Scripps College
Scripps College is a private liberal arts women's college in Claremont, California. It was founded as a member of the Claremont Colleges in 1926, a year after the consortium's formation. Journalist and philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps provided its initial endowment.
Scripps is a four-year undergraduate institution and enrolled 958 students as of 2020. It offers instruction in the liberal arts with an emphasis on the humanities, and is known for its extensive interdisciplinary core curriculum. Its campus was designed by Gordon Kaufmann in the Spanish Colonial Revival style and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Scripps is regarded as the premier women's college in the West Coast of the United States. It is a top producer of Fulbright students. Its athletes compete on the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas joint team in the SCIAC, a Division III conference.
History
Founding era
In November 1908, Ellen Browning Scripps, a philanthropist and prominent figure in the worlds of education, publishing, and women's rights based in La Jolla, Calif., first visited Pomona College in Claremont for its Dedication Day. She met many notable members of the young college, including James A. Blaisdell, its new president. Scripps continued to stay involved with Pomona College's community and kept in touch with Blaisdell in the years following the event, funding some of the college's lecture series.Following an increase in enrollment of female students at Pomona College in 1919, Blaisdell turned to Scripps for the possibility of funding a "Woman's Campus." Scripps was willing to invest money into creating a college campus that would preserve her values of education. Over the next several years, she bought surrounding lots of land in Claremont and funded the construction of a new set of dormitories in what became "Scripps College for Women." According to Scripps, "The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously, and hopefully." To provide a liberal arts experience with both an all-women's education and co-education, she wanted the college "to stress the essentials, reduce the size of the curriculum instead of increasing it."
Scripps initially did not want the college to be named after her, but Blaisdell convinced her that her name would help grow and publicize the college.
The development of Scripps College marked the start of Claremont's "group-college" system, similar to that of the Oxford Colleges, for which Scripps received much publicity. Scripps was featured on the cover of Time magazine for establishing this new consortium of colleges, which became known as the Claremont Colleges.Scripps College was founded in 1926, following the coeducational Pomona College and Claremont Graduate University. Soon after, the first dormitory, created in 1927, was dedicated in memory of trustee Eleanor Joy Toll. Ernest J. Jaqua was inaugurated as the first president of Scripps College in the same dedication ceremony of Toll Hall. The second dormitory, established as a "sister building" to Toll Hall, was dedicated to Grace Scripps Clark, the niece of Ellen Browning Scripps and daughter of James E. Scripps, in November 1928. Balch Academic Hall and Browning Residence Hall, named for trustee Janet Jacks Balch and founder Ellen Browning Scripps, respectively, were dedicated in a joint ceremony in September 1929. Despite being designed by different architects, both halls adopted a "'Mediterranean' motif" unique to the campus.
At age 89, Scripps founded the college as one of the first institutions in the West dedicated to educating women for both professional careers and personal growth. Scripps's "experiment in education" called for a setting with an artistic connection between buildings and garden landscape on an intimate scale.
Postwar era
Over time, the college has moved away from its finishing school–esque origins.In 1968, students occupied a grove of olive trees to save them from being cut down to make space for construction of the humanities building.
21st century
In 2000, the college opened a centralized dining facility, Malott Commons, ending the practice of serving meals in the residence halls.In 2014, the college began admitting transgender women.
Campus
Scripps College is frequently described as one of America's most beautiful college campuses and has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1984. In its 2017 edition of The Best 379 Colleges, the Princeton Review cited the campus as the 12th-most beautiful in the United States, as has been corroborated by Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, The Huffington Post, and others.Scripps College was the first recipient of the Getty Campus Heritage Initiative Program, which documented aspects of the college that were deemed historically significant and at risk of change. The original historic precinct was recorded and the history of each site was given, an original appearance was described, and a recording of changes over time was taken. Different courtyards on site, such as the Sicilian Court, Iris Court, and Margaret Fowler Garden were surveyed and adjusted to resemble their initial designs wherever possible.
Scripps is in the center of the Claremont Colleges, with Harvey Mudd College to the north, Pitzer College to the east, Claremont McKenna College and Pomona College to the south, and Claremont Graduate University to the west. The original campus was designed by Gordon Kaufmann in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, featuring extensive use of domestic spaces that catered to a 1920s conception of femininity. In general, his 1926 campus plan has been carefully preserved, with major vistas linking the central areas. The overall planting schemes and landscaping devised by Edward Huntsman-Trout are still followed.
The campus offers a number of interactive landscaping elements, including a rose garden to the north designated for community cutting and fruit trees available for picking. Oranges, grapefruits, pomegranates, kumquats, and loquats are available to students. Scripps also harvests olives from its olive trees and presses it into award-winning olive oil.
Several facilities are shared by the members of the Claremont Consortium. Scripps shares the Keck Science Center with Pitzer College. The consortium also owns the Robert J. Bernard Field Station north of Foothill Boulevard.
Margaret Fowler Garden
Originally designed as a European medieval-style cloister garden east of a proposed chapel, the Margaret Fowler Garden is a walled garden on the Scripps College campus. It is laid out in two distinct sections: the western area contains a sculpture by Albert Stewart, "", a central pool, and four walkways extending in the cardinal directions. The eastern end has a Mediterranean-style tiled wall fountain and open flagstone area. Arcades run along the north and south sides of the garden.On the south wall of the Margaret Fowler Garden are murals by Alfredo Ramos Martínez. The college commissioned Martinez in 1945 to paint a mural, "The Flower Vendors", on the south wall of the Fowler garden. Martínez sketched the composition on the plaster wall and began working on several panels before dying unexpectedly on November 8, 1946, at age 72, leaving the mural unfinished. In 1994, a grant from the Getty Endowment allowed the mural to be conserved.
Environmental sustainability
Scripps College has several sustainability initiatives underway, from energy conservation to green building practices. On the conservation front, the college has seen monetary and energy savings through use of a new energy management system, and has designed water systems to cut down on waste. Turning "Alumnae Field" into a natural surface also helped in efforts to conserve water. Scripps has also downsized trash bins and made "to-go" containers recyclable, in order to divert more waste from landfills. On the emissions reductions front, maintenance staff use electric blowers and carts, while a ride-sharing program is available for students, faculty and staff.For its practices regarding sustainability, Scripps earned a B− on the College Sustainability Report Card 2011, published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. This grade reflects a quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of the institution's policies. The college received positive recognition for student involvement, on-campus transportation, its food and recycling programs, water programs, and LEED buildings, but fared poorly on the shareholder involvement evaluation category of the report.
Organization and administration
Scripps is governed as a nonprofit organization by a board of trustees responsible for overseeing the college's long-term interests.The college has an endowment of $478 million as of November 2023.
The college's motto is "Incipit Vita Nova", from Dante's New Life.
Academics
Scripps is a member of the Claremont Colleges, and much of student life revolves around the five colleges, or "5Cs." Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, Pomona College, Pitzer College, and Harvey Mudd College not only interact socially, but also share dining halls, libraries, and other facilities spread throughout their campuses. All five colleges, along with Claremont Graduate University and Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences, are part of the Claremont University Consortium.Scripps students can cross-register for classes at or enroll in the majors of any of the undergraduate schools at The Claremont Colleges. Classes average 16 students, with an overall student-to-teacher ratio of 10:1. More than 21% choose to double or dual major by the time they graduate. All courses are taught by faculty.
Academics are focused on interdisciplinary humanities, combined with rigorous training in the disciplines. General requirements include classes in mathematics, fine arts, letters, natural sciences, social sciences, foreign language, women's/gender studies, and race/ethnic studies. Scripps also requires first-year students to take a writing course in their first semester. Each graduating student must complete a senior thesis or project. Its most popular majors, by number out of 227 graduates in 2022, were:
- Political Science and Government
- Research and Experimental Psychology
- Biology/Biological Sciences
- English Language and Literature
- Environmental Science
- Neuroscience
- Mass Communication/Media Studies
- Econometrics and Quantitative Economics