At the RBML, we recently installed a small exhibition on diplomas awarded by King’s College, as Columbia was known from 1754 to 1784. The exhibition in the Chang Octagon includes reproductions of diplomas awarded from 1763 to 1773. How did these materials make it to the University Archives? For some, we are indebted to the […]
Tag: Columbia University
Now on View: King’s College Diplomas
At the RBML, we recently installed a small exhibition on diplomas awarded by King’s College, as Columbia was known from 1754 to 1784. The exhibition in the Chang Octagon features reproductions of diplomas awarded from 1763 to 1773. It also includes related documents: a handwritten draft for an honorary degree, a program from the 1771 […]
Columbia’s Yew Trees
Senior Class gifts have evolved significantly over the years. In the early days of Columbia on Morningside Heights, the Senior Class ended their Class Day with the presentation of the class gift: the planting of a yew tree and a speech given by a Yew Tree Orator chosen by the class. Why would students give […]
Women at Columbia College in 1786?
A notice in the New-York Journal of November 23, 1786, notes that a number of young women participated in public examinations at Columbia College, vying for prizes for the best reader, best writer, best speller and best proficient in French. Women taking exams at Columbia in 1786? Yes, just months after its first Commencement since […]
Alice Louise Pond
Alice Louise Pond was not the first nor even the second woman to receive a Columbia diploma. Those honors belong to Winifred Edgerton, the first woman to receive a degree from Columbia, a PhD in Mathematics in 1886, and to Mary Parsons Hankey, who completed the Collegiate Course for Women and became the first woman […]