Goucher College

History

Early in its history, Goucher played an important role nationally in providing women access to higher education. Many ground-breaking women doctors, researchers, and scientists graduated from Goucher in the early 20th century, including Hattie Alexander, Florence B. Seibert, and Margaret Irving Handy. Judge Sarah T. Hughes of Texas, who was famously photographed administering the presidential oath of office to Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One, graduated from Goucher in 1917. A daughter of President Woodrow Wilson, Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre, also graduated Goucher and went on to play a significant role in the women's suffrage movement.

19th century

In 1881, the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church passed a resolution to found a seminary. The proposal was met with some objection, with one member stating, "I would not give a fig for a weakling little thing of a seminary. We want such a school, so ample in its provisions, of such dignity in its buildings, so fully provided with the best apparatus, that it shall draw to itself the eyes of the community and that young people shall feel it an honor to be enrolled among its students." Minister and conference member John B. Van Meter asserted "that the Conference [should] make the foundation and endowment of a female college the single object of its organized effort."

Van Meter was joined by fellow minister John Franklin Goucher (1845–1922) and together they eventually persuaded the conference to found a college, instead. Subsequently, the Woman's College of Baltimore City ("City" was later dropped) was chartered on January 26, 1885. It opened its doors in 1888, and four years later graduated its first class of just five students.

John F. Goucher, despite being the school's namesake and co-founder, was not the college's first president. Although offered the post, he declined, and it went to William Hersey Hopkins, who had served as president of St. John's College in Annapolis. After Hopkins resigned in 1890 to join the faculty, the board of trustees voted unanimously to renominate Goucher. Under pressure from the board, Goucher relented and accepted the position, which he held for nearly two decades. Goucher and his wife Mary Cecilia Fisher made significant financial contributions to the college, including the bequest of a portion of his estate.

20th century

During President Goucher's tenure, enrollment grew but the college suffered financial deficits. In 1904, the college became the second in Maryland to establish a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, after Johns Hopkins University. Goucher stepped down in 1908 to resume his international missionary work but remained involved with the school as president emeritus until his death in 1922. In 1910, the school was renamed Goucher College in his honor.

In 1913, the college inaugurated its fourth president, William W. Guth, who oversaw the construction of several new residence halls and a successful million-dollar fundraising campaign. Around this time, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, whose daughter Jessie was a Goucher alumna, expressed support for the college's fundraising efforts in correspondence with the administration, writing in March 1913, "It would, indeed, be... evidence that our great educational public does not fully understand its own interests if an institution which has served with such faithfulness... in the cause of woman's education should be allowed to break up for the lack of money." By 1914, Goucher was one of six "Class I" colleges for women in the U.S.

In 1921, Goucher purchased 421 acres of land in nearby Towson that had belonged to the estate of a prominent Baltimore family, for $150,000. The move from Baltimore to the Towson suburbs was completed in 1953. Before 1950, Goucher hosted nearly a dozen sorority chapters on campus including Kappa Kappa Gamma, Kappa Alpha Theta, Gamma Phi Beta, and Pi Beta Phi, but they were disbanded on the move to Towson.

Goucher turned coeducational in 1986 when the board of trustees voted to admit men, citing declining enrollment and reduced national interest by women in single-sex colleges. The decision was controversial among many students and a minority of alumnae. However, it was followed by increased enrollment and sustained support from the school's donors, with Goucher's endowment growing nearly five-fold from $45 million in 1986. President Rhoda M. Dorsey, who also initially resisted the proposal, relented and presided over the transition.