removed from the name, prompting some local residents of Poughkeepsie, New York, to quip that its founder believed it might one day admit male students. The college became coeducational in 1969.
Vassar was the second of the Seven Sisters colleges, higher education schools that were strictly for women, and historically sister institutions to the all-male Ivy League colleges. It was chartered by its namesake, brewer Matthew Vassar, in 1861 in the Hudson Valley, about 70 miles (110 km) north of New York City. The first person appointed to the Vassar faculty was astronomer Maria Mitchell, in 1865.
Vassar adopted coeducation in 1969. Immediately following World War II, Vassar accepted a small number of male students on the G.I. Bill. The formal decision to become co-ed came after its trustees declined an offer to merge with Yale University, its sibling institution, in the wave of mergers between the historically all-male colleges of the Ivy League and their Seven Sisters counterparts.
In its early years, Vassar …
