Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Alvin P. Sanoff
“Agnes Scott College is a place that helps women
achieve their highest expectations.”
—Mary Brown Bullock, President, Agnes Scott College
Cedar Crest has doubled in size and now enrolls the fulltime
equivalent of about 1,700 students, half of whom are
traditional undergraduates and the rest adult learners. Says
Blaney: “Building our reputation in the sciences has brought
about the growth.”
Agnes Scott College in Georgia is another women’s
college that has enjoyed substantial growth. In the past decade
undergraduate enrollment has risen from 600 to 900. Founded
in 1889 as part of the Presbyterian educational movement,
the college’s original mission was to educate women for the
betterment of their families and the elevation of their religion.
It has since widened its vision dramatically. Today, many
graduates enter law, medicine, and other professions and a
number pursue graduate studies. Indeed, measured by the
proportion of graduates who go on to earn their doctorates,
Agnes Scott ranks in the top 10 percent nationally and in the
top one percent in the field of economics.
President Mary Brown Bullock, herself a graduate of
Agnes Scott, describes the college as a place that helps women
“achieve their highest expectations.” Bullock, who has led
Agnes Scott since 1995, says that as the college has expanded
offerings in the sciences and ramped up its international
programs—about 40 percent of students now study
abroad—it has benefited from its location in Atlanta. While
Boston may be the first city that comes to people’s minds
when they hear the words “university town,” Bullock notes
that 18 colleges and universities in Atlanta form a regional
consortium and that Agnes Scott students can cross-register
at any of the other institutions. Because of the college’s
location, it can guarantee internships to all students, at
institutions ranging from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
and the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to many smaller companies run by women. Agnes
Scott offers women an education filled with opportunity that
is both “challenging and engaging,” says Bullock.
Reaching Out to the
Under-Represented
Another school that was established to educate
young women, Mount St. Mary’s College in California, also
continues to serve a student body composed mostly of women.
But the college, founded in 1925, is best known as one of the
nation’s most ethnically and racially diverse institutions of
higher education. More than half the students in the college’s
baccalaureate program are Latina or African-American, and
more than one-fifth are Asian-American. Many of the college’s
1,800 undergraduates are from lower-income families. About
40 percent are first-generation college students—many from
families whose primary language is not English.
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