Emma Willard School
Emma Willard School, originally called Troy Female Seminary and often referred to simply as Emma, is an independent university-preparatory day and boarding school for young women located in Troy, New York. Located on Mount Ida, it offers grades 9–12 and postgraduate coursework.
The first women's higher education institution in the United States, it was founded by women's rights advocate Emma Willard in 1814. As of 2022, it had an endowment of $179 million. In 2018, the school was ranked by The Post-Standard as the #1 private school in Upstate New York.
Academics
Emma Willard is an independent college-preparatory day and boarding school enrolling students in grades 9–12 and post-graduate studies. Class sizes are kept at a 16-student maximum; the typical student to teacher ratio is 6 to 1. 83% of the faculty hold advanced degrees. Advanced Placement classes are no longer offered as the school switched to their own system of advanced courses called Advanced Studies classes.Most students take five courses each semester. Classes meet three times each week for fifty to seventy minute periods, though seminars, art classes, and other elective sections may for varying lengths of time. An ESL program offers intermediate and advanced-level curriculum for international students. Core requirements for graduation include a minimum of four units of English; three units of history, foreign language, mathematics; two units of lab science, two units in the arts, and one-fourth unit in health. All students must fulfill a community service requirement and take physical education or its equivalent each semester in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. Seniors must take at least ten weeks.
Emma Willard offers inquiry-based classes across all disciplines. In the fall of 2005, Emma Willard began its Physics First program for all incoming ninth-grade students. It has students take a basic physics course in the ninth grade rather than the biology course that is standard in most public schools.
Educational philosophy
The guiding educational philosophy at Emma Willard School is based on three pillars: intellectual flexibility, purpose & community, and equity & justice. Each student is encouraged to develop fully in all areas of life: as a strong intellectual in a variety of disciplines, as a practitioner of her chosen passions, as a social member of the community, and as a responsible global citizen in her future.In keeping with that philosophy of personal development providing its own benchmarks, class rank is not provided. The grading system uses letter and number grades: A, A−, B+, B, B−, C+, C, C−, etc., usually accompanied by a number indicating where on the spectrum the individual student falls. Emma Willard's independent-study program, Practicum, allows students to pursue coursework at area colleges, career internships, community service, and individualized athletic training and competition off-campus for academic credit. Over one-third of the students participate in Practicum each year.
Emma Willard students worked to make Emma Willard School the first fair trade high school in the United States in 2010.
History
Emma Willard School traces its roots to the Middlebury Female Seminary, founded by Emma Hart Willard in 1814. In 1821, Willard moved her school to Troy, New York, and opened it as the Troy Female Seminary to provide young women with the same higher education as their male peers. Prior to the school's founding, young women had been unable to pursue the advanced curricular offerings in mathematics, classical languages, and the sciences that were taught to their male counterparts. Her husband, John Willard managed the school's finances and served as the in-house physician until his death in 1825.Having taught for several years, Emma Willard perceived the egregious disparity in what girls learned compared to boys. In 1819, Willard promoted a comprehensive secondary and post-secondary female educational institution, which would require funding by the State of New York. Her address to the office of New York's "innovative" governor DeWitt Clinton met with initial success. However, the New York State legislature at Albany, on hearing her request, responded with mixed sentiment, and ultimately rejected her proposal. Many of the wives of prominent men steadfastly supported and promoted her educational agenda to their friends and associates. Thereafter, the City's Common Council eventually raised $4,000 that would facilitate Willard's purchase of a suitable flagship building for her proposed seminary for young women.
She had already obtained inexpensive accommodation in a nearby historic Waterford, New York, landmark farm. There, she rented two nondescript long and narrow stone structures, former pre-Colonial Dutch estate's outbuildings in a picturesque setting along the Mohawk River. The property's border still abuts the Erie Canal's first but long-defunct stone lock, near a major point of the Mohawk's primary arterial confluence into the Hudson River. However, in early 1821, a critical funds shortage from to a brief economic downturn that had affected the region forced her to close her Waterford Academy.
Toward the close of 1821, Willard secured $4,000 in funding and relocated to Troy, downstream from Watertown along the Hudson River. The Albany Academy for Boys had been established just downstream in March 1813 by Philip Schuyler Van Rensselaer, who founded the
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a college for men, in Troy in 1824.
Willard was able to formally found the Troy Female Seminary "for young ladies of means", becoming "the first school in the country to provide girls the same educational opportunities given to boys". From its establishment in 1821 until 1872, the seminary admitted 12,000 students. The Troy Female Seminary promoted the education of young girls as well as women teachers in training. The seminary provided tuition on credit for students who could not afford it, with the agreement that those students would be teaching assistants and eventually become teachers themselves.
That type of on-credit tuition led to the growing reputation of the Troy Female Seminary as the demand for female teachers increased during the nineteenth century. Willard advocated for publicly supported female seminaries by asserting the necessity of educating as many women as possible in the United States, a task, she pointed out, that was too large for private institutions alone to undertake. Willard also promoted educational reform by emphasizing that women were capable of intellectual evidence in any field and demanded for women to be trained for professions. The school was immediately successful, and it graduated many great thinkers, including noted social reformer and suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Willard remained the head of the seminary until 1838, when she handed it over to her son. In 1895, the school was renamed The Emma Willard School for Girls. In 1910, a new campus was built for the school on Mount Ida.
Educational philosophy and academics
Her educational philosophy for the Troy Female Seminary was to "educate the women for responsible motherhood and train some of them to be teachers," with a curriculum that was similar to the contemporary men's colleges. The curriculum included courses in mathematics, science, modern languages, Latin, history, philosophy, geography, and literature. The Troy Female Seminary School also provided the services of Normal Schools by giving women the opportunity to become teacher's assistants and spread women's education throughout the United States. The alumnae of the Troy School were unusual among contemporary women in their pursuit of work beyond the "private sphere" of the home. These alumnae established numerous Normal Schools, institutions that promoted the study of arts and sciences, and expanded into other professions involving the sciences and law.Co-curricular pursuits
Co-curricular pursuits include sports, choir, orchestra, a cappella groups, the student newspaper, a literary arts magazine, model UN, county-champion Mock Trial team, speech and debate, quiz team, various clubs, and the yearbook, among others.As it is a fair trade school, students from EcoEmm Fair Trade Club study global social justice issues and help educate the community, as well as sell fair trade goods at the school. Students also sign petitions fighting human rights abuses worldwide. Each year, students and faculty take service trips to countries in the developing world so Emma's women can see the world and make the changes they discuss in their classrooms throughout the year. Emma Willard is also the first boarding school to become a member of the international Round-Square program. In 2009, students and faculty traveled to Africa and to Casa de los Angeles in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, to care for the children of poor working mothers.
Traditions
Every year the senior class conduct a play called Revels. The plot mimics a medieval Christmas celebration set in a manor house. The parts are kept secret until the play. The first Revels performance was in 1915. The seniors also control a triangular patch of grass in the center of campus called the Senior Triangle. Only seniors and alumnae are permitted to walk on the grass unless invited by a senior or alumna. Juniors "take over" this patch of grass after the seniors leave for senior retreat at the end of the year during Triangle Takeover.Juniors receive their class ring through their ring sister, who dresses them up throughout Ring Week and gives a half a quote to a member of the faculty for them to find before the week commences with Ring Dinner in which the ring is presented.
Other traditions include hall tea where once a week students gather with their halls to bond; Eventide, the winter concert; sophomore tree decorating; Peanuts and Shells ; May Day, in which freshman participate in a maypole dance and a May Queen who is voted on by the student body is crowned; and Principal's Play Day, a secret day chosen by the head of school in which class is cancelled.