About Bryn Mawr College
The Mission of Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College educates students to the highest standard of excellence to prepare them for lives of purpose. The College’s rigorous liberal arts curriculum and distinguished graduate programs foster a thirst for knowledge, open inquiry, global perspectives, civic engagement, and innovation through study across the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. A world-class faculty of teacher-scholars, a talented staff, and a tight-knit student body cultivate intellectual curiosity, independence, personal integrity, and resilience in a community of passionate, joyful learners.
As a residential women’s college at the undergraduate level, and through coeducational graduate programs in arts and sciences, in social work, and in post-baccalaureate premedical training, Bryn Mawr is committed to women’s education and empowerment, to gender equity, and to supporting all students who choose to pursue their studies here.
Equity and inclusion serve as the engine for excellence and innovation. A commitment to racial justice and to equity across all aspects of diversity propels our students, faculty, and staff to reflect upon and work to build fair, open and welcoming institutional structures, values, and culture.
Emerging from their Bryn Mawr experience equipped with powerful tools and with a deeper understanding of the world and each other, our graduates define success on their own terms and lift up others as they make a meaningful difference in the world.
A Brief History of Bryn Mawr College
Established in 1885, Bryn Mawr was founded to offer a more rigorous education than any then available to women.
Like many projects of late 19th century Progressive thinkers, this bold vision embodied emancipatory potential and deep contradictions.
Its principal architect was the College’s first dean and second president, M. Carey Thomas, who became an influential national advocate for women’s advancement. Like some who were part of the Progressive Movement, however, Thomas embraced and contributed to the eugenics movement, and her vision for Bryn Mawr and for women excluded African Americans and reflected ethnic and anti-Semitic bias. The College continues to grapple with this complex legacy and the harms that resulted and has made advancing equity and inclusion central to its mission and its vision of institutional excellence.
From its founding, Bryn Mawr has prized superb teaching and research. The College offered undergraduate and graduate degrees from the outset, and was the first women’s college to offer the Ph.D. Bryn Mawr’s undergraduate and graduate programs became widely viewed as models of academic excellence, helping to elevate higher education standards nationwide.
While the College has been non-denominational for most of its history, Bryn Mawr was founded by members of the Religious Society of Friends (“Quakers”). Its Quaker legacy can be traced in the costly, principled stands President Katherine McBride took on behalf of freedom of belief and conscience during the McCarthy era and again in the late 1950s and during the Vietnam War, at times costing the College government financial aid funds. The College’s commitment to social justice has also found myriad forms of expression on campus, including in the 1914 founding of its Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, one of the first in the United States, and the deep engagement of many current students in community service and with social justice issues.
Respect for students’ capacity to direct their own lives has always been an integral part of Bryn Mawr, which was the first college in the country to approve a student self-government association (1891). For more than 135 years, students have taken a large measure of responsibility for managing residential life and upholding standards of academic integrity through the College’s Honor Code, which many alumnae/i describe as a lifelong touchstone for professional and personal integrity.
The traditions of high expectations, academic excellence, civic engagement, and ethical commitment remain at the core of Bryn Mawr’s identity, expressed today through innovative academic programs and approaches to learning and among students and alumnae/i who pursue lives of purpose in all fields of endeavor. Our graduates include Emily Balch 1889, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946; Ume Tsuda 1894, founder of the first women’s college in Japan; Enid Cook ’31, a distinguished microbiologist and the first African American graduate of Bryn Mawr; seven recipients of MacArthur Fellowships; the first women presidents of the University of Chicago and Harvard University; recipients of Pulitzer Prizes; members of the National Academies of Science; one of Forbes Magazine’s ten most powerful women in the world; and many leaders in business, government, and nonprofit organizations