Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts historically women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States.
The Seven Sisters is a term that refers to seven highly selective liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women's colleges. They were created to provide women with the educational equivalent to the Ivy League colleges. The name Seven Sisters is a reference to the Greek myth of The Pleiades, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione. The daughters were collectively referred to as The Seven Sisters.
Mary Mason Lyon was an American pioneer in women's education. She established the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, in 1834. She then established Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1837 and served as its first president for 12 years. Lyon's vision fused intellectual challenge and moral purpose. She valued socioeconomic diversity and endeavored to make the seminary affordable for students of modest means.
Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male students to their graduate schools or in smaller numbers to undergraduate programs, but all serve a primarily female student body.
Wheaton College is a private liberal arts college in Norton, Massachusetts. Wheaton was founded in 1834 as a female seminary. The trustees officially changed the name of the Wheaton Female Seminary to Wheaton College in 1912 after receiving a college charter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It remained one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States until men began to be admitted in 1988. It enrolls 1,669 undergraduate students with no graduate students.
Western College for Women, known locally as Western College, was primarily a women's college in Oxford, Ohio, between 1855 and 1974. In 1979, the former college, known now as Western Campus of Miami University, was designated a U.S. Historic district known as the Western Female Seminary Historic District.
Mary Emma Woolley was an American educator, peace activist and women's suffrage supporter. She was the first female student to attend Brown University and served as the 11th President of Mount Holyoke College from 1900 to 1937.
Ada Howard was the first president of Wellesley College.
Ipswich Female Seminary was an American female seminary in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The institution was an early school for the secondary and tertiary-level education of young women. Enrollment averaged 116 students. According to Academy records, 88 of the school's graduates went on to teach as educational missionaries in the western and southern United States.
Lucy Weston Pickett was a Mary Lyon Professor and Camille and Henry Dreyfus Chair in Chemistry at Mount Holyoke College.
Mount Saint Mary College is a private Catholic college in Newburgh, New York. It was founded in 1959 by the Dominican Sisters.
Hartford Female Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut was established in 1823, by Catharine Beecher, making it one of the first major educational institutions for women in the United States. By 1826 it had enrolled nearly 100 students. It implemented then-radical programs such as physical education courses for women. Beecher sought the aid of Mary Lyon in the development of the seminary. The Hartford Female Seminary closed towards the later half of the 19th century.
Peabody Hall is a mixed-use academic and residential building located on the campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The original building, known as Seminary Hall, was built in 1855, and was the central building of Western College for Women. That building burned down in 1860 and was rebuilt the following year, only to become damaged by an 1871 fire. Rebuilt again that same year, the building was renamed Peabody Hall, after Helen Peabody the first head of Western College, in 1905. Peabody Hall is one of two residential buildings on Miami's Western Campus still used for their original purposes. It is one of 15 contributing buildings to the Western Female Seminary National Historic District.
Marcia Anna Keith (1859–1950) was a physicist, teacher of physics to women, and a charter member of the American Physical Society since its founding in 1899.
Fidelia Fisk was an American Congregationalist missionary and teacher. She founded the Fiske Seminary boarding school in Urmia in West Azerbaijan Province, Qajar Iran.
Yau Tsit Law (1888-1961) was a Chinese Christian educator, and one of the first Chinese women to graduate from Mount Holyoke College.
Alice Gordon Gulick was an American missionary teacher in Spain.
Ellen Rebecca Whitmore was the first principal teacher at the Cherokee Female Seminary in modern-day Oklahoma and later served as a missionary in Hawaii.
Sarah A. Worden was an American painter of landscapes and portraits. She was also an art instructor in various schools and for several years, at Mount Holyoke College.
Eunice Caldwell Cowles was an American educator who influenced hundreds of women in the U.S. and abroad. She was the first associate of Mary Lyon in the opening of Mount Holyoke Seminary. She had previously graduated under Lyon and Zilpah Grant from Ipswich Seminary in 1829, where she was afterwards principal from 1844 to 1876. She also served as the first principal of Wheaton Seminary. She was also affiliated with the Christian Woman's Board of Missions (C.W.B.M.), having co-founded the Essex North Branch and serving as its president.
