Lafayette College

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Lafayette College
motto Veritas liberabit
founding 1826
Sponsorship Private
place Easton, Pennsylvania United States
President Alison Byerly
Students 2488
Employee 215
Foundation assets $ 800+ million
University sports NCAA Division I - Patriot League
Website www.lafayette.edu

The Lafayette College is a private, non-denominational college in Easton (Pennsylvania) , which in 1826 by James Madison Porter was established and other citizens Easton. The college is named after the French General La Fayette . The college offers undergraduate degrees in liberal arts and engineering . Since 1970 women have also been admitted to study at Lafayette College. The campus is located on College Hill in the Lehigh Valley and offers accommodation for all students. Since 1854 the administration of the college has been associated with the Presbyterian Church .

history

Founding and development in the 19th century

Marquis de La Fayette, who gave the college its name
South College, a residence of Lafayette College
Colton Chapel
Kirby Library

The initiative to found the college came from James Madison Porter and other citizens of Easton. At a meeting on December 27, 1824, they decided to name the college after the French General La Fayette ("as a testament to the respect for his talents, virtues and pioneering deeds in the pursuit of freedom"). A veteran of the French Revolution , La Fayette traveled the United States from July 1824 to September 1825 to examine the fledgling state, which corresponded to its own political ideals.

A 35-member Board of Trustees was set up to found and manage the college . The curriculum was designed by Porter and attorneys Jacob Wagener and Joel Jones and submitted to the Governor of Pennsylvania . Governor John Andrew Shulze approved the curriculum on March 9, 1826, which has since been considered the founding date of Lafayette College.

On March 15, 1826, the Board of Trustees elected the first board of directors of Lafayette College. This consisted of Thomas McKeen as treasurer, Joel Jones as secretary and James Madison Porter as chairman. During the first few years, the board of directors was primarily concerned with raising an endowment to support the college. The first four students enrolled on May 1, 1829, and were tutored by the Presbyterian Rev. John Monteith. In 1830 Rev. George Junkin was called to be president of the college. Junkin had previously directed the Manual Labor Academy in Germantown and relocated that facility to Easton. Study and work went hand in hand in the early years of college: the students worked alongside their studies in agriculture and for artisans to finance their studies.

Academic classes initially took place on an empty farm. In 1839 the college acquired the area of ​​today's campus (College Hill) and built a new building there, which was completed and occupied in 1841. President Junkin left college in 1841 after arguments with the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, James Madison Porter.

To secure funding for the college, the Board of Trustees sought church support. In 1854 the administration of the college was attached to the Presbyterian Church . In return, the Presbyterian Church paid the college $ 1,000 annually for the budget. In the following years 1855 and 1856 the number of students reached its first high at 112. In 1857 alone, 27 students completed their studies at the same time. This Class of 1857 was also the first fraternity founded the college that was kept secret until 1915 and not supported by the College.

The main focus of Lafayette College was engineering .

First World War

After the United States entered World War I , Lafayette College supported the war effort by encouraging its students to work on farms. Those who took part in these assignments received their academic degree in absentia . Professor Beverly Kunkel and some college students and faculty members formed a medical service that was affiliated with the United States Army Ambulance Service . The campus was transformed into a parade ground in 1917. After the war ended, the college resumed normal operations on January 2, 1919.

Economic crisis

During the Great Depression , the college's student population dropped dramatically from 1930 to 1934. To make his engineering degree more attractive, Lafayette College held information weeks in high schools to introduce students to the basics of the engineering profession. In 1935 and 1936, the number of enrollments slowly increased again. Although the college struggled with its own problems, it did its part to support the population during the economic crisis: it set up a free teaching program for the unemployed in 1932 and made its gym available as accommodation for the unemployed.

As the end of the economic crisis loomed in 1934, College President William Mather Lewis launched the Decade of Progress campaign . On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the engineering course and in view of the tremendous technical progress, the president set the goal of collecting $ 500,000 in donations by 1944 and thus financing a new building (Gates Hall) , the renovation of the Van Wickle Memorial Library and various modernization measures to tackle. The campaign raised a total of $ 280,853.34 through 1944.

Second World War

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt pleaded for the United States to join the war after the outbreak of World War II, 37 lecturers from Lafayette College protested in a telegram. After the USA entered the war, faculty at Lafayette College set up a Council of Defense . The college also established a Reserve Officer Training Corps and was hired by the War Department to train engineers and pilots for the armed forces. The college's student population reached unprecedented heights under the Serviceman's Readjustment Act (1944), with nearly 2,000 students in 1949.

Since the Second World War

The Morris R. Williams Center for the Arts
Computer workstations in the Skillman Library

A recurring theme at Lafayette College was co-education or the admission of women to university. In 1967 the lecturers set up a committee to deal with this question, which in 1968 recommended the establishment of a co-educational curriculum. In September 1970, the first women enrolled at Lafayette College. There were 146 female students in this year alone.

A 2004 study of religious life at Lafayette College concluded that the college's formal association with the Presbyterian Church needed to be verified. The connection remains unchanged, although Lafayette College is not a member of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities .

In 2007, Lafayette College celebrated the 250th birthday of its namesake with a series of lectures and festive events.

Subjects

Lafayette College offers undergraduate courses in 65 subjects: 37 lead to a Bachelor of Arts, 14 to a Bachelor of Science. There are also ten courses in the natural sciences and four in engineering. The social sciences , engineering, biology , English and psychology have the highest enrollment rates . In addition, students have the opportunity to get out of various courses of their own major subject (Major) together.

Lafayette College students come from 42 US states and 37 foreign states. The engineering course offers five focus programs: civil engineering , chemical engineering , electrical and computer engineering , mechanical engineering and engineering. The students in these courses do on average better than students from other universities in nationwide exams: In 2012, 94% passed the basic engineering examination; the national average was 70–87% (depending on the exact subject).

Ranking

magazine Ranking
Forbes - Top Colleges 48
US News - National Liberal Arts Colleges 35
PayScale - Overall College Return On Investment Rank 22nd
Kiplinger - Personal Finance 31
Journals of Blacks in Higher Education - 50 Leading Liberal Arts and Universities 5

Sports

The college's sports teams are the leopards . The university is a member of the Patriot League .

Personalities

Alumni

Two Nobel Prize winners studied at Lafayette College: Philip Showalter Hench (1896–1965) received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1950 , Haldan Keffer Hartline (1903–1983) received the 1967 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine .

Other well-known college graduates include:

Lecturers

  • Eugene Cook Bingham (1878–1945), chemist, head of the chemical department 1916–1945
  • Ernst Wolfgang Caspari (1909–1988), zoologist, geneticist, assistant professor 1941–1944
  • Francis Andrew March (1825–1911), philologist, professor of English and comparative linguistics 1857–1906
  • James Madison Porter (1793–1862), President of the Board of Trustees 1826–1852 and Professor of Law and Economics 1837–1852
  • Theodore Roethke (1908–1963), poet, 1931–1935 lecturer in English

President of the College

  1. George Junkin , 1832-1840
  2. John William Yeomans , 1840-1848
  3. George Junkin (again), 1848–1849
  4. Charles William Nassau , 1849-1850
  5. Daniel V. McLean , 1850-1854
  6. George Wilson McPhail , 1854-1861
  7. William Cassady Cattell , 1863-1883
  8. James Hall Mason Knox , 1883-1890
  9. Ethelbert Dudley Warfield , 1891-1914
  10. John Henry MacCracken , 1915-1926
  11. William Mather Lewis , 1926-1945
  12. Ralph Cooper Hutchison , 1945-1957
    Guy Everett Snavely , 1957–58 (acting)
  13. K. Roald Bergethon , 1958-1978.
  14. David Ellis , 1978-1990
  15. Robert I. Rotberg , 1990-1993
  16. Arthur J. Rothkopf , 1993-2006
  17. Daniel Weiss , 2006–2013
  18. Allison Byerly (since 2013)

Trustees

literature

  • David Bishop Cook: The Biography of a College: Lafayette . Hoboken (NJ) 1932
  • David B. Skillman: The Biography of a College. Being the History of the First Century of the Life of Lafayette College . Easton (PA) 1932
  • Albert W. Gendebien: The Biography of a College: Beginning the History of the Third Half-Century of Lafayette College . York (PA) 1986

Web links

Commons : Lafayette College  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b History of Lafayette College . Lafayette College. Archived from the original on September 4, 2010. Retrieved January 22, 2007.
  2. ^ A b c d David B. Skillman: The Biography of a College. Being the History of the First Century of the Life of Lafayette College . Easton (PA) 1932.
  3. ^ David Bishop Cook: The Biography of a College: Lafayette . Hoboken (NJ) 1932.
  4. ^ A b c Albert W. Gendebien: The Biography of a College: Beginning the History of the Third Half-Century of Lafayette College . York (PA) 1986.
  5. ^ Lafayette: Coed in 1970 . Retrieved March 7, 2013.
  6. ↑ Chaplain position to be eliminated upon Miller's retirement this spring . The Lafayette.
  7. ↑ Marquis de Lafayette at 250 . Lafayette College. Archived from the original on August 27, 2007. Retrieved September 24, 2007.
  8. ↑ Lafayette College Majors . Lafayette College. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
  9. ^ Program: Division of Engineering . Lafayette College. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
  10. ^ Forbes . Retrieved March 9, 2013.
  11. ↑ US News . Retrieved September 10, 2014.
  12. ↑ PaysScale college rankings . Retrieved March 9, 2013.
  13. ^ Kiplinger Personal Finance Rankings . Retrieved March 9, 2013.
  14. ^ Journals of Blacks in Higher Education . Retrieved March 16, 2013.
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