History
The college was founded in 1919 by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur as the first women's Catholic college in New England. The trustees of the college were incorporated by the state in 1921. In 2000, cash-strapped and with fewer than 500 students enrolled, Emmanuel College faced an uncertain future. Led by longtime President Sister Janet Eisner, the college signed an agreement with Merck Pharmaceuticals to lease a portion of its campus for a new research laboratory, for 75 years and approximately $50 million. The agreement makes Emmanuel the only college in the country with a pharmaceutical lab on campus.
The subsequent windfall and alliance with Merck permitted Emmanuel to add dormitories so it could start admitting men in 2001, sparking a sustained revival that has made Emmanuel one of the fastest growing colleges in New England. Emmanuel developed an ambitious building campaign featuring the state-of-the-art Jean Yawkey Student Center, which opened in 2004 as the first new building on campus in 35 years. That same year, Merck opened its 12-story facility, whose glass facade glitters over the college's main quad and English Gothic buildings.
Until 2001, Emmanuel was a women's college primarily known for training teachers but long-time President Sister Janet Eisner used the windfall to secure millions in federal science grants to fund the construction of a $50 million science center. The Maureen Murphy Wilkens Science Center open in fall 2009 effectively doubling the academic space of the campus. The Wilkens Center is four floors and 47,500 feet and contains faculty/student research space and offices, student study areas, new classrooms for all academic areas, 120 underground parking spaces, as well as teaching laboratories for Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics. Since 2001, overall enrollment has tripled, but male enrollment has declined since the initial surge.
Read more about this topic: Emmanuel College (Massachusetts)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)