriptures by every stud

ent and with the act of incorporation." They have "power to make and execute such statutes and rules as they may consider needful for the best administration of their trust, to appoint committees from their own number, or of those not otherwise connected with the college, and to prescribe their duties and powers." It is th

of both faculty and trustees. If, in matters financial, the trustees have been sometimes unwilling to consider the scruples of groups of individuals on the faculty, along lines of economic morals, they have nevertheless taken no official steps to suppress the expression of such scruples. They have withstood any reactionary pressure from individuals of their board, and have always allowed the fac

d well-meaning in the cause of woman's education. But so long as the faculty are excluded from direct representation on the board, the situation will continue to be anomalous. For it is not too sweeping to assert that Wellesley's development and academic

artments, three were men, the professors of Music, of Education, and of French. Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, not heads of departments, five were men; of the fifty-nine instructors, ten were men. It is inte

ing its own experiments, and the results achieved at Wellesley indicate that a faculty made up largely of women, with a woman at its head, in no way militates agai

departments, five-the professors of English Literature, Chemistry, Pure Mathematics, Biblical History, and Physics-are Wellesley graduates, three of them from the celebrated class of '80. Of the thirty-nine professors and associate professors, in 1914-1915, ten were alumnae of Wellesley, and of the fifty-nine instructors, seventeen. Since 1895, when Professor Stratton was appointed dean to assist Mrs. Irvine, Wellesley has had five deans, but only Miss Pendleton, who held the o

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gogic instinct have left their impress upon the intellectual life of their times. But the possibility that women might be intellectually and physically capable of sharing equally with men the burdens and the joys of developing and directing the scholarship of the race had never been seriously considered until the nineteenth century. The women who came to teach in the women's colleges in the '70's and '80's and '90's knew themsel

ejudice, at what points the education of the girl should differ or diverge from the education of the boy; to try out the pedagogic methods of the men's colleges and discover which were antiquated and should be abolished, w

k in experimental psychology, established by Professor Calkins in 1891, was the first in any women's college in the country, and one of the first in any college. In 1886, the American School of Classical Studie

t Oxford, Paris, Bologna, experienced no keener intellectual delights

er of being blurred and lost sight of to-day by a generation that knew not Joseph. The zeal with which the advocates of educational and domestic training are trying to force into the curricula of women's colleges courses on housekeeping, home-making, dressmaking, dairy farming, to say nothing of stenography, typewriting, double entry, and the musical glasses minus Shakespeare,

y do not add to their curricular activities the varied aims of an Agricultural College, a Business College, a School of Philanthropy, and a Cooking School, with required courses on the modifying of milk for infants. Great institutions for vocational training, such as Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Simmons College in Boston, have a dignity and a usefulness which no one disputes. Undoubtedly America needs more of their kind. But to impa

s and their literatures, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit. Seven are modern languages and their literatures, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English Literature, Composition, and Language. Ten are sciences, Mathematics, pure and applied, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Geography, Botany, Zoology and Physiology, Hygiene. S

prescribed for freshmen; courses in Biblical History and Hygiene; a modern language, unless two modern languages have been presented for admission; two natural sciences before the ju

ctive; but the student must group her electives intelligently, and to this end she must complete either nine hours of wo

e free electives. Just what led to this legislation, only those who were present at the decisive discussions of the Academic Council can know. Possibly they have discovered by experience that young women do not need to be coaxed or coerced into study

seniors and graduates. This does not mean, however, that the graduate work is not on a sound basis. Wellesley has not yet exercised her right to give the Doctor's degree, but expert testimony, outside the college, has declared that some of the Master's these

ome other American college of approved standing; she must be "not more than twenty-six years of age at the time of her appointment, unmarried throughout the whole of her tenure, and as free as possible from other responsibiliti

landis Hibbard, in English Literature. Two are from Radcliffe, and one each from Cornell, Vassar, the University of Dakota, Ripon, and Goucher. The Fellow is left free to study abroad, in an American college or university, or to use the income for independent research. The list of univer

ver that the standard of admission and the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts place Wellesley in the first rank among American colleges, whether for men or for women. But every woman's colle

tching from photographs of the pictures studied. These five and ten minute sketches by young girls, the majority of whom have had no training in drawing, are remarkable for the vivacity and accuracy with which they reproduce the salient features of the great paintings. The students are of course given the latest results of the modern school of art criticism. In addition to the work with undergraduat

n practical music. The first-year class, meeting once a week, listens to an anonymous musical selection played by one of its members, and must decide by internal evidence-such as simple cadences, harmonic figuration as applied to the accompaniment and other characteristics-upon the school of the composer, and biographical data. The analysis of the mus

dy of the History of Art and the History of Music are origi

g enthusiasm for their subjects, and keen insight into the cultural needs of American girls, they have built up their department on a sure foundation of accurate scholarship and tested pedagogic method. At a time when the study of literature threatened to become, almost universally, an exercise in the dry rot of philological terms, in the cataloguing of sources, or the analyzing of literary forms, the department at Wellesley continued unswervingly to make use of philology, sources, and even art forms, as means to an end; that end the in

teachers' agencies not infrequently ask candidates for positions if they are familiar with the Wellesley methods. In an address before the New Hampshire State Teachers' Association, in 1913, Professor Muller describes the aim

e that it has held ever since. Such a result was due not merely to methods, of course, but first of all to the strong and enthusiastic

g that their intrepid professor of German asked for. They not only saw that all equipments needed... were provided, but they also generously stipulated, at Fraulein Wenckebach's urgent request, that all the elementary and intermediate classes in the foreign language departments should be kept small, that is, that they should not exceed fifteen. If Fraulein Wenckebach had been obliged, a

the person of the head of the Department. Centralization may not work well in politics, but a foreign language department working with the reformed methods could not develop the highest efficiency under any other form of government. With a livin

is what we want and what on the whole we get from our students. It was so in the days of Fraulein Wenckebach an

present taught by Americans wholly. I have come to the conclusion that well-trained Americans gifted with viv

d, so that no student may elect courses in modern German, the novel and the drama, who has not already been well grounded in Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. The

en as the years pass. Professor Gamble, Wellesley's own daughter, is the foremost authority on smell, among psychologists. In her chosen field of experimental psychology she has achieved results attained by no one else, and her work has a Continental reputation. Professor Calkins, the head of the Department, is one of the distinguished alumnae of Smi

rican economic conditions, as evidenced in her books, the "Industrial History of the United States", and "Economic Beginnings of the Far West", in her studies in Social Insurance published in The Survey, and in her practical work for the College Settlements Association and the Consumers' League, and as an active member of the Strike Committee during the strike of the Chicago Garment Workers in 1910-1911, lent to her teaching an appeal which more cloistered

as a sophomore. I have always meant to tell you, too, of what great practical value your seminar in Statistics was to me; it gave me enough insight into the principles and practice to encourage me to present my work the first year out of college in statistical form. It was approved. Without the incentive and the little experience I had gained from you I might not ha

s proved of vital importance to me. That was in 1887-1888, but as I look back I see that in your teaching then, you presented to us the ideas, the concepts, which are now accepted principles of men's tho

t not been for yourself and Miss Balch, that work would not have stood for so much. For your guidance and your inspiration I am most grateful. I h

usetts,-among them the disinterested and competent City Planning Board,-and the sanity and judicial balance of her opinions are recognized and valued by conservatives and radicals alike. Besides the traditional courses in Economic History and Theory, Wellesley offers under Miss Balch a course in Socialism, a critical study of its main theories and political movements, open to juniors and seni

laboratories; of the modern work in Geology and Geography carried on not only in Wellesley but for the teachers of Boston by Professor Fisher who is so wisely developing the department which Professor Niles set on its firm foundation; of the work of Professor Robertson who is

ston. By a gradual process of adjustment, admission to the two years' course leading to a certificate in the Department of Hygiene "will be limited to applicants who are candidates for the B.A. degree at Wellesley College and to those who already hold the Bachelor's degree either from Wellesley College or from some other college." A

th the eager crowd of youth. It may be years before an American college for women can sustain and foster creative scholarship for its own sake, after the example of the European universities; but Wellesley is not ungenerous; the S

m idyllic novels, such as Margaret Sherwood's "Daphne", and sympathetic travel sketches like Katharine Lee Bates's "Spanish Highways and Byways", to scholarly translations, such as Sophie Jewett's "Pearl" and

uropean countries on a mission of peace. Miss Bates is active in promoting the interests of the International Institute in Spain. The American College for Girls in Constantinople often looks to Wellesley for teachers, and more than one Wellesley professor has given a Sabbatical year to the schoolgirls in Constantinople. During the absence of President Patrick, Professor Roxana Vivian of Wellesley was acting president, and had the honor of bringing the college safely through the perplexities and terrors of the Young Turks' Re

ot affect its intellectuality. The Wellesley faculty, like the faculty of Harvard, is not a cloistered body, and contact with the minds of "a world of men" through books and the visitations of itinerant scholars is about as e

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pens are fountains sealed, for a reticent hundred years-or possibly less, under pressure-with the seals of academic reserve, and historic perspective, and traditional modesty. Most of the women who had a hand in the making of Wellesley's first forty years are still alive. T

itatively; but gratitude and love will not be silent, and no story of Wellesley's first hal

of Natural History in 1875, the friend of Agassiz and Asa Gray. She was a Maine woman, and she had been teaching twenty-two years, in Ba

ries. At the close of this investigation she announced to the founders of the college that the task which they had assigned to her was too great for any one individual to undertake. There must be several professorships rather than one

pments in science, only very slight changes in the arrangement and distribution of the work in her department have since been necessary.... She organized and built up a botanica

he laboratories were housed in Stone Ha

nly those who knew her in this double capacity can fully realize the richness of her nature and the power of her personality." She retired from active service at the college in February, 1902, when she was made Professor Emeritus; but she lived in Wellesley village with her friend, Miss Horton, the former professor of Greek, until her death in 1911. Mrs. North gives u

76 and kept her connection with the college until her death, as associate professor, in 1906, was a scientific s

usetts Institute of Technology her precious memories of this devoted gentleman and scholar. His wise planning set the Department of Geology and Geography on its present excellent basis. At his

e founder of the Monroe Fund for her department; Doctor Speakman, Doctor Barker, Wellesley's resident physicians in the early days; dear Mrs. Newman, who mothered so many c

rilliant biography [Carla Wenckebach, Pioneer (Ginn & Co. pub.).] by her colleague and close friend, Margarethe Muller, who succeeded her in the Department of German. As an

tion by Professor Muller. She was attending the Sauveur Summer School of Languages at Amherst, and had been asked to take so

bachelor, but something infinitely superior! I must not

ificent of all the women's colleges in the United States). I immediately comprehended that these were three lions (grosse Tiere), and I began to have curious presentiments. Fortunately, I was in correct dress, so that I could rush down into our elegant reception room. Here I made a solemn bow, the three ladies returning the compliment. The president, a lady who must be a good deal younger than myself, a real Ph.D. (of Philosophy and History), told me

bly getting a position there totally dazed me. Summoning up courage, however, I controlled my wild joy, and pulling myself together with determination, I gav

ly offered her. "Now you think, I suppose, that I fell round the necks of those angels of joy! I didn't though!" she blith

appearance surpasses even the great Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The entrance hall is decorated with magnificent palms, with valuable paintings, and choice statuary. The walls in all the corr

lary,' she exclaims, 'in comparison to the ease and enthusiasm with which I can here plow a new field of work! That, and the honor attached to the positi

freedom. In addition to her work in German, we owe to her the beginni

are souls among us who are 'near the shaping hand of the Creator.'" And Fraulein Wenckebach herself said of her profession: "Every teacher, every educator, should above all be a guide. Not one of those who, like signposts, stretch their wooden arms with pedantic insistence in a given direction, but one, ra

sorbed and inspired by any lectures as by hers. The secret of her power was not merely that she was master of the art of teaching and knew how to arouse interest and awaken the mind to independent thought and inquiry, but that her own earnestness and high purpose touched our lives and made anything less than the highest possible degree of effort and attainment seem not worth while.

ts eager to tell her what she had been to them. She writes in 1886: "What a privilege to pour into the receptive mind of young Amer

rtment of Greek, Sophie de Chantal Hart, of the Department of English Composition, Vida D. Scudder, Margaret Sherwood, and Sophie Jewett, of the Department of English Literature. In the autumn of 1909, Sophie Jewett died, and never has the college been stirred to more intimate and personal grief. So many poets, so many scholars

of all finest aspects of beauty; on her sensitive allegiance to truth; on the fine reticence of her imaginative passion; on that heavenly sympathy and

r her swift ardor for all high causes and great dreams; for that unbounded tenderness toward youth, that firm and steady standard of scholarship, that central hunger for

to a strange degree, hushed echoes of heavenly music? These lyrics are not wholly of the earth: they vibrate subtly with what I can only call the sense of the Eternal. How beautiful, how consoling, that her last book should have been that translation, such as only one who was a

knew well, guided her through obscure dialects of Italy and Sicily, but Castilian, Portuguese, and Catalan she puzzled out for herself with such natural insight that the experts to whom these translatio

en in prose, is the delicate interpretation of St. Fran

ene, she ca

h task of

knew, nor

of her la

n music in

ie Jewett." A poem

llege News,

e 1905, died during the spring recess after a three days' illness. Madame Colin had studie

died. Of these are Caroline Frances Pierce, of the class of 1891, who was librarian from 1903 to 1910. To her wise

tague was one of the first to receive the degree of M.A. from Wellesley. In 1882, the college conferred this degree for the first time, and Miss Montague was one of the two

. So I want to say it formally for myself and for all the others and for all the years. For I suppose that if we were doomed to go before our girls for a last judgment, the best and the least of us would care just fo

way, elected her courses as long as there were courses to elect; but we have had to teach many years since to know how special that gift of hers was. Just as closer acquaintance with herself proved her breadth of mind and sympathy not quite understood before, so more intelligent knowledge of her methods showed them to be broader and more fundamental than we had quite

onsive, but never unwary, without the slightest reflection of her personality upon us, with never a word too much of praise or blame, of too much intimacy or of too much reserve. She was a figure of familiar friendliness, ready with sympathy and comprehension, but wholesome, sound and sane, without trace of sentimentality. Above all, I felt her a singularly honorab

ay at the end of the Phaedo of the death of Socrates. After Miss Montague died, I turned to the book and found

et on the hills, and many a m

delay. But I do not think that I should gain

th. Miss Coman's power as a teacher has been spoken of on an earlier page, but she will be remembered in the college and outside as more than a teacher. Her books a

ul, she shines

kes and clamo

jestic brows

ars fo

th the child, th

e and rustic

t be a pilgr

untain

look, the cand

f folded grani

, whose swayed gr

ling

is a mount

teeped in sunsh

when shadows

ain it

tain Soul," by Kathar