User:Btittle1/sandbox

History
Before the idea of the Claremont Colleges, Pomona College was founded in 1887. Pomona began after a group of congregationalists envisioned a “New England-type” college on the West Coast. Pomona College relocated to Claremont, California after the college acquired an unfinished hotel in Claremont. And 23 years later, James A. Blaisdell became president of Pomona. Though in 1923, Pomona College faced a problem. The school’s population was growing. Thus, Pomona either had to go against their ideals of expanding or limit the amount of growth at the college. James Blaisdell developed a different option. He advised the college chose to form a consortium of differentiated small colleges, modeled after Oxford and Cambridge.

The start of the Claremont Colleges came in 1925 with the addition of a graduate school, now known as Claremont Graduate University. The college was originally known as Claremont College and began to function in 1927. The second addition came in 1926 when Ellen Browning Scripps founded Scrips College. Scripps College allowed Ellen Browning Scripps to put-forth her plan of a school which offered women access to a higher education, to better their professional careers and to better their personal lives. Scripps College officially opened in 1927. In 1946, 86 students and 7 faculty members formed the fourth institution of the Claremont Colleges, known as Claremont McKenna College. CMC was formed as a fully male undergraduate school until women were admitted in 1976. In 1955, Harvey Mudd College became the fifth institute in the consortium. HMC was founded by Harvey Seeley Mudd, a former chairman of the Board of Fellows of Claremont College. He envisioned an undergraduate college in the consortium that focused its education in science and engineering. In 1963, Pitzer College joined the Claremont Colleges. Pitzer was founded as a college for woman focusing in social and behavioral college. Later in 1970, Pitzer enrolled 80 men. The school was named after Russell K. Pitzer, an important benefactor in the development of the institution. The final and seventh college to join the consortium was Keck Graduate Institute. KGI was founded in 1997 after a $50 million donation from W.M. Keck Foundation. The graduate school focuses on post-graduate biomedical applications.