This study considers how institutional histories of admitting women are associated with present college experiences, and uses data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education to compare the experiences of women at women's colleges or former women's colleges to those of women at former men's colleges and colleges that have always been…

At the moment of its founding in 1911, Connecticut College for Women exhibited a curricular tension between an emphasis on the liberal arts, which mirrored the elite men's and women's colleges of the day, and vocational aspects, which made it a different type of women's college, one designed to prepare women for the kind of lives they would lead…

This institutional autoethnography (IAE) explores the political and pedagogical dynamics of WPA and WAC/WID work within an exceedingly small, resolutely single-sex, and assuredly rural liberal arts campus ecology. Working within a theoretical framework informed by WAC/WID's historical commitment to increasing literacy in students from diverse…

Historical scholarship has traditionally focused on the commonalities uniting Catharine Beecher and Mary Lyon, the two leading antebellum women's educational reformers in New England. This essay shifts that focus by contrasting their educational philosophies and exploring the implications their differences had for the development of American…

This dissertation is a qualitative case study of how three liberal arts colleges rationalized and provided physical education courses despite a trend in higher education to reduce or eliminate physical education from the curriculum. Kalamazoo College, Bennett College for Women, and Barnard College for Women continue to provide physical education…

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have received inadequate funding since their inception. This has challenged the development of programs and infrastructure, the adoption of technology, and the recruitment of faculty and students. Yet among HBCUs there are standouts that, despite unequal funding patterns in comparison to…

Curriculum development to incorporate new scholarship about women is necessary and would be aided by two ingredients: visiting professorships to bring artists and scholar-teachers versed in the new scholarship to campus for the benefit of both faculty and students, and stipends or release time for faculty wishing to transform existing courses.…

Essays include: some considerations on the higher education of women (Rosemary Park); three women, creators of change (Esther Raushenbush); women's education, the case for the single-sex college (Susan Romer Kaplan); liberal arts education and women's development (C. Robert Pace); women's studies, its origin, organization, and prospects (Sheila…

Strategies employed by Hood College to bolster its enrollment and survive are discussed. They include eliminating some underenrolled or duplicative courses, launching new programs of study, adoption of a core curriculum, making planning an integral part of every department, improving budgeting, improving student services, and professionalizing…

The establishment of Kirkland College as the first independent women's college founded in the East since 1926 is reviewed with focus on its merger in 1978 into its parent institution, Hamilton College. Financial problems are cited and extreme differences in campus outlook are discussed. (LBH)

A study examined the administratively sponsored rituals of academic and student life at a long-established, women's liberal arts college as metaphors for the ways students make meaning from the college experience. It is concluded that rituals can embody institutional mission, explain important educational processes, and shape views of the…

This annual compilation explores the history of small colleges in five articles that focus on the "uses" of this history in facing current debates concerning institutional directions. A brief introduction by Harold S. Wechsler addresses the role of institutional history for the small college. The first article is "Celebrating Roots:…

Nannerl Overhouser Keohane, one of a new breed of women presidents of women's colleges, is strongly committed to feminist scholarship and is also working to prepare Wellesley's graduates for the technology of the future. The role of minority students at Wellesley is discussed. (MLW)

At two women's liberal arts colleges, freshman (n=127, n=140) perceptions of academic advising style were measured. Although students reported developmental advising at both institutions, the mean score at one college was significantly more developmental than at the other. Frequency of contact and an academic planning component were significant…

The study examined the advising attitudes and practices of faculty members identified as developmental advisors at two women's liberal arts colleges. Developmental advising, as distinguished from prescriptive advising, was defined as a relationship based on shared responsibility in which students participate in the academic planning process.…