Talk:Chatham University

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Editors interested in this article may find the Teaching with Wikipedia Workshop that will take place at CMU on Aug 15 of interest. This workshop is open to general public, and is a joint imitative of CMU and Pitt). There will be another workshop held at Pitt in the Fall as well. It will cover how to include Wikipedia in one's course (WP:SUP) and also how to become a Campus Ambassadors. Pennsylvania has currently only one ambassador (myself) and it would be great if we could recruit at least several more. Ambassadors help course instructors, showing them how Wikipedia works, and interact with students. Many current ambassadors come from the body of students, faculty and university staff; it is a fun adventure, and adds to one resume/CV, to boot :) If it sounds interesting, feel free to ask me any questions, or to come to the workshop. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk 20:33, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Question about date of oringin of Pennsylvania Female College
I have been researching my family history, and there is a record that one of my relatives, Rebecca Nash of Whitemarsh, Montgomery County, PA, graduated from Pennsylvania Female College in 1865. It was also indicated that there was a Pennsylvania Female College that was incorporated around 1858 in Collegeville.

The Wikipedia article indicates it was founded in 1869.

Is there any connection between the college in that is now Chatham University and the Pennsylvania Female College in Montgomery County:?

The following is from a link to

ALUMNI OF PENNSYLVANIA FEMALE COLLEGE

Class of 1865
 * Calista Aiman, Whitemarsh
 * Mrs. B. Wright (Emma T. Black), Tullytown
 * Mary P. Crawford, Lower Merion
 * Henrietta M. Hahn, Clifton Springs, NY
 * Clarissa V. Hahn, Washington, DC
 * Rebecca Nash, Whitemarsh
 * Anna Townsend, Royal Oak, Md
 * Sarah F. Valliant, St. Michael's, Md

PENNSYLVANIA FEMALE COLLEGE (Collegeville, Pa.). -Prominent among the educators of Montgomery County are Professor J. Warrenne Sunderland, LL.D., and Luannie Sunderland, who, with the Rev. Abraham Hunsicker, organized the Montgomery Female Institute or Seminary as early as 1851. In their "announcement" they proclaimed what was then a new departure, and boldly advocated the necessity of a higher education for women in terms which, however well accepted and popular now, were deemed by many well-disposed and influential persons visionary then. These advanced educators then said, "We believe the female mind endowed with powers and capabilities quite equal to those of the other sex, and no sufficient reason can be assigned why they should not be as fully and carefully developed. In projecting this institution, therefore, we have a twofold object in view, -first, to provide, correct and thorough instruction in the ordinary branches of learning at so cheap a rate as to bring it within the reach of all; second, to afford to such young ladies as may desire to pursue a more extensive course in the sciences and liberal arts an opportunity of doing so under circumstances as favorable as those enjoyed by the other sex at our most reputable colleges." They further assured parents, guardians and the public that "any young lady completing the course of studies prescribed, and sustaining satisfactory examinations, would receive an appropriate diploma, and be entitled to a laureate as significant and valuable is that conferred on young men at institutions of a corresponding grade."

The foundation was now laid for a "Female College" in Montgomery County. If it was an experiment, it had liberal-minded, progressive and determined projectors, and measures were speedily taken to obtain such chartered privileges from the commonwealth as would place the institution in such a position as to command the respect, interest and public favor originally solicited for it by its founders. In 1853 an act of incorporation was obtained, vesting the following named trustees with the necessary corporate powers: James Warrenne Sunderland, John R. Grigg, Mathias Haldeman, William B. Hahn and Wright Bringhurst. These trustees were empowered to appoint a president and faculty of instruction, "who shall be charged with the direction and management of the literary affairs of the college, etc." The Charter provided that "the faculty shall have power to confer such literary degrees and academic honors as are usually granted by colleges upon such pupils as shall have completed in a satisfactory manner the prescribed course of study." [NOTE]

[NOTE] Act to incorporate the Pennsylvania Female, College, Pamphlet Laws, 1858, page:127.

This pioneer female college gave a new and startling impulse to the advance of woman, and its annual commencements called together the most learned and progressive audiences that ever assembled in the Perkiomen Valley. It was indeed something new for the mothers of Eastern Pennsylvania to witness the graduation of daughters with collegiate honors; and on all these occasions the "class," surrounded by corporators and faculty, having passed the examination required by the high standard prescribed, and otherwise acquitted themselves in accordance with the commencement exercises, elated with their success as students flushed with tributes of substantial friendship and the congratulations of senior college sisters, waited in common with an expectant public for the parting address of the president, who was required to disarm all unfriendly criticism, justify the pronounced innovation upon rules of education and approve the advent of the graduates upon the threshold of a higher and broader life than had been vouchsafed to the earlier generations of womanhood in Pennsylvania. This task Professor Sunderland always performed during his presidency with distinguished ability and marked public approval, and to no one more than him is due the credit and honor of moulding that public opinion which a quarter of a century ago and since has demanded equal educational advantages for woman, fitting her for the employment of teacher and all the higher pursuits of life in which she is now found. Joepmyers (talk) 02:52, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

When was it founded, again
This source says that the Rt. Rev. Beverly Roberts Waugh was the PFC's first principal from 1853–61. (A man's name, btw.) Choor monster (talk) 13:13, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The source you have listed The John Harris Mansion, 1766-1897 concerns the John Harris-Simon Cameron Mansion in Harrisburg. The "Pennsylvania Female College" was founded there in 1853. The website for the Historical Society of Dauphin County explains: "The year of 1861 was devastating for the Pennsylvania Female College. There was the social turmoil of the beginning of the Civil War, and near the end of the year Reverend Waugh died. This combination of events forced the school into bankruptcy."
 * A different "Pennsylvania Female College", founded 1869 in Allegheny County, later became Chatham.
 * As women were generally barred from most colleges and universities at the time (because: cooties), the formulation "(location) Female College" was fairly common. Note, for example, that the book you cited has Waugh as a professor at Baltimore Female College before returning to the area (he was a graduate of Dickinson in Carlisle) for Pennsylvania Female College. This is similar to the current trend of having two versions of a product: a "regular" one and a pink one "for women/girls". Men and boys are normal, women and girls are different. The struggle continues. - Sum mer PhD  (talk) 14:20, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * As women were generally barred from most colleges and universities at the time (because: cooties), the formulation "(location) Female College" was fairly common. Note, for example, that the book you cited has Waugh as a professor at Baltimore Female College before returning to the area (he was a graduate of Dickinson in Carlisle) for Pennsylvania Female College. This is similar to the current trend of having two versions of a product: a "regular" one and a pink one "for women/girls". Men and boys are normal, women and girls are different. The struggle continues. - Sum mer PhD  (talk) 14:20, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * As women were generally barred from most colleges and universities at the time (because: cooties), the formulation "(location) Female College" was fairly common. Note, for example, that the book you cited has Waugh as a professor at Baltimore Female College before returning to the area (he was a graduate of Dickinson in Carlisle) for Pennsylvania Female College. This is similar to the current trend of having two versions of a product: a "regular" one and a pink one "for women/girls". Men and boys are normal, women and girls are different. The struggle continues. - Sum mer PhD  (talk) 14:20, 3 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I saw all that. Did the new school buy the name, just take it, or what?  In particular, Simon Cameron was on the first PFC's board.  I would expect a major player like him was on the second PFC's board also.  Choor monster (talk) 15:28, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what ownership issues there may have been with the name, if any. Post-secondary schools for women at the time often didn't last long (note the section above apparently deals with another "Pennsylvania Female College", in a Philadelphia suburb; a trifecta of sorts). Some certainly didn't do much to earn the title "college", being little more than teaching women their "place" in the world.
 * I am similarly ignorant of any connections with Cameron. I would note that the founding of the Harrisburg "Philadelphia Female College" (1853) coincides with a gap (1849 - 1857) in his U.S. senatorial career when he seems to have been living in Harrisburg. Post war, in 1869 for the founding of the Pittsburgh "Pennsylvania Female College", he was back in the senate. At 70 years old, Washington D.C. to Harrisburg in the 19th century was a bit of a trek, I'd assume. Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, no picnic today, was likely no fun (the rail connection through the mountains was still a few years in the future, IIRC). Additionally, I wonder if Cameron's Republican connections would have meshed well with the relatively progressive take on women presented in Chatham's current history section. (I'm no expert, but the GOP of the time was certainly not a champion of women's suffrage.) - Sum mer PhD  (talk) 16:22, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The word "college" was typically used for what today we would call high school. For example, Will Rogers attended Willie Halsell College, from which he was a 10th grade dropout.  (See refs in John Milton Oskison, a friend and classmate who went on to Stanford.)  And the novel "...And Ladies of the Club" opens with the post-Civil War high school graduation ceremony at the Waynesboro Female College.
 * Look at the URL I provided again. Simon Cameron lived in the Simon Cameron House in Harrisburg from 1863 on.  Choor monster (talk) 16:41, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to Women in Red's Role Models editathon on Women's Colleges
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Two questions

 * 1) Is Chatham pronounced  (like "chat 'em"), like Chatham, Kent, is? Or is it pronounced  to rhyme with "math 'em"?
 * 2) Does the university admit men or not? The opening sentence says it "has coeducational academic programs through the doctoral level", but in the History section it merely says the university was considering admitting men back in 2014, and there's no word on what's happened on that front in the past 6 years. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:26, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I see that no one responded to your questions. I am a Chatham College (Class of 1987) alumna, I can answer both.
 * 1) the "th" in Chatham is pronounced as a soft "t."
 * 2) the following paragraph rightly states the university began admitting men in 2015. Whoever wrote the article must have assumed the reader would infer the results of the exploratory committee from there. However, it's a little-known fact that Chatham allowed men to take courses long before 2015. They just were not permitted to matriculate from the college. Also, while the graduate & professional programs are fully co-educational, it's my understanding that the undergraduate college remains single sex. Additionally, while alumnae were dismayed at the decision, it was actually then-enrolled students - the women who would be most dramatically affected by the change - who were more upset about the change. Same as anyone who chose Chatham, they had chosen it at least in part because it was single-sex; changing that on them while they were there was no small matter to them. Chatham is not a decision one makes lightly, so the school was supposed to keep the undergraduate college single sex to ameliorate that issue. I need to pay more attention to the Alumni Recorder!Kelelain (talk) 10:59, 7 July 2023 (UTC)