Women at Kenyon - Celebrating Fifty Years of Coeducation

On Dec. 29, Kenyon College is officially incorporated by action of the Ohio state legislature.

The Harcourt Place Seminary for Young Ladies and Girls opens in Gambier, with Lucy Caroline Andrews, as headmistress.

Emma Wright joins the Kenyon administration as College librarian and serves until her death in 1896.

Ellen Douglas Smith Devol is named the College’s librarian, a post she holds for 26 years.

Kenyon celebrates its centennial with guests including Florence Kling Harding, who accepts an honorary degree on behalf of her recently deceased husband, U. S. President Warren Gamaliel Harding.

The June 19 Collegian leads with the satirical headline, “Announce Kenyon to Go Co-ed in Fall.” “Who knows, for the first time in its long and distinguished journalistic career the Collegian may be published by members of the fair sex in the Fall Term,” the article reads.

In September, students return to a campus that no longer provides maid service in student rooms, requiring Kenyon men to make their own beds — in the words of President F. Edward Lund — “just like the boys at Harvard and Yale.”

On Feb. 27, the Kenyon board approves (in principle) the expansion of the student body and the creation of the Coordinate College for Women, which would admit around 175 female students in the fall of 1969. According to the Fall 2013 Bulletin, “as news of the plan leaked out, alumni and students reacted, often vehemently … A campus poll indicated that more than half of the 644 students opposed entry of women.

Kenyon announces its Program for Expansion, which entails an increased enrollment of men and, for the first time, the admission of women.

On Dec. 12, Doris Bean Crozier, a professor of anthropology and assistant to the president at Chatham College, is announced as the dean of the Coordinate College for Women. “An international traveler who had lived and taught in Germany and Cambodia, Crozier knew something about foreign cultures — an understanding that, as the sole female member of an all-male administration, would serve her well,” Hoekstra writes in the 2013 Bulletin article.

On Sept. 8, Kenyon marks the official opening of the Coordinate College for Women and the unofficial end of single-sex education on the Hill. The Collegian, in its Sept. 18 paper, noted that although “many Kenyon men welcomed the presence of girls on Middle Path, the majority still viewed the addition with clearly mixed feelings.”

Barbara (Lee) Johnson ’73, Doretha Smallwood ’73 (now Leftwood) and and Glory Wolfe (now Shuler) '73, the first black women to study at Kenyon, arrive on campus.

On Sept. 18, Linda Urban ’73 (later Sears) becomes the first woman student to have her byline in the Collegian. The article’s title is “Women in Kenyon Tradition.”

At Founders’ Day, the Oath of Matriculation is administered only to the men in the freshman class. Ohio State University President Novice Fawcett ’31 gives the address.

From Feb. 5-7, the Kenyon College Dramatic Club presents a rock-musical version of Aristophanes’s “Lysistrata,” with Mia Halton ’73 in the title role.

Kenyon’s Lambda Chapter of Sigma Pi fraternity disaffiliates from its national organization and becomes a local group known as the Peeps (its former nickname), and admits women as members.

On April 9, the Kenyon College Dramatic Club presents its production of the Peter Weiss play “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, or Marat/Sade,” the first to be directed by Assistant Professor of Drama Harlene Marley. The leading female role of Charlotte Corday is played by Colleen Kelly ’73.

On May 30, Kenyon awards degrees to its first three female graduates, Belinda Bremner, Judith Hobbs Goodhand and Patricia Sellew (the first woman elected to the Beta of Ohio Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa). All three came to the College as transfer students in 1969.

Flora Katz ’72 becomes the first Kenyon woman to be awarded a Watson Fellowship for travel and study abroad.

In July, Karen Burke joins Kenyon as assistant director of women’s physical education and the first full-time coach of the College’s field hockey and women’s lacrosse teams. For five of her eleven years at Kenyon, she simultaneously coaches four sports: basketball, field hockey, lacrosse, and volleyball.

On Feb. 19, the Kenyon board votes that the College will become a coeducational institution on July 1, 1972. Thus the short life of the Coordinate College for Women comes to an end, perhaps as intended from the beginning. In a Collegian article, Provost Bruce Haywood says he hopes that the word “student” can now be used “without any further qualification,” and that he foresees a time when “we will no longer speak in terms of the number of men and number of women enrolled at Kenyon.”

Geraldine “Geri” Coleman ’74 (now Tucker) becomes the first woman to serve as president of the Black Student Union.

On May 27, Kenyon graduates its first fully coeducational class, consisting of 211 men and 100 women.

In January, Kim Stapleton ’74 (now Smith) is “activated” as a member of Psi Upsilon, becoming the first woman to join a Kenyon fraternity.

On July 1, Rev. Joan P. Grimm, who later became one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood by the Episcopal Church (1977), begins a two-year tenure as Kenyon’s associate chaplain.

In early 1974, recent graduate Julie Miller (now Vick) '73 returns to the College to establish, with support from Provost Bruce Haywood and Dean Susan Givens, the After Kenyon Library, which will evolve into the College's Office of Career Development.

The Owl Creek Singers are established as Kenyon’s first all-female a cappella group.

February sees the resignation of Sharon A. Decker, the first woman to be hired into a tenure-track position in the Department of English. Decker cites “social isolation,” “hostility” and “lack of understanding,” as well as opposition to change, among her reasons for leaving to accept a job at the University of Virginia.

On March 31, President Jordan announced the appointment of Donna Hurt Scott as Kenyon’s part-time equal opportunity coordinator, serving also as assistant to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women at Kenyon.

Joyce Klein and Peggy Turgeon start what will become a beloved tradition: Friday Cafe, a lunchtime gathering, open to all, featuring homemade gourmet comfort food and camaraderie.

Kathryn “Ryn” Edwards, Kenyon’s first out lesbian professor, joins the biology faculty as an assistant professor. Open about her sexual orientation from the start, she becomes an important part of the College’s gay and lesbian community and an essential player in efforts for equality on campus.

In March, the Ladies swimming team makes its first appearance at the NCAA Division III championships. All-American swimmer co-captain Katrina Singer ’81 (now Litchfield) places third in the 200-meter backstroke at nationals.

“Shapes of Their Thoughts: Reflections of Culture Contact in Northwest Coast Indian Art,” by Victoria Wyatt ’77 H’15, a historian, teacher expert in Native American art and culture, is published.   

On July 1, Harlene Marley of the Department of Dance and Drama becomes Kenyon’s first female faculty member to be awarded a full professorship.

The Kenyon Athletic Association Hall of Fame inducts its second class, including its first woman, two-sport (swimming and track) All-American Elizabeth Ann Batchelder ’84 (now Boring).

At Honors Day, Cornelia “Buffy” Ireland Hallinan ’76, becomes the first Kenyon alumna to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the College.

Allison E. Joseph ’88 H’14 receives Ploughshares magazine's John C. Zacharis First Book Award for her collection of poems, “What Keeps Us Here.” While at Kenyon, Joseph was the first undergraduate to be published in the Kenyon Review since Robert Lowell and James Wright.

On May 13, Roberta Teale Swartz Chalmers, poet, professor, widow of President Gordon Keith Chalmers, and often unacknowledged co-founder of the Kenyon Review, dies at her home in Newton, Massachusetts, at the age of 89. According to the Fall 2018 Bulletin, Chalmers was the one who had noticed the absence of an American literary review and encouraged her husband to remedy this oversight.

In October, Kenyon announces a $1.25-million gift from Peg and Andrew Thomson P’76 and the Beatrice P. Delany Charitable Trust to fund the Sheila and Philip Jordan Jr. Professorship in Environmental Science.

Historian Janette Thomas Greenwood ’77 H’11 publishes her first book, “Bittersweet Legacy: The Black and White ‘Better Classes’" in Charlotte, North Carolina, 1850-1910.” The landmark study challenges the fundamental premises of earlier work on the New South, which tends to separate the histories of whites from those of African-Americans.

The Hon. Kathleen O’Malley ’79 H’95 is the first Kenyon alumna to be the Commencement speaker — a milestone that coincides with the 25th anniversary of coeducation.

Vicki Barker ’78 H’96 is hired to host the BBC World Service's morning world news program for U.S. listeners, “World Update.” She later produces a four-part radio documentary, "The Changing Face of Global Power," which introduces the world to the concept of the "BRICs" — Brazil, Russia, India and China as rising powers.

Melissa L. Kravetz ’99 becomes the College’s first student to be awarded the Doris B. Crozier Award and the E.Malcolm Anderson Cup.

Kristina Peterson ’73 H’98 is named president of Random House Children's Group and receives an honorary doctor of laws at Kenyon. She later accepts a new position as president of Simon & Schuster’s children’s publishing division.

Inductees to the Kenyon Athletic Association Hall of Fame include the 1972 field hockey and 1973 women’s lacrosse teams and their coach, Karen Burke.

Starting this year, Kenyon consistently enrolls more female than male students, with the percentage of female students fluctuating between 52 and 56 percent during the ensuing years.

Aileen C. Hefferren ’88 H’12 is appointed chief executive at Prep for Prep, a leadership development program that prepares New York City’s most promising students of color for placement in private schools. In 2012, she delivers Kenyon’s Commencement address on race in America.

On July 1, S. Georgia Nugent becomes Kenyon’s 18th president. In her inaugural address, she invites everyone to take part in "this endless odyssey of education," and thereby to increase "Kenyon's capacity to act in and transform our world."

Robin L. Bennett ’81 H’09 is elected president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors.

At Honors Day, Debra S. Lunn ’73 is awarded an honorary doctor of fine arts. At the same event, Kelly P. Burke ’06 is announced as one of the College’s three winners of the year’s Barry M. Goldwater Excellence in Education Scholarship.

As Kenyon celebrated the 35th anniversary of the first full graduating class of women during Reunion Weekend 2008, Bonnie Levinson '73 and Todd Leavitt '73 spearheaded a project to capture the stories of members of the Class of 1973. Video interviews from the project are available on Vimeo.

Among the first four students to reside at The Kenyon Farm are Claire O’Connell ’13 and Anna Peery ’14.

Obstetric anesthesiologist McCallum R. Hoyt ’76 H’95 is appointed to a one-year term as president of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology.

The publication FierceBiotech includes Linda Slanec Higgins ’84 H’17 on its annual list of Women in Biotech.

President Barack Obama nominates career diplomat Katherine Simonds Dhanani ’81 H’16 as the first U.S. ambassador to Somalia in more than 23 years. Dhanani, the State Department’s director of the Office of Regional and Security Affairs in the Bureau of African Affairs, later withdraws her nomination for personal reasons.

The Obama administration honors two alumnae for their change-making work. Colette Pichon Battle ’97 H’18, director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy in Slidell, Louisiana, is among 10 individuals recognized by President Barack Obama as “White House Champions of Change for Climate Equity.” According to a press release, the White House selected Battle because of her work “with local communities, national funders and elected officials around equity issues in her home state of Louisiana in the post-Katrina and post-BP disaster in the Gulf Coast.” And Sonya Pryor-Jones ’94, the chief implementation officer at the Fab Foundation, is named one of 10 “White House Champions of Change for Making,” for empowering people to become inventors in a digital age. "I believe that education is the greatest equalizer," she writes in a White House blog post. 

Judy Hoff Gilbert ’91 is hired into a newly created role at biotech company Zymergen: chief people officer. On April 12, Vanity Fair interviews Gilbert for a piece titled, “How one tech start-up ditched its brogrammers. And became a better company.”

On March 4, Allison Janney '82 H'00 wins her first Academy Award — Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role — for her acting in “I, Tonya.” She publicly thanks her mentor Joanne Woodward for her “encouragement and generosity that gave me the confidence to think I could pursue a career in acting.”

On Jan. 7, Allison Janney ’82 H’00 wins her first Golden Globe Award — Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture — for her portrayal of LaVona Golden, Tonya Harding’s abusive, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, bird-wearing mother, in “I, Tonya.”

Ruby Schiff ’21 takes the stage at the 91st Academy Awards to help accept an Oscar for “Period. End of Sentence.” She was an co-executive producer of the short-subject documentary.