campus.
The Wesleyan student body numbered about 300 in 1910 and had grown to 800 in 1960.
Wesleyan is, along with Amherst and Williams colleges, a member of the Little Three. Wesleyan began as the smallest of the three. Later on, it expanded its programs, qualifying as a university with a variety of graduate offerings and became larger than the other two.
In 1872, the university became one of the first U.S. colleges to attempt coeducation by admitting a small number of female students, a venture then known as the "Wesleyan Experiment". "In 1909, the board of trustees voted to stop admitting women as undergraduates, fearing that the school was losing its masculine image and that women would not be able to contribute to the college financially after graduation the way men could." From 1912 to 1970, Wesleyan operated again as an all-male college.
Wesleyan became independent of the Methodist church in 1937. In 2000, the university was designated as a historic Methodist site.
Beginning in the late 1950s, president …
