Allegheny College
Allegheny College is a private liberal arts college in Meadville, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1815, Allegheny is the oldest college in continuous existence under the same name west of the Allegheny Mountains. It is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Presidents' Athletic Conference and it is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
History
Early history
Allegheny College was founded in April 1815 by Timothy Alden, a graduate of Harvard's School of Divinity. The college has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1833 but does not integrate religion into the classroom or pedagogy.The first class, consisting of four male students, began their studies on July 4, 1816, without any formal academic buildings. Within six years, Alden accumulated sufficient funds to begin building a campus. The first building erected, the library, was designed by Alden himself, and is a notable example of early American architecture. Bentley Hall is named in honor of William Bentley, who donated his private library to the college, a collection of considerable value and significance. In 1824, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Alden, expressing the hope that his University of Virginia could someday possess the richness of Allegheny's library. Alden served as president of the college until 1831 when financial and enrollment difficulties forced his resignation. Ruter Hall was built in 1853.
File:IdaTarbell-Purdy.LOC.jpg|thumb|150px|alt=black-and-white picture of a woman|Allegheny graduate Ida M. Tarbell, crusading muckraking journalist who exposed abuses by Standard Oil. Allegheny began admitting women in 1870
Allegheny began admitting women in 1870, early for a US college; a woman was valedictorian of the Allegheny class of 1875. By the time Ida Tarbell, future journalist, arrived in 1876, nineteen women had attended Allegheny and only two had graduated. Tarbell described Ruter Hall in her writing, "...looking out on the town in the valley, its roofs and towers half hidden by a wealth of trees, and beyond it to a circle of round-breasted hills. Before I left Allegheny I had found a very precious thing in that severe room--the companionship there is in the silent presence of books."
In 1905, Allegheny built Alden Hall as a new and improved preparatory school. Over the decades, the college has grown in size and significance while still maintaining ties to the community.
Recent history
In 1970, the film Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me based on the Richard Fariña novel was filmed on college grounds.While the word "Allegheny" is a brand for the college, it is also the name of a county, a river, and a mountain range, and the school has tried to prevent other entities from using this word. For example, Allegheny objected in 2006 when Penn State tried to rename one of its campuses "Allegheny". Allegheny president Richard Cook said 'Allegheny' was "our brand." It sued the Philadelphia's Allegheny Health and Research Foundation in 1997 to change its name.
Under president Richard J. Cook, Allegheny was reported to have had a "stronger endowment, optimal enrollment, record retention rates, innovative new programs and many physical campus improvements." These years were marked by significant growth in the endowment, marked by a $115-million fund-raising drive, bringing the endowment to $150 million. In 2008, James H. Mullen Jr. took office as the 21st president of Allegheny.
The college and the town cooperate in many ways. One study suggested the Allegheny College generates approximately $93 million annually into Meadville and the local economy.
Campus
The campus has 40 principal buildings on a central campus located just north of downtown Meadville, a outdoor recreational complex north of campus, called the Robertson Athletic Complex, and the Bousson nature reserve, protected forest, and experimental forest.Non-residential buildings
- The Pelletier Library had 922,540 volumes. Another estimate was that the library had 420,000 bound volumes, 227,000 microform titles, 1,000 periodicals, and 261,000 U.S. government and Pennsylvania state documents. The library has noteworthy Americana and Ida Tarbell collections, as well as materials concerning abolitionist John Brown's years in Crawford County. computer lab, audiovisual center, and music listening system are there too. It is named after past president Lawrence L. Pelletier who served from 1955 to 1980. The Learning Commons, which is located in Pelletier Library, assists students with writing, research, public speaking and study skills, and also offers disability services.
- Newton Observatory houses a nine-inch refracting telescope and a computer-interfaced 10-inch Meade LX200 telescope with CCD camera. The Office of Public Safety and Security is also housed in the Newton Observatory.
- The Allegheny College Center for Experiential Learning coordinates career internships, off-campus study programs, service-learning, pre-professional advising, and leadership development.
- A Counseling Center, which has joined the Winslow Health Center in Schultz Hall, offers guidance for students in adjusting to student life. The center is staffed by registered therapists and provides crisis and walk in hours to students, free of charge.
- Winslow Health Center is staffed by a registered nurse and offers routine diagnosis and treatment. The center also offers free STI testing to students on a monthly basis.
- The main dining facility is in Brooks Hall, and students can also dine at McKinley's Food Court in the campus center. There have been efforts by students to support the relationship between food services and local farmers. Allegheny won a $79,545 grant in May 2009 to buy equipment to help with composting food waste, including a shredder mill, screening plant, conveyor, skid-steer loader and leaf collection system.
- The Center for Political Participation was founded at Allegheny in 2002 by political science professor Daniel M. Shea, following concerns about low youth voter turnout in the 2000 presidential election. The CPP conducts scholarly research related to youth political participation; sponsors on-campus events related to politics and the electoral process, such as panel discussions; and conducts community-outreach efforts, including the Model Campaign USA program, a campaign simulation designed to get high school students interested in electoral politics.
- Henderson Campus Center was recently renovated and includes McKinley's food court, the bookstore, the game room, Grounds for Change—the student-run coffee house, the post office, and campus offices of college departments as well as student organizations. Also included in the Henderson Campus Center are the Bowman, Penelac & Megahan Art Galleries. Allegheny has auctioned art at times to raise money to renovate other projects, such as the college's Doane School of Art.
- Sports facilities include the $13 million David V. Wise Sport & Fitness Center, which opened in 1997.
- A Women's Center which is located in the basement of Walker Hall was established in 2003 to be a resource for research on gender issues and women's history.
- The college established the Center for Economic and Environmental Development in 1997.
Academics
Allegheny is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
About 30% of the college's 2,100 students graduate in one of the STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering, and math. Students must take at least two courses in a discipline other than their major or minor.
The most popular majors, in terms of 2021 graduates, were Biology/Biological Sciences, Psychology, and Environmental Science.
Total credits for graduation are 128 semester credit hours and no more than 64 credit hours can be from any one department. Almost all courses carry four semester hours of credit.
The college requires all students to take a three-seminar series which "encourages careful listening and reading, thoughtful speaking and writing, and reflective academic planning and self-exploration," to be completed in their first two years. Sophomores typically meet with faculty advisers eight times a year.
Allegheny requires seniors to complete a senior project in their major. Some senior projects can be quite ambitious; in 2007, one senior project involved comprehensive instructions for installing solar panels on the roof of a campus building.
Allegheny divides its academic calendar into two 15-week semesters. The school year typically runs from the last week of August to mid-May, with a short fall break in mid-October, a Wednesday-to-Sunday Thanksgiving break, a month-long winter break from mid-December to mid-January, and a week-long spring break in the third week of March.
It formerly had a Chinese language minor, which was discontinued with the Chinese program itself in 2022.