Goucher College
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| Goucher College | |
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| Motto: | Gratia et Veritas "Grace and Truth" |
| Established: | 1885 |
| Type: | Private |
| Endowment: | U.S. $223 million |
| President: | Sanford J. Ungar |
| Faculty: | 146 |
| Undergraduates: | 1,475 |
| Postgraduates: | 900 |
| Location: | Towson, Maryland, USA |
| Campus: | Suburban 287 acre (1.2 km²) |
| Athletics: | 17 varsity teams |
| Mascot: | Gopher |
| Website: | www.goucher.edu |
Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287-acre (1.2 km²) campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary programs and about 900 students studying in graduate subjects. It was one of the first colleges to embrace internships and allow its students to take a more individualized approach. In 2004, Newsweek called Goucher the college with the happiest students.[1]
Recently, Goucher College has instituted a study-abroad requirement—each undergraduate must complete at least one study-abroad experience. To help students fulfill this requirement, the college offers a wide range of three-week "intensive courses abroad," as well as semester and year-long programs, in concert with vouchers of $1,200 to subsidize the costs.
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[edit] History
The school was founded in 1885 as a women's college, by Methodist ministers Dr. John Goucher and John B. Van Meter, with the assistance of Goucher's wife Mary Cecilia Fisher Goucher. Originally called The Woman's College of Baltimore, the school was renamed in 1910 in honor of its founding members and benefactors.[2]
The original campus was in the southern part of what is now the Charles Village neighborhood in Baltimore City. Goucher moved to its present suburban location in 1953. The college has been co-educational since 1986.
[edit] Campus demographics
Female students still predominate on the undergraduate level at about 67%. This number is higher at the graduate level, where almost 81% of the students are female. About 11.5% of the undergraduate population are either African-American, Asian, Hispanic or Native-American. At the graduate level, the number is about 8.5%. Two of the most popular majors are communications and psychology. Politically, most students lean toward the Democratic side of the spectrum. [1] U.S. News and World Report ranked Goucher college #93 in its annual rankings of national liberal arts colleges, tied with Albion College in Michigan, Bennington College in Vermont, and Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Its most well-known faculty members include Dr. Jean H. Baker and Dr. Julie Roy Jeffery of the History Department; President Sanford J. Ungar; and the writer Madison Smartt Bell, who oversees the college's Kratz Center for Creative Writing. Goucher is one of 40 schools profiled in the book Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope.
[edit] Campus
The Goucher College campus is proximate to downtown Towson, though the 287-acre campus is separated from it by surrounding woods owned by the school. The academic buildings appear generally at the north side of campus, and the residential buildings are located to the south. Most buildings are clad in tan-colored stone called Butler Stone. As a part of a recent expansion plan, a new residence hall was built in 2005, while next to it under construction is the Athenaeum, a 100,000-square-foot multipurpose facility featuring an expansive modern library. The grounds are slightly hilly and include hiking and riding trails in the woods. Newsweek magazine described the campus as "unusually bucolic".[3]
In a marked shift away from traditional collegiate layout characterized by symmetry and quadrangles, the designing architectural firm Moore and Hutchins elected to group buildings together into informal zones based on function. For this reason, the campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.[4]
[edit] Deer population
In a fenced area with no natural predators, the wooded area on campus is host to approximately 200 deer. A biologist for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources estimated the 287-acre woods as only being able to support 40 deer. Goucher's response in winter of 2007 has been to hire bowmen to thin the population by about 50 deer. Reasons cited are to maintain the health of the remaining deer and other animals, reduce the risk of car crashes, protect landscaping and prevent the spread of Lyme disease. Some students and community members have objected to the hunting.[5]
[edit] Academics
[edit] Undergraduate level
In fall 2006, the college launched a liberal education curriculum that outlines requirements that reflect the core values that underpin a liberal-arts education. These include: an international experience; proficiency in English composition and in a foreign language; and solid foundations in history, abstract reasoning, scientific discovery and experimentation, problem-solving, social structures, and environmental sustainability. There are special introductory courses for freshmen to orient them to the campus, as well as college life at Goucher. Undergraduate students are expected to fulfill an off-campus learning requirement either through an internship or a study-abroad experience. A popular choice among many Goucher students is to participate in a "three-week intensive" course abroad made up of an on-campus classroom component followed by three weeks abroad during the winter or spring. Goucher also allows students to participate in semester and yearlong study-abroad programs offered by other schools. Goucher recently announced that starting with the class of 2010 all students will be required to have at least one study-abroad experience to graduate, thus making it the first college to require such an experience of its students. Goucher is also well-known for its creative writing, dance,pre-med, and peace studies departments.
[edit] Graduate level
Goucher offers the following graduate programs:
- Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction
- Master of Arts in Historic Preservation
- Master of Arts in Arts Administration
- Master of Arts in Teaching
- Master of Education
[edit] Certificate and continuing education programs
- Historic Preservation Certificate Program
- Post-Baccalaureate Premed Program (having a 96% acceptance rate to medical school over its entire history)
- Teacher's Institute
- Educational Technology Certificate
[edit] Extracurricular activities
Goucher offers many student-run clubs in different areas such as the French club, the theater club the philosophy club, a pirate club, and a student-labor action committee. It has a bi-weekly school newspaper called the Quindecim, a literary arts journal called Vagabond, and a student-run quarterly newsmagazine called The Goucher Review. Also notable is Goucher Student Radio, which contains a host of student, staff, and faculty programming and expands each year. The station can be streamed entirely online from http://www.goucher-radio.net. It is accessible through Goucher's website as streaming media. The college is also credited with founding Humans vs. Zombies, a game similar to tag that is played generally on college campuses.
[edit] Athletics
Goucher competes in NCAA Division III, fielding men's and women's teams in lacrosse, soccer, basketball, track and field, cross country, swimming, and tennis, as well as women's teams in field hockey, volleyball, and coed equestrian sports. In 2007 the college joined the Landmark Conference after competing as a member of the Capital Athletic Conference from 1991 to 2007.
[edit] Other programs on campus
Goucher has served as a campus for the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth summer program for gifted students.
[edit] Notable alumni
- Jean H. Baker, historian and professor
- Joan Claybrook (class of 1959), president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader.
- Judy Devlin Hashman, (class of 1958), 10-time world singles badminton champion
- Mildred Dunnock, (class of 1922), Oscar-nominated film and stage actress
- Jonah Goldberg, American conservative commentator
- Patricia Goldman, (class of 1964), former senior vice president for USAir; former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
- Sarah T. Hughes, (class of 1917), federal judge
- Georgeanna Seegar Jones, ((class of 1932), reproductive endocrinologist
- Alice Kessler-Harris, historian and professor
- Lydia Villa-Komaroff, (class of 1970), chief operating officer of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass
- Judy Lewent, (class of 1970), EVP and CFO of Merck
- Sandra Magsamen, art therapist
- Florence Marie Mears, mathematician
- Sara Haardt Mencken, wife of H.L. Mencken, and childhood/lifelong friend of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald
- Mary Vivian Pearce, actress John Waters movies
- Margot Perot, then Margot Birmingham, wife of Ross Perot
- Hortense Powdermaker, anthropologist
- Denise Redington, FST teacher/ New York Knicks dancer
- Laura Amy Schlitz (class of 1977), author and Newbery Medal winner
- Florence Siebert, American scientist
- Darcey Steinke, writer
- Paula Stern, (class of 1967), former chairwoman of the United States International Trade Commission
- Eleanor Wilner, (class of 1959), poet, 1991 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellows Program
[edit] References
- ^ Newsweek Ranks "Hot Schools of 2004" - News
- ^ Goucher College, The Baltimore Sun, August 29, 2002
- ^ The Hot Schools Of 2004 | Newsweek Education | Newsweek.com
- ^ Moore and Hutchins
- ^ Goucher aims to thin deer with bowmen - baltimoresun.com
[edit] External links
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