History & Traditions
History & Traditions
The College of Wooster was founded on December 18, 1866 by Presbyterians who wanted to do "their proper part in the great work of educating those who are to mold society and give shape to all its institutions." A citizen of Wooster, Ephraim Quinby, donated a venerable oak grove set on twenty-two acres overlooking the Killbuck Valley, and the Trustees of the fledgling institution spent the next four years raising funds so that the school might open with buildings, books, a laboratory, scientific equipment, and experienced faculty members.
On September 8, 1870, Wooster opened its doors as a university, with a faculty of five and a student body of thirty men and four women.
Willis Lord, the first President, made a strong commitment to coeducation, warning the early classes that Wooster had the same expectations of its women as it had of its men and that men and women would be taught in the same classes and pursue the same curriculum. The first Ph.D. granted by Wooster was given to a woman, Annie Irish, in 1882, and many of the early women graduates made careers for themselves in foreign missions, doing abroad what they could not easily do in this country--founding colleges, administering hospitals, and managing printing houses.
Likewise, on the matter of race, Wooster was clear from the beginning. President Lord declared that Wooster should be a place of studies for all: "The sameness of our origin as men and women carries with it our original and essential equality. Had our national life been the true expression of our national creed, slavery would have been forever impossible. Caste, in whatever name, strikes at the soul of our humanity and liberty." Clarence Allen, Wooster’s first African-American student, entered the College in the 1880s, and the promise of the early vision still inspires the College. In 1988, the Board of Trustees created The Clarence Allen Scholarships to honor his memory.
An aspiration for excellence marked the College from its inception. Jonas Notestein, a student in Wooster's first graduating class, wrote that "a kind of prophetic feeling possessed us all that this was to be a great institution after a time, that we were starting ideals and setting standards and that it became us to do our very best so that the after generations of students would have something to be proud of."
Those aspirations faced a severe test in December 1901, when fire destroyed Old Main, and with it all the young institution’s classrooms, laboratories, and faculty offices. “Yesterday, I was president of a college,” Louis Holden wrote to a friend of the College, “Today I am president of a hole in the ground.” But in a year, thanks to the generosity of donors including Andrew Carnegie, Wooster constructed four new buildings to replace the one it had lost.
By 1915 Wooster had eight academic divisions, including a medical school. That year, there was a bitter fight over whether to establish yet another division. At first, the Trustees sided with the minority of the faculty which favored the new division, but after the resignation of President Holden, they reversed themselves and supported the majority who wished to devote themselves entirely to undergraduates in the liberal arts.
An unusually high percentage of Wooster’s early graduates went overseas as missionaries, and soon not only their sons and daughters, but also the students from their schools were enrolling at Wooster as students. There were special houses for these students where every occupant spoke two or three languages and where friendships developed among students from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This international presence affected the entire campus, establishing a tradition that continues to influence the College. Today approximately five percent of the student body is international in origin, representing more than 30 different countries.
For its first hundred years, the College was owned by the Presbyterian Church’s Synod of Ohio. In 1969, the Synod voted to release ownership of the College and its assets to Wooster's Board of Trustees, and thus today the College is a fully independent institution. Wooster has chosen to continue a voluntary relationship with The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) through a Memorandum of Understanding with The Synod of the Covenant.
When Howard Lowry ’23 left Princeton to become Wooster’s seventh president in 1944, he brought with him a vision that continues to profoundly shape the College to this day. In his inaugural address, Lowry described an academic program that would culminate in a significant intellectual and creative project — today it would be called a capstone project — for every student, not just those in an “honors” program. He called it “a creative adventure in self-discipline and self-discovery” but for more than 60 years, Wooster students and faculty have simply called it I.S., short for Independent Study. Every senior works one-on-one with a faculty mentor to conceive, organize, and complete a significant work of inquiry or creative expression on a topic of his or her own choosing.
These are the strands from which Wooster’s history are woven: the faith in liberal learning, the commitment to offer studies for all regardless of sex or race, the international and religious dimensions of the College, and an unparalleled commitment to mentored, independent undergraduate research.