The Long College for Women was a

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 th ...

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

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 ...

associated with

Hanover College Hanover College is a private college in Hanover, Indiana, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Founded in 1827 by Reverend John Finley Crowe, it is Indiana's oldest private college. The Hanover athletic teams participate in the H ...

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

between 1947 and 1978.

History

Founding

Formally named Henry C. Long College for Women of Hanover College, Long College was the coordinate institution of Hanover. Hanover became a

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...

institution in 1879 when the Board of Trustees voted to fully accept female students into the college. Calla Harrison became the first woman to graduate from Hanover in 1883.Hanover College Board of Trustees Minutes, Hanover College, HC 1 Following the death of longtime donor and major supporter of women's education Henry C. Long from Indianapolis – and especially after a subsequent donation of $750,000 from his estate – it was decided to open a coordinate institution. Long College was formally established on June 2, 1947. It was originally intended to last only ten years, but Hanover renewed the agreement in 1957 and extended the life of Long College. The addition of Long College to Hanover College added more than $1 million to the joint college's annual budget. New buildings, including dining halls and

dormitories A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm) is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as boarding school, high school, college or university s ...

, were constructed to assist the incoming women in particular.

Coordinate system

As with other coordinate women's institutions of the time, such as Pembroke College of Brown University and Newcomb College of

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pub ...

, students at Long shared most of the resources that were available to Hanover's male students. Although the colleges were technically separate in that all women received degrees from Long and all men received degrees from Hanover, the students shared the same campus, faculty, and even classes. By the early 1960s, faced with the widespread coeducation movement of the decade, the board of trustees relented and allowed its female graduates to receive diplomas from Hanover instead of Long. Women were still not considered full Hanover students, however, and were required to register and attend as Long students.

Final years

During the Super Outbreak of April 3, 1974, the Hanover campus was devastated by a tornado. With $10 million in damages, the college began to look at ways to save money. Due to the need to save money and the rise of coeducation, Long was fully merged into Hanover on November 2, 1978, ending the coordinate college system and making the new single college fully coeducational.

Alumnae

A notable alumna of Long College is

American-Canadian American Canadians are Canadians of American descent. The term is most often used to refer to Canadians who migrated from or have ancestry from the United States. Demography According to the 2016 Census, 29,590 Canadians reported American as ...

writer

Carol Shields Carol Ann Shields, (née Warner; June 2, 1935 – July 16, 2003) was an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel ''The Stone Diaries'', which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as ...

, who was a member of

Alpha Delta Pi Alpha Delta Pi (), commonly known as ADPi (pronounced "ay-dee-pye"), is an International Panhellenic sorority founded on May 15, 1851, at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. It is the oldest secret society for women. Alpha Delta Pi is a memb ...

while at the college. Shields used the coordinate college system of Long and Hanover as inspiration in several of her works, especially '' The Stone Diaries''.

References

* Goertz, Dee. ''Carol Shields, Narrative Hunger, and the Possibilities of Fiction''. University of Toronto Press, 2003. * Songe, Alice H. ''American Universities and Colleges: A Dictionary of Name Changes''. 1978. *
Timeline of Hanover College History
" Joseph Wood Evans Memorial Special Collections and Archives Center, Hanover College. October 30, 2007. Accessed March 20, 2008.

External links

Hanover College

Hanover College Alumni Association
{{authority control 1978 disestablishments in Indiana Educational institutions established in 1947 Educational institutions disestablished in 1978 Indiana educational history Defunct private universities and colleges in Indiana Universities and colleges affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) Education in Jefferson County, Indiana Former women's universities and colleges in the United States Presbyterianism in Indiana 1947 establishments in Indiana History of women in Indiana