This page was created by Christine Liebson. The last update was by Julia Teran.
1850-1899
Oberlin College opened - the first American college to grant undergraduate degrees to women.
1849
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to receive a medical degree from a regular American medical school, Geneva Medical College.
Nancy Talbot Clark
1852
Nancy Elizabeth Talbot Clark was the first woman to graduate from Western Reserve's nine-year-old medical school.
1855
University of Iowa became the first state university to admit male and female students on an equal basis from its opening.
1870
University of Cincinnati was founded as a coeducational municipal university. 29% of American colleges were coeducational, 12% were women only, 59% were men only. Women represented 21% of all students enrolled in American higher education institutions. Ada Kepley became the first woman in the U.S. to receive a law degree, from Union College of Law.
Viola Smith Buell
1876
Fifty years after its establishment, Viola Smith Buell became the first woman to graduate from Western Reserve College.
1877
Helen Magill White was the first woman awarded the Ph.D. by an American university, Boston University.
1879
Harvard “Annex” opened for women’s instruction by Harvard faculty. In 1894 it was chartered as Radcliffe College.
Francisca Himmelsback painting of Laura Kerr Axtell
1885
Laura Kerr Axtell was the first woman to endow a Case School of Applied Science professorship.
1888
Western Reserve University ended undergraduate co-education and adopted the coordinate system, establishing the College for Women, later Flora Stone Mather College, as its women's college.
Eliza Hardy Lord
Maude Kimball
Eliza Hardy Lord, Dean of the College for Women (1888-1892) was Western Reserve University's first woman faculty member and first woman dean.
In 1888, Maude Kimball was the first student of the Western Reserve University College for Women.
1889
Columbia trustees approved the founding of Barnard College, Columbia’s “female annex.”
1890
43% of American colleges were coeducational, 20% were women only, 37% were men only.
Women represented just under 36% of all students enrolled in American higher education institutions.
Mary Louise French
1891
Mary Louisa French was the first graduate of the College for Women.
Brown adopted the coordinate system, establishing Pembroke as its women’s college.
1892
From its establishment, the University of Chicago admitted women and men.
1895
Mary Chilton Noyes was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from Western Reserve University when its three-year-old Department of Graduate Instruction awarded its first Ph.D. degrees.
Aida Louise Smith
1896
Aida Louise Smith was the first documented woman hired by Case School of Applied Science.
1898
First Phi Beta Kappa chapter at a woman’s college was established at Vassar College.
Louisa F. Randolph became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Western Reserve University.
