Kirkland College was a small, private
liberal arts
Liberal arts education (from Latin "free" and "art or principled practice") is the traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term ''art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the ...
women's college
Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male stud ...
located in
Clinton,
New York, from 1968 to 1978. It was named for
Samuel Kirkland
Samuel Kirkland (December 1, 1741 – February 28, 1808) was a Presbyterian minister and missionary among the Oneida and Tuscarora peoples of present-day central New York State. He was a long-time friend of the Oneida chief Skenandoa.
Kirkland ...
, who founded
Hamilton College
Hamilton College is a private liberal arts college in Clinton, Oneida County, New York. It was founded as Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1793 and was chartered as Hamilton College in 1812 in honor of inaugural trustee Alexander Hamilton, following ...
. Hamilton absorbed Kirkland on June 30, 1978, and now maintains its archives and
financial endowment
A financial endowment is a legal structure for managing, and in many cases indefinitely perpetuating, a pool of financial, real estate, or other investments for a specific purpose according to the will of its founders and donors. Endowments are o ...
, and supports its alumnae community.
History
![Kirner-Johnson building, Hamilton College NY](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Kirner-Johnson_building%2C_Hamilton_College_NY.jpg)
Planning for Kirkland began during the 1962-1963
academic year
An academic year or school year is a period of time which schools, colleges and universities use to measure a quantity of study.
School holiday
School holidays (also referred to as vacations, breaks, and recess) are the periods during which sch ...
through the influence of then-
Hamilton College
Hamilton College is a private liberal arts college in Clinton, Oneida County, New York. It was founded as Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1793 and was chartered as Hamilton College in 1812 in honor of inaugural trustee Alexander Hamilton, following ...
president
Robert W. McEwen. It was named after the nearby town of Kirkland, in turn named for
Samuel Kirkland
Samuel Kirkland (December 1, 1741 – February 28, 1808) was a Presbyterian minister and missionary among the Oneida and Tuscarora peoples of present-day central New York State. He was a long-time friend of the Oneida chief Skenandoa.
Kirkland ...
, the founder of Hamilton. Hamilton was a
men's college
In higher education, a men's college is an undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institution whose students are exclusively men. Many are liberal arts colleges.
Around the world In North America United States
In the United States, co-educ ...
. Kirkland College, a college for women, was envisioned as the first of several institutions which would form a cluster similar to the
Claremont Colleges
The Claremont Colleges (known colloquially as the 7Cs) are a consortium of seven private institutions of higher education located in Claremont, California, United States. They comprise five undergraduate colleges (the 5Cs)— Pomona College, Sc ...
. Though the "cluster" vision was never achieved, two factors led to a more innovative and experimental nature at Kirkland: first, the introduction of progressive views of undergraduate education on the part of
Millicent Carey McIntosh
Millicent Carey McIntosh (November 30, 1898 – January 3, 2001) was an educational administrator and American feminist who led the Brearley School (1930–1947), and most prominently Barnard College (1947–1962). The first married woman to he ...
, former President of
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
, who came on as a member of the first Board of Trustees, and second, the mandate to "make a fresh attack on introducing major fields of learning" without being constrained by the more traditional patterns at Hamilton – a mandate embraced by Kirkland's president, Samuel F. Babbitt. The untimely passing of Hamilton President McEwen, also a member of the first Kirkland Board, led to the more independent development of the new institution.
Kirkland opened in 1968 on its own campus, adjacent to Hamilton College. The Kirkland faculty and students operated in a more diverse and transparent community than had been the norm at Hamilton, and, although the new college got off to an exciting start, the many differences in educational and community functioning inevitably led to small and large conflicts between the two institutions. Meantime, the economic climate, which had been very positive during the planning stages for Kirkland, began to deteriorate. As a result, the debt service accruing to build Kirkland's entirely new campus exerted a tremendous burden on its finances. Construction costs in one year increased by 10%. Planning a large endowment fundraising effort ("The Campaign for the Second Decade") Kirkland turned to Hamilton for a guarantee of potential loss of annual funds. In 1977, with the planned resignation of President Babbitt, Hamilton refused such assistance, and the two colleges were merged under protest into a single, coeducational Hamilton in 1978.
A study and consideration in the form of an 'intimate history' by Samuel Fisher Babbitt, Kirkland's only president – ''Limited Engagement: Kirkland College 1965-1978, An Intimate History of the Rise and Fall of a Coordinate College for Women'' – provides an in-depth, first-person account of Kirkland's brief existence. In addition to personal records and recollection, Babbitt was able to employ archival materials housed in the Hamilton College and Columbia University libraries. Despite its dissolution, Kirkland College, through faculty who remained to teach at Hamilton, and through the active influence of its graduates and former trustees, has had a profound influence on the surviving coeducational institution. One wag has commented: "Kirkland lost the battle, but they won the war".
Legacy at Hamilton College
When Kirkland was officially incorporated into and absorbed by Hamilton College in 1978, many continuing students elected to join the new co-ed college, and some faculty accepted equivalent positions in Hamilton's departments. Yet discontent with the way the merger was executed festered long after 1978, coloring alumnae relations, inter-faculty relations and, to some degree, campus social dynamics. Despite such friction, many of the educational principles of Kirkland (such as student-designed majors and independent study) found their way into the Hamilton curriculum. Efforts on the part of both Kirkland and Hamilton alumni to acknowledge common interests have begun to mend these breaches by responding to the curiosity and interests of current Hamilton students regarding Kirkland and its influence on their college.
Endowment
Upon the dissolution of Kirkland, its endowment was transferred to the Hamilton endowment, with existing restrictions intact, with the understanding that all funds were to be applied "to support women and their needs and interests at Hamilton." One on-going Hamilton program that received early support from the Kirkland Endowment is HAVOC (Hamilton Association for Volunteering, Outreach and Charity).)
Memorabilia and traditions
The Kirkland Archives are housed in the Burke Library at Hamilton College. In 2007 a display case, containing a rotating exhibit of items from the Archives, was installed in the lobby of McEwen Hall, near an iconic sculpture, the "rock swing" that dates from Kirkland's early years.
The central motif of the Kirkland College seal was an apple tree, and green apples remain a symbol of Kirkland among its alumnae and supporters to this day. During commencement exercises at Hamilton many students and faculty choose to wear a green apple pin on their academic robes to honor Kirkland's legacy. Many graduating seniors also place green apples on the podium prior to receiving their diplomas.
The Hamilton College Bookstore sells various Kirkland merchandise, typically available on campus during June reunions.
The Kirkland Project
In the mid-1990s, a group of Hamilton faculty initiated a project with the intention of working "toward establishing a research center like the Bunting Institute at Harvard and the Pembroke Center at Brown."
[The Kirkland Project News, Vol.1, no.1]
The Kirkland Project is named in honor of Kirkland College, building on Kirkland's twin legacies of women's education and innovative pedagogy, expanding on them to meet the global challenges that face contemporary male and female students, faculty and staff.
[The Kirkland Project News, Spring 2003]
Notable alumnae
*
Christie Vilsack
Ann Christine Bell Vilsack (born July 9, 1950) is an American literacy advocate and politician. Vilsack is married to former Iowa Governor and United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. She served as the First Lady of Iowa from 1999 ...
, a member of the Kirkland College Charter Class 1972, was the
First Lady
First lady is an unofficial title usually used for the wife, and occasionally used for the daughter or other female relative, of a non-monarchical
A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state fo ...
of
Iowa
Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...
.
* Joanne Rappaport is Professor of Anthropology at Georgetown University.
*
Esther Barazzone
Esther Barazzone (born 1946) is an independent American consultant in higher education governance and leadership, and president emerita of Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As president of Chatham from 1992 to 2016, when she retire ...
, a former Kirkland faculty member, is now president of
Chatham College
Chatham University is a private university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally founded as a women's college, it began enrolling men in undergraduate programs in 2015. It enrolls about 2,110 students, including 1,002 undergraduate students an ...
in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
.
*
Roz Chast
Rosalind Chast (born November 26, 1954) is an American cartoonist and a staff cartoonist for ''The New Yorker''. Since 1978, she has published more than 800 cartoons in ''The New Yorker''. She also publishes cartoons in ''Scientific American'' and ...
, cartoonist for The New Yorker, attended Kirkland College.
* Donna O. Kerner, is chairman of Anthropology at Wheaton College in Massachusetts.
*
Natalie Babbitt
Natalie Zane Babbitt (née Moore; July 28, 1932 – October 31, 2016) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. Her 1975 novel '' Tuck Everlasting'' was adapted into two feature films and a Broadway musical. She received th ...
, noted children's author, taught at Kirkland. She was married to Pres. Samuel F. Babbitt, and wrote her first works while raising their children in Clinton, NY.
* Broadway actress
Sandy Faison
Sandra Faison (born September 16, 1950) is an American actress and singer. She became an acting teacher after her performing career.
Career
Acting
In 1977, she made her Broadway debut as Grace Farrell, secretary to Daddy Warbucks, in '' Ann ...
was a member of the Charter Class at Kirkland College, graduating in 1972.
* Patricia Goldsmith is Vice President of Institutional Advancement at
Scripps College.
/ref>
* M. Ellen Mitchell, class of 1975, is Professor of Psychology and was Director/Dean for 18 years at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago
* Helen Barolini writer, editor and translator who taught at Kirkland College.
See also
*
References
External links
The Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture
Hamilton College
Kirkland Alumnae site at Hamilton College
Kirkland Interactive Archives
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Defunct private universities and colleges in New York (state)
Liberal arts colleges in New York (state)
Hamilton College (New York)
Embedded educational institutions
Educational institutions established in 1968
Educational institutions disestablished in 1978
Universities and colleges in Oneida County, New York