Swarthmore College

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Parrish Hall
Swarthmore Science Center

The Swarthmore College is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore in US -Bundesstaat Pennsylvania . Opened in 1869 and founded by Quakers , the facility is located about 15 kilometers southwest of Philadelphia .

Key data

As a liberal arts college , Swarthmore offers undergraduate programs in the humanities and social sciences , biology , physics , engineering, and other fields. There is a consortium for joint study programs with Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania .

Around 1600 students are enrolled at the university (2018), 95% of whom live on campus. 13% of the students come from abroad. The number of faculty is approximately 190. The annual operating budget of 148 million US dollars is financed 43% from tuition fees and 53% from income from the university assets of approximately 1.75 billion US dollar.

history

founding

Swarthmore College was founded at the instigation of members of the Hicksite Friends , a liberal branch of the Quakers . The three main principles that were to be implemented in the planned university were, on the one hand, the co-education of girls and boys, secondly, a focus on the natural sciences and, thirdly, a “sheltered” training for young Quakers under the guidance of their fellow believers.

Among the most important advocates of the university's founding were Benjamin Hallowell (1799–1868), President of the later University of Maryland since 1859 , the abolition activist, suffragette and writer Martha Ellicott Tyson (1795–1873) and the businessman Samuel Willets (1795–1883) , also supporters of abolitionism and women's rights activists.

A first meeting to start the project was held in 1860 at Martha Ellicott Tyson's estate. In 1861 a joint committee of Quakers from New York , Philadelphia, and Baltimore announced the intention to establish a "boarding school for Quaker children and teacher training". To this end, the committee brought 150,000 US dollars on the purchase of farmland and building the building. In 1862, the Friends Educational Association was founded in Philadelphia and it was determined that as many women as men should belong to it.

The name Swarthmore was chosen in 1863 after Swarthmoor Hall , a country house in Ulverston in Cumbria in England and the center of the early Quaker movement.

The unusual way of founding a stock corporation was chosen to finance and manage the university . The college was now owned by 6,000 shareholders who funded the project at $ 25 per share. On April 1, 1864, the Pennsylvania Senate and House of Representatives approved Swarthmore College "to establish and operate a school and college for the purpose of instructing persons of both sexes in the various fields of science, literature and the arts."

Edward Parrish (1821–1872) was founding president of Swarthmore College in 1865. Parrish, a trained pharmacist, traveled on horseback for months to raise money for school. Parrish was particularly keen to make education accessible to all walks of life. He declared that it was important "to separate oneself from the aristocratic idea of ​​an 'educated class'". Parrish also taught ethics, chemistry, and physics at the school.

In 1866 the foundation stone for the college building (later named Parrish Hall in honor of the founding president ) was laid. It was designed by the architect Addison Hutton , a Quaker, over 100 meters long and had a library, geological museum, classrooms, a chemistry laboratory, dining room, kitchen and accommodation for the students.

On November 10, 1869, the opening ceremony took place in the presence of Lucretia Mott, who was significantly involved in the founding . Initially, the board of directors had only planned to accept 75 pupils and students; Due to the unexpectedly large number of registrations, 199 were accepted, including 25 as college students, of which 15 were female. The majority of students were secondary school students - the age limit was 13 and still only required to be a Quaker or a shareholder to enroll. It was not until several years later that the number of college students exceeded that of secondary school students. In 1892, secondary school activities were given up.

In 1870 the university's founding president, Parrish, was forced to resign from the board of directors because of his attitude towards school and university students, which was viewed as too liberal and permissive . Then US President Ulysses S. Grant hired him as a negotiator in a conflict between the US government and Indians in the Great Plains . On this mission he fell ill with malaria in what is now Oklahoma and died of the disease in Fort Sill .

On the late evening of September 25, 1881, a fire broke out in the school building. People were not harmed, but the building burned to the ground. Two weeks later, teaching was resumed in rented rooms nearby. Reconstruction began immediately and the building was available again on the first anniversary of the fire.

In 1888, the Chair of the Mathematics Department, Susan Jane Cunningham , designed and built the first observatory at Swarthmore College. Cunningham had been there from the inception of Swarthmore and had been a professor since 1871. In the still (as of 2020) named after her building, which no longer serves as an observatory since the 1960s, she lived until her retirement in 1906. The as Cunningham Observatory designated plant was by her builder of a 15-cm refractor telescope equipped and served mainly for teaching.

In 1911 denominational ties to Quakerism were given up.

First World War

On October 25, 1913, US President Woodrow Wilson spoke in Swarthmore on the founding day of the college. During World War I , Swarthmores President Joseph Swain opposed US entry into the war; Among other things, he spoke for this purpose at a hearing of the US House of Representatives . After entering the war, however, Swain finally advocated the establishment of a military training camp on campus for students of the college, which had been requested by the representative of the male students. Swain thus drew the anger of numerous members of the pacifist and anti-militarist-dominated religious community of the Quakers. In May 1918 the camp was the only one of its kind to be established in a college founded by Quakers.

Second World War; Opening up to African American

In 1943, under College President John Nason, the board of directors decided that from now on black applicants could also be accepted as students in Swarthmore. Until then, this had not been permitted, even though African-Americans had been studying in Swarthmore as members of US Navy training programs since the United States entered World War II . In the decades leading up to the war, two actually successful applicants had been turned down after it was discovered that they were African American. The first case was from the beginning of the 20th century; in the second case, in 1932, Swarthmore successfully sought admission to Dartmouth College . However, numerous students did not agree with the rejection. After Nason's inauguration as college president in 1940, he was petitioned to open the college to African-Americans, and in April 1941 the student newspaper Phoenix wrote:

“We are guilty of the frequent and deliberate error of not fitting what we do into the pattern of what we pretend to believe, of isolating hard actuality from charming theory. Most of us [see] a meaningful relationship between the general ideal of racial equality in the United States and the situation here at Swarthmore ... "

“We are guilty of the widespread and deliberate mistake of failing to conform our actions to the pattern of what we are supposed to believe; guilty of separating hard reality from magical theory. Most of us [see] a relevant relationship between the general ideal of ethnic equality in the United States and the situation here in Swarthmore ... "

21st century

In 2010, Rebecca Chopp became a female president of Swarthmore College for the first time. Her successor, Valerie Smith, became the first African American in the role in 2015.

In December 2016, following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, University President Smith and Board Chairman Tom Spock declared the college a sanctuary campus , where the university administration will do everything possible to protect university members who by virtue of membership of a Minority are persecuted. This also included people without a valid residence permit. Like the Sanctuary Cities in the USA, Swarthmore announced in this context that, among other things, it would no longer voluntarily provide information about students to the immigration authorities, grant them access to the campus without a legal obligation, and that the college's own security agencies would not investigate the legal status of To employ university members.

President

Personalities

Professors

see also category: University Lecturers (Swarthmore)

Graduates

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Swarthmore College. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . Accessed May 10, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b Facts & Figures. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c 1860: Founders and the Quaker Tradition. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  4. ^ 1861: Joint Committee of Friends. In: A Swarthmore College Timeline. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  5. ↑ 1862: Friends Educational Association. In: A Swarthmore College Timeline. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  6. ↑ 1863: Swarthmore's Namesake. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  7. ↑ 1864: Incorporation. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  8. ↑ a b 1865: First President Edward Parrish. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  9. ↑ 1866: Cornerstone Laid. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  10. ↑ 1869: College Opens, Admits First Class. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  11. ↑ 1881: Parrish Hall Burns. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Elizabeth Weber: The Cunningham Building: Swarthmore's Other Observatory . In: The Phoenix . November 15, 1996 ( online at swarthmore.edu [accessed July 19, 2020]).
  13. ↑ 1913: Woodrow Wilson Speaks at Founders Day. In: A Swarthmore College Timeline. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  14. ^ 1914: President Swain Lobbies Congress Against WWI. In: A Swarthmore College Timeline. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  15. ↑ 1918: Student Army Training Corps. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  16. ↑ 1943: Integration of Student Body. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  17. ↑ 2010: 14th President Rebecca Chopp. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  18. ↑ 2015: 15th President Valerie Smith. Swarthmore College, accessed May 9, 2018 .
  19. ^ Swarthmore Board Pledges Sanctuary for Undocumented Students, All Community Members. Swarthmore College, December 2, 2016, accessed May 9, 2018 .
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Coordinates: 39 ° 54 ′ 18.2 "  N , 75 ° 21 ′ 14.4"  W.