Swarthmore College



         


This article is about the liberal arts college. For other meanings, see Swarthmore (Disambiguation).

School Data

Established 1864
School type Private
President Alfred H. Bloom
Location Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States
Enrollment 1,500 undergraduates
Faculty 167
Campus Suburban, 357 acre (1.4 km²) arboreal campus
Homepage

Swarthmore College is a highly selective liberal arts college located in the town of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. It is one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the United States (along with Williams, Amherst and Wellesley) and is renowned for its academic rigor. Usually, 50 states in America and about 40 different foreign countries are represented by the student body. All of its roughly 1400 students are undergraduates. The school was founded in 1864 by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and has been a co-educational institution from its beginning. Swarthmore dropped its religious affiliation and became officially non-sectarian in the early 20th Century. Nonetheless, vestiges of its Quaker past are still present in campus life in the form of occasional collections (student body meetings) and weekly Friend's meetings on campus. Its sprawling campus is home to the Scott Arboretum] and includes a variety of rare species of trees and plants (nearly all of which are labeled by genus and species).

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Academics

Swarthmore is consistently rated as one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country and is particularly noted for its External Examiners Honors program, which allows students to take graduate-level seminars from their junior year and start writing honors theses based on their independent researches in the beginnning of their senior year without any immediate examination. At the end of their senior year, the honors students take oral and written examinations conducted by outside experts. Unlike most liberal arts colleges, the school offers which is recognized by the US News and World Report as one of the top undergraduate engineering program in the United States. Swarthmore is a member of the Tri-College consortium of liberal arts colleges, along with Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College. The consortium as a whole is additionally affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.

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History

The name 'Swarthmore' has its roots in early Quaker history. Swarthmoor Hall, in Cumbria, England, was the home of Thomas and Margeret Fell in 1652 when George Fox, fresh from his epiphany atop Pendle Hill in 1651, came to visit. The visitation turned into a long association as Fox persuaded Thomas and Margeret Fell and the inhabitants of the nearby village of Fenmore of Friendly teachings, and Swarthmoor was used for the first Friends' meetings.

See also: *

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Facts

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"First"

  1. First woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. - Helen Magill (Ph.D. in Classics from Boston University in 1877.)
  2. First African American dean to lead a "top-ranked" U.S. law school - Christopher Edley Jr.
  3. First "openly gay" United States ambassador - James C. Hormel
  4. The founder of the first private, secular university in Ghana - Patrick Awuah
  5. First woman appointed by the President to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia - Wilma A. Lewis
  6. First African American to serve as Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior - Wilma A. Lewis
  7. First woman president of the Conference of Chief Justices -Ellen Ash Peters
  8. First woman chief judge of the largest circuit court of the United States - Mary Schroeder
  9. First African-American woman to have an endowed professorship named in her honor at Harvard - Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
  10. First person who coined the term "hypertext" - Ted Nelson
  11. First secure commerical transaction on the web, founder of NetMarket - Daniel Kohn
  1. Established the first "tenure - Kathryn L. Morgan (Professor Emerita of History)
  2. First U.S. educational institution since the end of the anti-apartheid movement to file a solo 1864)
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Notable alumni

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Nobel laureates

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MacArthur Fellow ("Genius award")

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Law

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Business

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Education

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Natural science and engineering

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Politics

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Psychology

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Writers

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Arts

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Student Groups

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Notable professors

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Current Faculty

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Former Faculty

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Publications

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Video






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