Wellesley College is a private liberal arts college for women in Wellesley, Massachusetts. It grants bachelor’s degrees in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Wellesley students may cross-register at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Olin College of Engineering, Brandeis University, and Babson College.
Wellesley is noted for its Science Center, which includes greenhouses, an observatory, and specialized laboratories for molecular biology, electronics, and other sciences. The Davis Museum and Cultural Center has an outstanding collection of paintings, sculpture, and other art.
Henry Fowle Durant, a wealthy lawyer, founded Wellesley College in 1870 to provide young women with educational opportunities equal to those of young men. The college opened in 1875. It was the first women’s college to have scientific laboratories and the second college in the United States, after MIT, to establish a physics laboratory. Wellesley was an original member of the “Seven Sisters,” a regional conference of seven women’s colleges that also included Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, and Vassar.
Notable Wellesley alumnae have included novelists Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Helen Hooven Santmyer, Secretaries of State Madeleine K. Albright and Hillary Clinton, social work pioneer Sophonisba Breckinridge, environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, etiquette expert Judith Martin (also known as Miss Manners), and journalists Cokie Roberts and Diane Sawyer.
The university’s website at https://www.wellesley.edu/ offers additional information.
