Simmons University

with a bequest by John Simmons, a wealthy clothing manufacturer in Boston. Simmons founded the college, called Simmons College, based on the belief that women ought to live independently by offering a liberal arts education for undergraduate women to integrate into professional work experience. Sarah Louise Arnold was the school's first dean.
Simmons is a member of the Colleges of the Fenway consortium, which also includes Emmanuel College, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Simmons absorbed Garland Junior College in 1976. (Wheelock College, a former member, merged with Boston University to become the Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.)
Simmons graduated its first African American student in 1914. Furthermore, Simmons was one of the few private colleges not to impose admission quotas on Jewish students for the first half of the 1900s.
The school's MBA program was the first in the …