The story
Founded by M. Carey Thomas and Rowland Ellis in 1885.1
Bryn Mawr College is a private women's liberal arts college founded in 1885. The Graduate School is co-educational. The name "bryn mawr" is Welsh for big hill. It is named after the town of Bryn Mawr, in which the campus is located. The town of Bryn Mawr had previously been named Humphreysville, after the Humphreys family who had bought the land in 1683. The town was renamed Bryn Mawr in the mid-nineteenth century by the Pennsylvania Railroad Corporation. Bryn Mawr had been the name of an estate granted to Rowland Ellis by William Penn in the 1680s. Ellis named it after his former home, a house near Dolgellau, Merioneth, Wales. The college was largely funded through the bequest of Joseph W. Taylor, and its first president was James Rhoads. Bryn Mawr was one of the first institutions of higher education in the United States to offer graduate degrees, including doctorates, to women. The first class included 36 undergraduate women and eight graduate students. Bryn Mawr was originally affiliated with the Quakers (Religious Society of Friends), but by 1893 had become non-denominational.
In 1912, Bryn Mawr became the first college in the United States to offer doctorates in social work, through the Department of Social Economy and Social Research. This department became the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research in 1970. In 1931, Bryn Mawr began accepting men as graduate students, while remaining women-focused at the undergraduate level.
From 1921 to 1938 the Bryn Mawr campus was home to the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, which was founded as part of the labor education movement and the women's labor movement. The school taught political economy, science, and literature.
The college celebrated its 125th anniversary of "bold vision, for women, for the world" during the 2010–2011 academic year. In September 2010, Bryn Mawr hosted an international conference on issues of educational access, equity, and opportunity in secondary schools and universities in the United States and around the world. Other festivities held for the anniversary year included publication of a commemorative book on 125 years of student life, and, in partnership with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the creation of a mural in West Philadelphia highlighting advances in women's education.
Transgender students
On February 9, 2015, the college's board of trustees announced approval of a working group recommendation to expand the undergraduate applicant pool allowing transgender women and intersex individuals identifying as women to apply for admission. This decision made Bryn Mawr the fourth women's college in the United States to accept trans women. Bryn Mawr "recognizes that gender is fluid and that traditional notions of gender identity and expression can be limiting", and has the official policy of accepting nonbinary students who were assigned female at birth as well. All current, past, and future students are fully recognized as members of the Bryn Mawr community, regardless of current gender identity.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bryn Mawr College, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5