P.E.O. Record
WOMEN'S COLLEGE
During a memorable convention in Oklahoma City in 1927, Virginia Alice Cottey presented her life's work to the P.E.O. Sisterhood :
My proposition is that you accept the deed for the property with no debt against it and agree to raise an endowment of not less than $200,000. [There is] no time limit for its completion.
With the acceptance of this proposition, the P.E.O. Sisterhood assumed responsibility for a women's college-Cottey College, founded in 1884 by Virginia Alice Cottey. With the help of her sisters, Mary and Dora, and their $3,000 savings, Cottey College grew from a dream of Virginia Alice Cottey into the reality of a two-story red brick building located in Nevada, Missouri. The land was six acres of a cornfield on the western edge of town provided by the City of Nevada. The location was, at the time, sufficiently remote from the center of town to be cause for concern. This year Cottey College is 125 years old.
Virginia Alice Cottey's dream to found a college grew from her desire to provide educational opportunities for women equal to those available to men. She was inspired by reading a biography of Mary Lyon, the founder of Mount Holyoke. In 1834, Mary Lyon courageously left her position as assistant principal of Ipswich Female Seminary and tirelessly focused on raising the funds to found a college for women. Her vision was realized with the founding of Mount Holyoke in 1837. Both visionary women believed fervently that young women needed and deserved the same educational opportunities available to men. Mount Holyoke became the first of the "Seven Sisters," seven prominent women's colleges in the northeast: Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe (now part of Harvard University), Vassar (now co-educational), Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard College, all founded between 1837 and 1889.
During the 1800s the number of women's colleges grew to well over 300. Today, there are fewer than 50, with additional women's colleges closing or becoming co-educational at the rate of one or two a year. This loss of women's colleges has caused some to question: Are women's colleges any longer needed or relevant? Why should this particular type of educational experience continue to exist?
Answering this question requires understanding a true complex of issues that have been the subject of much research and inquiry-studies such as Carol Gilligan's "In a Different Voice" (1982), Mary Belenky and others, "Women's Ways of Knowing" (1988), and Sally Helgesen's "The Web of Inclusion" (1995). These studies and others have argued over several decades that women communicate, learn and lead differently than men. Hence, women learn best from women-centered education.
The Women's College Coalition participated in the research on the value of women's education by commissioning the research firm Hardwick-Day to survey graduates of women's colleges. The Hardwick-Day research included alumnae from the classes of 1970 through 1997, comparing the experiences of women attending women's colleges with those of women attending co-educational institutions. Cottey College did not participate in this study because only graduates of four-year institutions were included. Detailed information about the Hardwick-Day study is available on the Women's College Coalition website. The Women's College Coalition subsequently distributed key messages drawn from the findings that help make the case supporting the effectiveness and relevance of women's college education.
creates leaders, communicators, and persuaders.
develops critical skills for life and career.
enables students to engage with top faculty and resources.
proves its value over a lifetime.
A woman's college education. . .
www.womenscolleges.org
From Emma Willard, who in the 1860s was the first to openly promote higher education for women, to Emily Langdon of St. Norbert College who makes a case analyzing student satisfaction data, it is clear that women want and choose women's colleges and say they would choose women's colleges again, even when surveyed five years later (7). Paul Umbach, Jillian Kenzie and others, analyzing students' engagement with their educational experience, show that women value their experiences. The conclusion of the Umbach study, "Women Students at Coeducational and Women's Colleges" summarizes the advantages well:
For more than two decades, proponents of women's colleges have asserted that such institutions offer female students a challenging, supportive, and developmentally powerful learning environment. . . .Our findings support this claim and plainly indicate that single-sex colleges are a vital postsecondary option for women. In many respects they are models of effective educational practice, institutions that have much to teach other types of colleges and universities that aspire to providing a challenging yet supportive educational environment for all their students (25).
Of course, such research always leaves some questions unanswered, but those who support women's colleges are encouraged by this empirical data to support their observations and experiential data which provide many specific examples to validate the research findings.
Our experience assures us that many women at women's colleges develop strong self-images and self-confidence, enabling them to communicate their interests and passions. They often find the direction for their lives and develop the thinking skills and analytical skills necessary to succeed. At Cottey, we describe this as "finding a voice." One of the students in the Cottey leadership program, reporting on her leadership development, described visiting her transfer institution, a co-educational college. She attended a class and noted that only one of the women in the class raised her hand to answer a question. Our student laughed and said she wanted to raise her hand to answer! This is the type of anecdotal evidence that verifies the results of the research studies.
We also know that the list of graduates of women's colleges who have moved into significant leadership roles is long and impressive, roles that include the new president of Harvard University and the current Secretary of State. We know that young women in women's colleges benefit from frequently having women leaders as role models. We know that they have opportunities to hold more leadership roles themselves.
There is clearly a crucial role for women's colleges for the future. There is really no reason to continue to debate the effectiveness and relevance of women's education. Our role is, rather, to embrace the continuing needs for educational opportunities for girls and women throughout our nation and our world. Virginia Alice Cottey, Mary Lyon and the other bold and brilliant pioneers of women's education saw a nation where the intellect and talents of young women were too often wasted because of the lack of education. Similar challenges remain throughout our world. Only a few years ago, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan reported that there were 900 million illiterate people in the world today, and two thirds of them are women. Women's colleges can be part of the solution.
Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics and Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, wrote recently in a keynote address of the importance of educating women throughout the world not only because education enhances the well being of women, but also because educated women impact the lives of others. They become agents of change. He noted that "women's literacy and education greatly contribute to their voice and decisional power" which influences a woman's family and, in some cases, her entire community in important ways. Sen concluded that "women's education can help to enhance the lives of all-men, women, and children. . . ." (4) This is what, in simpler terms, we call the "ripple effect" at Cottey.
We know that motivated and inspired Cottey students can have a tremendously positive impact on others in their families, their communities, and in the world. One example comes immediately to mind. In 2007, a Cottey student who had participated in a mission trip to Guatemala shared a story with her suitemates of a life-changing experience she had while working with children at an orphanage. Her story was moving and compelling, and her suitemates were motivated by her to develop projects and to raise funds to educate Mayan girls in Guatemala. The projects, called Change in Action, have grown to include more students and more events, and now $2,400 has been raised. Change in Action is proving to be sustainable as this year's participants are making plans for the work to continue next year after they leave Cottey. This is an example of the agency of women. Educated and empowered young women are changing their own lives and the lives of others, even of others in another culture, faraway. The environment at a women's college supports such leadership, creativity, communication and engagement.
Virginia Alice Cottey, Mary Lyon and other visionary women recognized the need for women's education and founded institutions to provide that education. Virginia Alice Cottey, in the Foreword of the first announcement of her college wrote:
In presenting to you for the first time the claims of our school, we ask your sympathy and prayers, as well as your hearty cooperation in the work we are about to undertake. Fully realizing, we trust, the great fact that God has called woman to a high and holy destiny in that He has commissioned her to be a co-laborer with Himself in the great work of enlightening and saving the world, we desire to open a school that shall have for its prime object the adjustment of woman to this her natural and God-given relation. A school for the education and training of girls demands vastly more than that which is contained in the ordinary curriculum.
We continue to recognize the distinctions that are required to educate women at a women's college, and we continue to strive to provide these advantages.
Works Cited
Langdon, Emily E. "Who Attends a Women's College Today and Why She Should: An Exploration of Women's College Students and Alumnae." A Closer Look at Women's Colleges. July 1999.
Sen, Amartya. "What's the Point of Women's Education?" Keynote Address for Women's Education Worldwide 2004: the Unfinished Agenda, June 2-4, 2004.
Umbach, Paul D. et al. "Women Students at Coeducational and Women's Colleges: How Do Their Experiences Compare?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, 2003.