Tag Archives: Connecting the past with the present

The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center Celebrates the History of Graduate Education – check out today’s poster session!

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As part of the Graduate Student’s Appreciation Week we have created a poster to chart the history of graduate education at Bryn Mawr College

The poster is currently being displayed in Thomas Great Hall along with posters from current graduate students. I will be available to talk about this poster tonight at 5.30pm along with the graduate students at a special event to be held before the talk by Professor James Wright of the Archaeology Department on ‘Graduate Education Through the Years’.

On Friday there will be a networking reception with current graduate students and alumnae/i and for this I have prepared a series of images which will be projected while the event is happening. This includes images of former graduate studies deans, students and facts about graduate education at Bryn Mawr College that you may be unfamiliar with. Be sure to check it out! The event is happening at 5pm in the Ely Room of Wyndham.

For more information on the events happening tonight and throughout the rest of the week check out http://inside.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2012/04/12/graduate-student-appreciation-week/

Focusing on Graduate Education at Bryn Mawr College – get involved!

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As you might have seen from notices and emails, the annual Graduate Student Appreciation Week is coming up from April 16th – 20th. This is run jointly by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and the Graduate Student Association and I have been working with them for this exciting event. Graduates, their areas of study and their post-Bryn Mawr lives are a focus of the research we are conducting at The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center and we are delighted to be involved. Check out our poster at the display on Wednesday April 18th at the Thomas Great Hall Graduate Research Symposium.

Bryn Mawr College’s graduate schools was one of the earliest to accept women fully into programs for masters and doctoral level education and represented a significant achievement for women in pursuing academic careers. If you haven’t yet seen the program of events, here’s what’s involved:

Monday, April 16th, 6:00pm – Thomas 110

Keynote Address by former President Pat McPherson: “A college without graduate students never occurred to us.” –M. Carey Thomas

Opening Remarks by Dean Osirim (GSAS) and Dean Bailey (GSSWSR)

Closing Remarks by Provost Cassidy

7:30pm – Thomas Great Hall: Reception following the Keynote Address

 Tuesday, April 17th. 6:00pm – GSSWSR Gym

Graduate Student (GSAS/GSSWSR) and Faculty Happy Hour: A time to relax and celebrate the connection between students and faculty

 Wednesday, April 18th, 5:30pm – Thomas Great Hall

Graduate Student Research Symposium: Presenters will display posters/answer questions throughout the hall; light refreshments will be served

6:00pm – Thomas Great Hall: Prof. James Wright (Archaeology Dept.) will present a talk on Graduate Education through the Years

7:30pm – Thomas Great hall: Graduate Student Research Symposium Awards Ceremony: GSAS and GSSWSR students will present Faculty Appreciation Awards; A Poster Award will be given

 Thursday, April 19th:

12noon – London Room, Thomas: TA Luncheon with Dean Osirim

4:00pm – Quita Woodward Room, Thomas: Reception with Graduate School Deans, Past and Present

4:30pm – Carpenter 21: Panel discussion with Graduate School Deans, Past and Present: Past and Present Deans from the GSAS and GSSWSR will discuss the role of graduate education at Bryn Mawr and share their personal experiences in the position of dean

 Friday, April 20th: 5:00pm – Ely Room, Wyndham

Networking Reception with Current Graduate Students (GSAS/GSSWSR) and Alumnae/i

Sponsored in part by the Career Development Office, this final event will allow current graduate students  to connect with alumnae/i while celebrating graduate education

 If you have any questions it is best to contact Lindsey Dever (ldever@brynmawr.edu) or Stella Diakou (sdiakou@brynmawr.edu) directly.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Celebrating National Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day!

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Courtesy of the Bryn Mawr College Archives

Happy International Women’s Day from The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education!

This year’s theme for National Women’s History Month is (aptly for us) Women’s Education – Women’s Empowerment. This connects strongly with one of the major themes in the history of women’s education – that of women’s higher education as a tool of empowerment, propelling women into the public world in meaningful and lasting ways. We’ve been working hard this month on finalizing the designs for our new site, which will be launched in the next few months. However, in celebration of Women’s Day and as a preview to some of the wonderful images we will have on the site, I’ve created a special  Tumblr which you can access here to see them. Enjoy!

Today is International Women’s Day, the theme of which is CONNECTING GIRLS, INSPIRING FUTURES. This reminded me of the exciting new initiative happening at Bryn Mawr College which links students here with peers in four women’s colleges in Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea and Japan. The President’s Seminar is a series of four IT-facilitated, internationally linked conversations that explore higher education for women as an engine for social change and progressive leadership. Having observed the first seminar with students from Effat University in Saudi Arabia, I was impressed with the articulate and intelligent contributions and the connections students were able to make between their lives in very different places (for more on the seminars click here). Although there are lots of sites dedicated to International Women’s Day, this site  gives you a truly global perspective on the ways in which it is being celebrated across the world. For some, it’s a day of commemoration and celebration, for others, it’s a crucial time for awareness raising for issues affecting women in society today.

International Women’s Day has its roots in the labor movement and women’s demands for better, more equitable pay and conditions and has been celebrated on this day every year since 1911. The Summer School for Women Workers at Bryn Mawr College was established in 1921, aimed at working class women factory workers who otherwise had no opportunity of experiencing higher education. A history of the School is available through Triptych and can be found here. The School was the first time many of the women had ever entered a college and was a profound moment in the college’s history of reaching out to the community and providing empowerment through education. As the history of the School says, ‘President M. Carey Thomas went far beyond educational events of the past and gave impetus to a dynamic experiment which has had far-reaching results’.

Although our website isn’t ready yet to view, Special Collections has a lot of inspiring material that it has digitized already which is intimately connected to the history of women’s social movements. If you haven’t already, check out the Carrie Chapman Catt Suffrage Collection which was digitized by Bryn Mawr College Special Collections here. One of my favorite images is of a float from 1918 which demonstrated the countries that allowed women to vote which you can see here

There are exciting events happening all month to mark Women’s History Month, many of which are advertised on the National Women’s History Project site (http://www.nwhp.org/) and I have been posting many links to relevant events and projects on Twitter (follow me @RedmondJennifer) with a special emphasis this month on role models and heroines of the past we can acknowledge and appreciate for their exceptional work and the path they laid for women today.

Whatever you do to celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month don’t forget to acknowledge the progress women have made, as well as the challenges we face. Happy Women’s Day!

Courtesy of the Bryn Mawr College Archives

Updates on the Essay Competition!

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Many thanks to all who entered the recent Greenfield Essay Competition for undergraduates at Bryn Mawr College. We received some really interesting, thoughtful entries and look forward to announcing who gets that cash prize soon.

The judging panel will be meeting on February 29th 2012 to decide on the overall winner. The winner will be announced in March as part of the Digital Center’s Women’s History Month activities (for more on this annual event, see http://womenshistorymonth.gov/).

As the the Women’s History Month site says, our history is our strength, and part of the impetus behind the essay competition was to give students the opportunity to reflect on the history of women’s education in a single-sex environment and what this means to them today.

Many of the essays mention the importance of role models, of how seeing a woman being able to achieve something is inspirational, and allows for others to imagine their own success.This strikes me as one of the most important aspects of higher education for everyone.

Keep an eye on this blog for the winner’s essay, and other updates, including the first Advisory Committee meeting, the launch of the website and other exciting events!

 

 

 

Single sex education in the twenty first century – undergrads of Bryn Mawr College, what’s your opinion?

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There seems to be a particularly enduring interest in debating whether single-sex education at any level is beneficial or harmful for students. Does the media attention to this issue reflect real concern, or an ongoing narrow focus on gendered divisions in educational experiences that has existed since before M. Carey Thomas’ time? Whatever your opinion, it’s important to celebrate how far we’ve come from the times when a Philadelphia doctor told M. Carey Thomas that students of Bryn Mawr would be physically damaged by studying at college level … if you don’t believe us listen to the woman herself in this extract from a radio speech in 1935…mcareythomas1935

A quick google scan of news articles reveals a steady stream of studies and academic debates about the pros and cons of having separate educational environments for girls and boys. It seems that this discourse knows no geographic boundaries – research has been conducted worldwide with no overall conclusive results being offered. Jaclyn Zubrzycki on the Education Week site discusses a report on the publicly run schools in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago which found that while single sex education benefits some girls, it doesn’t prove beneficial to all girls or boys (see http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/01/18/17singlesex_ep.h31.html) and, as previously referred to, our own President McAuliffe contributed an important piece to a series of articles in the New York Times last semester (see President McAuliffe’s recent piece in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/17/single-sex-schools-separate-but-equal/bucking-the-trend-at-womens-colleges)

So what do you think? We’ve come a long way since women were banned from entering the male bastions of higher education and single-sex education emerged as a remedy to counter the prejudiced policies of these all-male institutions. So, what now? Maybe the fact that Bryn Mawr was a single-sex college did not enter your decision making process to attend …. or maybe you specifically wanted to come here because of this. Maybe you never thought about this until you got here…. maybe you think co-education as you experience through the tri-co is a positive experience you would like more of …. If you would like to have your say then we want to hear it! Your essay will be published on the new site of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education (coming soon!) and the winner will receive a $500 cash prize. The competition is open to all current undergraduate students of Bryn Mawr College and the closing date for entries is January 27th 2012 so hurry up and get writing! (see here for the poster originally announcing the competition which you should have seen all over campus Greenfield Essay Competition)

 

The findings are fascinating!

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My name is Lisa MacMurray and I am a student at Temple University studying Secondary Education – Social Studies.  This semester our Social Studies Methods class wanted Temple students to help fellow history institutions in showcasing the importance of National History Day to both teachers and students throughout the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania region.  Sam Perry (my classmate) and I interviewed with several institutions; however, we were thrilled to have been chosen to intern with Bryn Mawr College’s Greenfield Project and the study of women in education.  This is an area of history in which both Sam and I are very much interested.  Jennifer Redmond, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Director, The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education, has been our mentor throughout the semester and has helped guide us through the research process.

Part of our research has been to get a clear understanding of how hard it was for women to achieve higher education in a college that was not simply a “finishing school” but one that would demand more from them and help expand their knowledge and intellect.  Additionally, Sam and I have been reviewing entrance examinations from the late 1800s through 1920 from several Seven Sister colleges, as well as, men’s Ivy League schools.  We started by comparing and contrasting the examinations between Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe and Wellesley.  Additionally, we have since looked at Yale, Harvard and University of Pennsylvania’s men’s colleges to compare their requirements to those of the women’s colleges.  The findings are fascinating!  The women colleges required just as much as the men’s colleges; yet, they were not allowed admittance to the men’s schools.  Originally, we focused on large segments of the examinations; however, since we are Secondary Education – Social Studies majors, we decided that the primary focus should be on the History/Geography sections of the examinations.  I have noticed that Bryn Mawr College has the hardest requirement with regard to History/Geography questions as compared to the other women’s colleges.  Bryn Mawr’s History/Geography sections are compatible with Yale and Harvard.  I could not compare University of Pennsylvania’s examination to Bryn Mawr as they had no examinations available for review, yet, we were able to gain much insight into the University of Pennsylvania’s discrimination against letting women into the university to earn a degree.

Now that our time at Bryn Mawr College is coming to a close, we will be making a lesson plan, along with test questions and, adding Bryn Mawr College’s entrance examination online so that teachers will be able to teach a lesson to their students to show how women did whatever they could to gain a higher education and, to have the students take the test so that they will see how difficult these examinations were.  For one, Bryn Mawr required perspective students taking the examination to have enough knowledge to be able to translate Greek, Latin, French, and German, along with extensive knowledge in the English language.  Students taking this examination online will most likely fail the test since they do not possess knowledge in all the language areas, let alone all the other content criteria that is included in the examination.  I also feel that teachers can give their students (both males and females) better insight into the challenges that women had to overcome in order to earn a college degree and that no matter the inequality, they overcame and endured and many became influential women in society.

I have enjoyed my time at Bryn Mawr College and I am going to miss Jennifer and the program.  I will begin Student Teaching in January so my time at Bryn Mawr will soon be finished; however, I have gained much knowledge during my internship and, if I have any available time, would love to help Jennifer with any other projects that the Canaday Library may be focusing on with regard to the Greenfield Digital Center.

The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education announces its first undergraduate essay competition!

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Photo courtesy of the Bryn Mawr College Archives

Want to win $500? Got something to say about studying at a women’s college? Then enter the inaugural undergraduate essay competition for a chance to express your views and win a prize!

Bryn Mawr College was recently awarded funding from The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation to initiate an exciting new venture in digital humanities – the launching of the Digital Center for the History of Women and Higher Education. The Digital Center will comprise of an online portal to promote and support original research, teaching, and the exchange of ideas about the history of women’s education, both in the United States and worldwide.

Given recent media attention to the issue of single sex-education (see President McAuliffe’s recent piece in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/17/single-sex-schools-separate-but-equal/bucking-the-trend-at-womens-colleges) we want to hear what current students think about the impact of studying and living at a women’s college in the twenty-first century. Does it matter whether an institution is single-sex or co-ed? What is the impact for young women attending a single-sex college? What do you think is the future? We want to know!

So, for this competition we invite you to address the following topic in 1,000 words or less:

‘Why single sex education matters today’

Agree? Disagree? Have a persuasive argument either way? Write it down and be in to win.

The winner will receive a $500 cash prize, kindly sponsored by Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Library, and the winning entry will be posted on The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center’s website. The deadline is Friday 27th January 2012 and all entries should be emailed to me, the Director, at jredmond@brynmawr.edu

This competition is open to current undergraduates of Bryn Mawr College only, but please check back for alum related events and get in touch if you are an alum with an idea for the Digital Center

Get involved! Have your say!

M.Carey Thomas, a Ouija Board, and a Moment of Reflection

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The only thing missing from last year’s course, “History of Women’s Higher Education,” was a Ouija board. As a class, we spent part of the semester examining the various representations of M. Carey Thomas  through her letters, biographies, and first-hand student accounts. Often times, this would lead us to use these archival artifacts to muse about what her response might be to the Bryn Mawr of today. Still, I was tempted to sneak down to the cloisters and attempt to resurrect her formidable spirit.

Recently while reading the speech of M. Carey Thomas in Special Collections, I could not shake the feeling that Thomas had risen from the Cloisters, sans Ouija Board. I felt included—or more accurately, implicated—in the opening “I doubt the most imaginative and sympathetic younger women in this audience can form any conception of it means… to be able to say…the battle of the higher education of women has been gloriously, and forever, won.”

Immediately, I focused on the fallacy of her absolutism of “forever won,” but I would like to linger for a moment on the first half of this declaration. It is true that I cannot comprehend a time when the mere fact of my sex would prevent me from attending college, especially as an alumna of women’s college with such a rich history. In some ways, this lacuna in my own memory speaks to Thomas’ intrepidity and the work of all those who labored towards creating higher institutions which did not discriminate on the basis of sex.  While I cannot imagine wanting so desperately to learn Greek that I would rather die than be told of my innate inadequacies (as Thomas declares in her speech), it is the presence of this communal  memory –no matter how hyperbolic that it might seem to us today– that creates a responsibility to remember in whatever available medium.

The experiences of women who have struggled to eliminate gender biases in education cannot be fully comprehended today, but their memories, their words, and their notable silences are marked with a tangible urgency that defies temporality. While working on the Greenfield Archive, I look forward to sifting through the voices and discovering those fragmentary moments when the past does not seem so distant and can be briefly beckoned to the present.