Organization
private liberal arts college in Wooster, Ohio
The College of Wooster is a private liberal arts college in Wooster, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1866 by the Presbyterian Church as the University of Wooster, it has been officially non-sectarian since 1969. From its creation, the college has been a co-educational institution. It enrolls about 1,900 students and is a member of the Five Colleges of Ohio, Great Lakes Colleges Association, and Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities.
The College of Wooster is a private liberal arts college in Wooster, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1866 by the Presbyterian Church as the University of Wooster, it has been officially non-sectarian since 1969. From its creation, the college has been a co-educational institution. It enrolls about 1,900 students and is a member of the Five Colleges of Ohio, Great Lakes Colleges Association, and Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities.
Founded as the University of Wooster in 1866 by the Presbyterian Synod of Ohio, the institution opened its doors in 1870 with a faculty of five and a student body of thirty men and four women. Ephraim Quinby, a Wooster citizen, donated the first 20 acres (8.1 ha), a large oak grove situated on a hilltop overlooking the town. After being founded with the intent to make Wooster open to everyone, the university's first Ph.D. was granted to a woman, Annie B. Irish, in 1882. The first black student, Clarence Allen, began his studies later in the same decade.
The university gradually began to define itself as a liberal arts institution. In 1915, after a bitter dispute between the faculty and the trustees, the institution was renamed The College of Wooster reflecting a dedication to the education of undergraduate students in the liberal arts. The college developed under the presidency of Charles F. Wishart, 1919–1944. During the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy in the 1920s, prominent Presbyterian layman and former United States Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan attacked the college for its teaching of evolution. The subject had been taught at the college for several decades and defended by president Wishart. Bryan called for the general assembly of the church to cut off funding to the college. In 1923, Wishart defeated Bryan for the position of Moderator of the General Assembly, largely on the evolution issue, and the college continued to teach evolution. Wishart was followed by Howard F. Lowry, who served from 1944 until his death in 1967. He was followed by J. Garber Drushal, who served until 1977.
On November 10, 2015, the college named Sarah Bolton as its twelfth president and first female president. Bolton left the college at the end of the 2021–2022 academic year to assume the presidency of Whitman College. Anne E. McCall was inaugurated on October 28, 2023.
Wooster's school colors are black and old gold and its mascot is the 'Fighting Scot'. Early Wooster teams were known as the Presbyterians or unofficially as the 'Presbyterian Steamroller.' In 1939, a large donation from alumnus Birt Babcock funded the purchase of kilts for the marching band, in the yellow-and-black MacLeod tartan (MacLeod of Lewis), which had no particular significance, except that it matched the school colors. Scottish culture became an important part of the school's heritage; today, the football games feature a Scottish pipe band with Highland dancers in addition to a traditional marching band, with all three groups clad in the MacLeod tartan. The college offers the "Scottish Arts Scholarship" for students who perform as pipers, drummers, or Scottish dancers.
Wooster has had fifteen presidents from 1870 to 2024, including interim presidents.
The College of Wooster Board of Trustees named Anne E. McCall to be the 13th president of the College of Wooster on December 8, 2022.
Wooster's most popular majors, by 2024 graduates, were:
Political Science 41
Psychology 34
Biology 31
Computer Science 23
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology 22
Neuroscience 19
Communication 18
History 16
Business Economics 15
Philosophy 13
The College of Wooster Libraries consists of three branches (Andrews Library, Flo K. Gault Library, and Timken Science Library) and a music library located at the Scheide Music Center. Andrews Library, the largest library in the system, houses more than 850,000 volumes and can accommodate over 500 readers. Andrews Library houses the college's Special Collections, media library and the student writing center. The Timken Science Library in Frick Hall, the oldest branch in the system, served as the original academic library for the college from 1900 to 1962. After three decades as an art museum, the building reopened as the science library in 1998.
The College of Wooster Art Museum was established in the 1930s. The current museum was established at the Ebert Art Center in 1997. The museum houses two small galleries, the Charlene Derge Sussel Art Gallery and the Burton D. Morgan Gallery, as well as storage for the college's permanent art collection. The museum's encyclopedic collection spans from ancient to contemporary art. Permanent collections include the John Taylor Arms Print Collection—which represents works by Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, Isabel Bishop, Martin Lewis, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Albrecht Dürer, Käthe Kollwitz and Félix Bracquemond—the William C. Mithoefer Collection of African Art, Middle Eastern pottery and Chinese decorative art.
The College of Wooster is a residential campus and has 16 residence halls, which house 16 to 270 students each, and 30 program houses. 97% of the student body live in the residence halls on campus.[1] The residence halls include Andrews Hall, Armington Hall, Babcock Hall, Bissman Hall, Bornhuetter Hall, Brush Hall, Compton Hall, Douglass Hall, Gault Manor, Gault Schoolhouse, Holden Hall, Kenarden Lodge, Luce Hall, Stevenson Hall, and Wagner Hall.
Elias Compton, former dean of the college, founded the Wooster in India program during the 1930s, which established a sister school relationship with Ewing Christian College in Allahabad, India. Over a forty-year time span, Wooster sent several former students to serve as Head Resident at Ewing while Ewing faculty were brought to Wooster as Ewing Fellows; a plaque with the names of Ewing Fellows hangs in Babcock Hall. The Wooster in India program helped build this unique bond between Wooster and India that enhanced the exchange of students, ideas and cultures. This international presence affected the entire campus, establishing a tradition which continues to influence the college. Today, 15% of the student body is international in origin, representing 59 countries. The college offers majors in Cultural Area Studies and International Relations, instruction in seven foreign languages and opportunities to study abroad in 60 countries. Sixty-nine percent of Wooster students are from outside of Ohio.
Scot Center: In early 2012, the Scot Center, a 123,000-square-foot (11,400 m2) $30 million recreation facility, opened its doors. It includes four multipurpose sport courts (for intramural basketball, volleyball and tennis), a 200-meter indoor track, a new fitness center, batting cages for baseball and softball, expanded locker rooms, coaches' offices and meeting facilities. The building also boasts a 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) solar roof, the largest of any college facility in the United States. The Scot Center is the first phase of a master plan to create a Campus Center.
Babcock Residence Hall: Babcock Hall houses 60% domestic and 40% international students who desire to experience this cross-cultural living environment. Babcock Hall offers cross-cultural programming that includes regular hall meetings with student speakers and cultural activities; celebrations of holidays from around the world; and discussions of international and diversity-related issues led by faculty and invited speakers.
Luce Residence Hall: Luce Hall houses six language suites (Chinese, Classics, French, German, Spanish, and Russian) providing students with a living/learning environment focusing on developing foreign language skills. The building features submarine-inspired architectural details, like a winding floorplan and porthole windows.
Wooster is the home of the Ohio Light Opera, an enterprise founded within the college in 1979, but not part of the college curriculum. It is the only professional company in the United States entirely devoted to operetta. OLO performs the entire Gilbert & Sullivan repertoire, but also regularly revives rarely performed continental works of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Over the years, the company has produced eighty different operettas.
Wooster's performing ensembles include the Wooster Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1915 by Daniel Parmelee, then Professor of Violin at the college. The orchestra currently is the second-oldest orchestra in continuous performance in the state of Ohio. Additional ensembles include the Scot Symphonic and Marching Bands, the Wooster Chorus, and the Wooster Jazz Ensemble.
Wooster has an active on-campus pipe band. Officially called the College of Wooster Pipe Band, members perform at many official on-campus events such as commencement, sports games (football, basketball, swim meets, and sometimes lacrosse games) and many spontaneous student-run events. During the spring season, they perform and compete at a grade 3 level, having won prizes at the Scots wi' Shotts event in Cleveland hosted by the local Lochaber Pipe Band. The Pipe Band also placed first in the grade 3 contest at the 2009 Toronto Indoor Highland Games, as the only American band competing.
The college's department of Theatre and Dance produces two dance concerts per year, a fall concert in the round, and a spring concert in a more formal proscenium setting. Additionally, the college produces at least two plays each academic year. Further plays are produced by student groups and seniors pursuing their Independent Study projects. In 2007, Wooster's theatre production of 'Nocturne' was invited to perform at the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C. Wooster's production was one of four shows chosen from a field of approximately 400 entries.
The College of Wooster has hosted numerous fraternities, sororities and honor societies since its establishment. These number more than 80 Greek named chapters, including defunct groups, with approximately 30 active today. The most visible are the college's Greek Academic and Social chapters. However, the Greek System includes Honor Societies and Professional Fraternities, along with Greek-aligned clubs and sections which adopted those terms when the words "fraternity" and "sorority" were discouraged.
There are currently twelve active academic and social Greek groups at the College of Wooster: six sororities, five fraternities and one co-educational group. Sometimes called clubs and sections, these groups are not affiliated with national Greek organizations, and approximately 15% of the student body participates. Wooster's twelve Greek chapters are self-governed under an Inter-Greek Council. Noted by date of founding, social chapters include:
At least eighteen honor societies are active at the college, including ΦΒΚ – Phi Beta Kappa, which arrived in 1926.
The college has a wide variety of student-run media. The Wooster Voice is the weekly student newspaper with a newly launched website, and has been published weekly since 1883 (see list of college newspapers), while WOO 91, which was at WCWS-FM until 2019, is the college's online radio station that streams from iHeartRadio.
The college also has a successful Ultimate Frisbee program. The Women's team, Betty Gone Wild, won USAUltimate's D-III College Championship Sectionals in 2014 and 2015. Also in 2014 and 2015, they came in second at USAUltimate's D-III College Championship Regionals. They attended the National College Championship in 2014 and came in 15th place.
The college is well known for its Moot Court team as part of the American Moot Court Association, ranked second in the nation in 2017 by the ACMA. In addition to the teams regional championships, the college routinely qualifies teams to the Moot Court Nationals tournament and was the 2008 National Champion. In 2017, Wooster qualified five teams to the nationals tournament and had teams finish 12th, 16th, and 18th in oral argument, 13th and 14th in oration, and third in appellate brief writing.
Wooster teams are named the Fighting Scots. Wooster's athletic history dates back to its first baseball team, in 1880, which played only one game, losing 12–2 to Kenyon College. The football program was established in 1889; over its first two seasons, the team won all seven games it played, by a total score of 306–4. Included was a 64–0 victory at Ohio State on November 1, 1890, in the Buckeyes' first-ever home football game. Shortly thereafter, intercollegiate sports were banned by the College President.
Sports sponsored include baseball, basketball, cross country, field hockey, football, golf, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track and field, and volleyball. They compete in the North Coast Athletic Conference of NCAA Division III.
J.C. Chandor, filmmaker
Martha Chase, geneticist
Arthur Holly Compton, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis
John Dean, White House Counsel for U.S. President Richard Nixon and participant in the Watergate scandal
John Exter, economist, member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and founder of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka
Stanley Gault, businessman
Duncan Jones, film director, producer, and screenwriter; son of David Bowie
Donald Kohn, former vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Norman Morrison, anti-war activist who self-immolated in front of the Pentagon in protest of the Vietnam War
Lamont Paris, college basketball coach
William P. Richardson, co-founder and first dean of Brooklyn Law School
George E. Goodfellow, first civilian trauma surgeon and naturalist
S. Robson Walton, billionaire heir to the fortune of Walmart
Susanne Woods, provost of Wheaton College and associate dean of faculty at Brown University
