Vassar College facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Vassar College

Former name	Vassar Female College
Type	Private liberal arts college
Established	1861; 163 years ago (1861)
Academic affiliations	NAICU Annapolis Group Oberlin Group CLAC
Endowment	$1.379 billion (2021)
President	Elizabeth H. Bradley
Academic staff	355 (2019)
Undergraduates	2,441 (2019)
Location	Poughkeepsie, New York , U.S. 41°41′15″N 73°53′45″W / 41.68750°N 73.89583°W / 41.68750; -73.89583
Campus	Suburban, 1,000 acres (400 ha)
Newspaper	The Miscellany News
Colors	Burgundy and gray
Nickname	Brewers
Mascot	The Brewer

Vassar College ( VASS-ər) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely following Elmira College. It became coeducational in 1969 and now has a gender ratio at the national average. The college is one of the historic Seven Sisters, the first elite women's colleges in the U.S., and has a historic relationship with Yale University, which suggested a merger before they both became coeducational institutions. About 2,450 students attend the college. As of 2021, its acceptance rate is 19%.

The college offers B.A. degrees in more than 50 majors and features a flexible curriculum designed to promote a breadth of studies. Student groups at the college include theater and comedy organizations, a cappella groups, club sports teams, volunteer and service groups, and a circus troupe. Vassar College's varsity sports teams, known as the Brewers, play in the NCAA's Division III as members of the Liberty League.

The Vassar campus comprises over 1,000 acres (400 ha) and more than 100 buildings, including two National Historic Landmarks and an additional National Historic Place. A designated arboretum, the campus features more than 200 species of trees, a native plant preserve, and a 530-acre (210 ha) ecological preserve.

History

Matthew Vassar

Vassar was founded as a women's school under the name Vassar Female College in 1861. Its first president was Milo P. Jewett, who had previously been first president of another women's school, Judson College; he led a staff of ten professors and twenty-one instructors. But after only a year, its founder, Matthew Vassar, had the word Female cut from the name, prompting some residents of the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, to quip that its founder believed it might one day admit male students. The college became coeducational in 1969.

Vassar was the second of the Seven Sisters colleges, higher education schools that were formerly strictly for women, and historically sister institutions to the Ivy League. It was chartered by its namesake, brewer Matthew Vassar, in 1861 in the Hudson Valley, about 70 miles (110 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. 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-educational. The formal decision to become co-ed came after its trustees declined an offer to merge with Yale University, its sibling institution, in the wave of mergers between the historically all-male colleges of the Ivy League and their Seven Sisters counterparts.

Main Building, built in 1861 by architect James Renwick, Jr., had the most interior space of any building in the United States, until the U.S. Capitol was completed in 1868.

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, and Vassar." A select and elite few of Vassar's students were allowed entry into the school's secret society Delta Sigma Rho, started in 1922. Before becoming President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Trustee.

Roughly 2,450 students attend Vassar, and 98% live on campus. About 60% come from public high schools, and 40% come from private schools (both independent and religious). Vassar is currently 56% women and 44% men, at national average for national liberal arts colleges. Students are taught by more than 336 faculty members, virtually all holding the doctorate degree or its equivalent. The student-faculty ratio is 8:1, average class size, 17.

In recent freshman classes, students of color constituted 32–38% of matriculants. International students from over 60 countries make up 8-10% of the student body. In May 2007, in keeping 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.

Vassar president Frances D. Fergusson served for two decades. She retired in the spring of 2006, and was succeeded by Catharine Bond Hill, former provost at Williams College, who served for 10 years until she departed in 2016. Hill was replaced by Elizabeth Howe Bradley in 2017.

The college was listed as a census-designated place (Vassar College CDP) in 2019.

Presidents

Catharine Bond Hill served as college president from 2006 to 2016.

Campus

Architecture

The Vassar College Observatory is one of two National Historic Landmarks on the college's campus, along with Main Building.

Vassar's campus, also an arboretum, is 1,000 acres (400 ha) and has more than 100 buildings, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International, with several buildings of architectural interest. At the center of campus stands Main Building, one of the best examples of Second Empire architecture in the United States. When it was opened, Main Building was the largest building in the U.S. in terms of floor space. It 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. Rombout House was purchased by the college in 1915 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Many original 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. 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.

Libraries

Vassar's Thompson Library

Vassar is home to one of the largest undergraduate library collections in the U.S. The library collection today – which actually encompasses eight libraries at Vassar – contains about 1 million volumes and 7,500 serial, periodical and newspaper titles, as well as an extensive collection of microfilm and microfiche, with special collections of Ellen Swallow Richards, Albert Einstein, Mary McCarthy, and Elizabeth Bishop. Vassar has been a Federal Depository library for selected U.S. Government documents since 1943 and currently receives approximately 25% of the titles available through the Federal Depository Program. Since 1988, Vassar has been a New York State Reference Center, part of the New York Depository Program. The library also selectively purchases United Nations documents.

A major renovation to Thompson Library was completed in 2001.

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

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

Vassar College was the first college in the United States to be founded with a full-scale museum as part of its original plan. Matthew Vassar was known for declaring that "art should stand boldly forth as an educational force". The art collection at Vassar dates to the founding of the college, when 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. One of the largest U.S. college or university art museums, the Frances Lehman Loeb Gallery displays a selection of Vassar's 18,000 articles of art in the building designed by Cesar Pelli.

Today, the gallery's collection displays art from the ancient world up through contemporary works. The collection includes work by European masters such as Brueghel, Gustave 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'Keeffe, 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. Students at the college can act as liaisons between the art center and the wider college community through work on the Student Committee of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, to which incoming freshmen can apply.

In November 2016, the gallery opened the Hoene Hoy Photography gallery on the second floor, named after Anne Hoene Hoy from the class of 1963.

Capital improvements

Bridge for Laboratory Sciences exterior west nearing completion, March 2016

In 2011, Vassar embarked on a $120 million project to improve science facilities at the college, centering on the construction of a new $90 million Bridge for Laboratory Sciences. The project included renovations of Olmsted Hall of Biological Sciences, New England Building and Sanders Physics Building as well as the construction of a new Integrated Science Center, a bridge building that connected to Olmsted Hall and crossed over the Fonteyn Kill. It was intended both to modernize and to support a collaborative and cross-disciplinary science community. The bridge building was completed in 2016.

Davison, one of Vassar's nine residence houses, was renovated during the 2008–2009 school year. During the year of renovation, Davison's residents were absorbed into the college's remaining residence houses. This was 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 was scheduled to be closed and renovated during the 2010–2011 school year, but complete renovation was postponed due to the economic downturn, with a number of improvements phased-in instead. Improvements were also made to Josselyn in 2011.

Academics

Rockefeller Hall, built in 1897, is home to the departments of Political Science, Philosophy, and Mathematics.

Vassar confers a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in more than 50 majors, including the independent major, in which a student may design a course of study, 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 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, Turkey, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, and Russia; students may also join pre-approved 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 no graduate students or teachers' assistants. The most popular majors, in terms of sheer numbers, are English, political science, psychology, economics and biology. Vassar also offers a variety of correlate sequences, or minors, for intensive study in many disciplines.

Admissions

of the NCAA, as a member of the Liberty League. The nickname originates from the college's founder and namesake Matthew Vassar, whose family ran a brewery in Poughkeepsie and would later amass a sizable fortune in the industry.

Vassar College currently offers the following varsity athletics: basketball, baseball, cross-country, fencing (competes in the Northeast Fencing Conference), field hockey (women only), golf (women only), lacrosse, rowing, rugby, soccer, squash, swimming/diving, tennis, track, and volleyball. Club sports include ultimate (open, mixed, and women's), ski team (competes in USCSA), equestrian team (competes in IHSA), polo team (USPA), cycling team (competes in ECCC), quidditch, and co-ed U.S. Figure Skating synchronized skating team.

Basketball teams play in Vassar's new Athletics and Fitness Center. Volleyball teams play in Kenyon Hall, reopened in 2006. Soccer, baseball, field hockey and lacrosse teams play at Prentiss Fields, 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.

In 2008, the Vassar men's volleyball team made the school's first appearance in a national championship game, beating UC Santa Cruz 3–0 in the semifinal before falling to Springfield in the championship game.

In 2007, the Vassar cycling team hosted the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Championship in Poughkeepsie and New Paltz, New York. The competition included a 100-mile (160 km) road race over the Shawangunk Mountains in New Paltz as well as a criterium in Poughkeepsie just blocks from the school's campus.

In a controversial move, on November 5, 2009, the athletics department leaders decided the men's and women's rowing team would transition over a two-year period from a varsity to a club sport as a cost-saving measure.

In 1940, 1941 and 1942, Vassar athletes won national intercollegiate women's tennis championships each year in both singles (Katherine Hubbell) and doubles (Hubbell, Carolyn "Lonny" Myers).

In 2018, the Vassar women's rugby team won the school's first team national championship, beating Winona State 50–13 in the final of the USA Rugby Women's Division 2.

Notable people

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  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, former First Lady of the United States

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  Grace Hopper, inventor of the first compiler for a computer programming language

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  Meryl Streep, Academy Award-winning actress

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  Jane Fonda, Academy Award-winning actress

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  Anne Hathaway, Academy Award-winning actress

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  Lisa Kudrow, Emmy Award-winning actress

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  Noah Baumbach, Academy Award-nominated independent filmmaker

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  Jason Blum, Emmy Award-winning film and television producer

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  Anthony Bourdain, Emmy Award-winning author and celebrity chef

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  Elisabeth Murdoch, media executive

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  Mark Ronson, Grammy Award-winning musician and producer

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  Victoria Legrand, lead vocalist, songwriter and keyboardist of Beach House

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  Elizabeth Bishop, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

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  Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pulitzer Prize-winning lyrical poet

Notable Vassar alumni include:

Notable attendees who did not graduate from Vassar include:

• Julia Tutwiler, notable education and prison reform advocate
• Anthony Bourdain, professional chef and television personality
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, First Lady of the United States
• Katharine Graham, Washington Post publisher
• Susan Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation
• Anne Hathaway, actress
• Jane Fonda, actress
• Justin Long, actor
• Mike D, member of the Beastie Boys
• Mark Ronson, Oscar-winning musician
• Rachael Yamagata, musician
• Curtis Sittenfeld, writer

Notable Vassar faculty include:

• Maria Mitchell, pioneering female astronomer
• Grace Hopper, computer scientist
• Monique Wittig, philosopher
• Grace Macurdy, classicist
• Richard Edward Wilson, composer
• Uma Narayan, philosopher
• Mitchell Miller, philosopher
• Bryan W. Van Norden, philosopher
• James Merrell, historian
• Peter Stillman, political scientist
• Paul Russell, writer
• Hua Hsu, writer
• Nancy Willard, writer
• Frank Bergon, writer
• Michael Joyce, writer and pioneer of hypertext fiction
• Robert DeMaria, scholar and editor of Samuel Johnson

Gallery

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  Shakespeare Garden

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  Interior of the Vassar Chapel

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  Men's rowing team

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  Davison House

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  Class of 1951 Observatory

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  Sunset Lake

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  Cushing House

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  Taylor Hall main gate

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  Noyes House

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  Looking up Sunset Hill towards Sanders Physics

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  The preserved facade of Avery Hall on the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film

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  Ferry Cooperative House

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  The Fonteyn Kill

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  Main Building in 2007, seen from near the entrance to campus

See also

In Spanish: Vassar College para niños