Women's College Coalition

Founded in 1901, Texas Woman’s has evolved into a major university with campuses in Denton, Dallas and Houston. With a legacy in health-related professions and more than half of current graduates earning a health-related degree, TWU is a significant economic driver for North Texas. The university offers a comprehensive catalog of academic studies, including baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral degrees in nursing, health professions, education, business and the arts and sciences. The university pioneered distance education and has been recognized as a leader in delivering online instruction.

Initially established in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary, a coeducational college, Hollins became an institution for women in 1852. Three years later, it was renamed Hollins in recognition of benefactors John and Ann Halsey Hollins.

Founded in 1913, the College of Saint Benedict embraces the rich heritage of bold leadership and pioneering spirit of its Benedictine founders, the Sisters of Saint Benedict's Monastery. The college’s dedication to the power of the liberal arts is a cornerstone of the Benedictine wisdom tradition. In addition, the college expresses its Benedictine character through the practice of enduring Benedictine values, including community living, hospitality and respect for persons.

When it was founded in 1889, Barnard was one of very few American colleges where women could receive the same rigorous and challenging education available to men. The College was named after Frederick A.P. Barnard, then the 10th president of Columbia University, who fought unsuccessfully to admit women to Columbia. Today, Barnard is one of the most selective academic institutions in the country and remains devoted to empowering extraordinary women to become even more exceptional.

Brenau University was founded in 1878 as the Georgia Baptist Female Seminary by Dr. W.C. Wilkes. In 1900, H.J. Pearce, who was the institution’s president at the time, named it Brenau, which is a linguistic blend of the German word “brennen,” meaning “to burn,” and the Latin “aurum,” which translates to “gold.” This combination embodies Brenau’s motto, “As gold refined by fire.” Today, Brenau University consists of The Women’s College, the coed Undergraduate School, and the Sidney O. Smith Graduate School.

Even before women were legally recognized as persons, the Ursuline sisters founded Brescia University College in 1919. They created sacred spaces where women could access the prestigious education previously denied to them, while fostering their commitment to leading with wisdom, justice and compassion in a changing world.

For more than 125 years Agnes Scott College has educated and empowered intelligent women. Through the new SUMMIT curriculum, Agnes Scott has reinvented the liberal arts and sciences for the 21st century so that ever women graduates ready to become a leader in a global society.

When Bryn Mawr College opened its doors in 1885, it offered women a more ambitious academic program than any previously available to them in the United States. Other women's colleges existed, but Bryn Mawr was the first to offer graduate education through the Ph.D.—a signal of its founders' refusal to accept the limitations imposed on women's intellectual achievement at other institutions.

Chartered in 1836, Wesleyan became the first college in the world chartered to grant degrees to women. Since then, we’ve sent scores of women out into the world to do the impossible, the amazing, and the extraordinary, like the first woman to receive a Doctor of Medicine degree in Georgia and the first woman to argue a case before the Georgia Supreme Court.

Smith College is a distinguished liberal arts college committed to providing the highest quality undergraduate education for women to enable them to develop their intellects and talents and to participate effectively and fully in society.

The college was founded in 1871 by Sophia Smith, who decided to leave that leaving her inheritance to found a women’s college was the best way for her to fulfill a moral obligation. Smith has changed much since its founding. But throughout its history there have been certain enduring constants: an uncompromising defense of academic and intellectual freedom, an attention to the relation between college education and the larger public issues of world order and human dignity, and a concern for the rights and privileges of women.

Today the college continues to benefit from a dynamic relationship between innovation and tradition. And while Smith’s basic curriculum of the humanities, arts and sciences still flourishes, the college continues to respond to the new intellectual needs of today’s women—offering majors or interdepartmental programs in engineering, the study of women and gender, neuroscience, film and media studies, Middle East studies, statistical and data sciences and other emerging fields.