Pine Manor College (PMC) is a private, liberal arts college located in Chestnut Hill, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1911, and was historically a women-only college until 2014, when it admitted its first male students. It currently serves almost 500 students, 75% of whom live on the 60-acre (240,000Â m2) campus.
PMC was rated the nation's most racially diverse liberal arts college by U.S. News & World Report. Pine Manor alumnae represent 60 countries and all 50 U.S. states.
History
The college was founded in 1911 as Pine Manor Junior College (PMJC) by Helen Temple Cooke, as part of the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. A finishing school, it was a women-only institution at a time when even wealthy women were generally denied access to higher education.
Author and educator Ella Lyman Cabot taught at PMJC in its early days. Pioneering female architect Eleanor Manning O'Connor taught at PMJC in the 1930s; educator Mary Nourse taught history there in 1933â€"1934.
Frederick Carlos Ferry, Jr. (1913â€"2004) served as Pine Manor's president from 1956 to 1974. The school's Ferry Administration Building is named after him.
In 1965 the school moved to a 78-acre (320,000Â m2) estate in Chestnut Hill. The estate, then known as Roughwood, was the residence of Ernest B. Dane, at that time president of the Brookline Savings and Trust. Many of the school's buildings are original to the estate and have been renovated to accommodate the college.
In 1977, the school expanded its mission to offer four-year bachelor's degrees, and became Pine Manor College.
In 1996, under new president Gloria Nemerowicz, the school changed its mission from educating women in the social elite to focusing on ethnic minorities and under-served communities. Although this shift brought the school praise and admiration, over the years enrollment declined, from around 1,200 to around 400 full-time students. The school's endowment similarly declined.
In 2013, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady purchased a section of land from Pine Manor College for $4.5 million to build his home and some surrounding buildings.
In September 2014, under President Dr. E. Joseph Lee, PMC welcomed its first co-ed class, admitting men for the first time in its 103-year history.
President Lee stepped down in 2015 amidst reports of the school's financial difficulties; at that time annual tuition to Pine Manor College was $36,000, with more than half the students on some form of financial aid.
Admissions
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and admission decisions are made throughout the year. In addition to academic achievement, the Admissions Committee looks for students possessing seriousness of purpose, leadership potential, motivation, breadth and depth of interests, social responsibility and other attributes.
Academics
PMC offers nine majors: Biology, business administration, communications, English, history and culture, liberal studies, psychology, social and political systems, and visual arts.
Upon graduation, students receive the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Associate of Arts, or the Associate of Science.
Within each major, students can pick their own concentration from a list of more than 50 options. For example, a student majoring in English can concentrate on creative writing or English education, while a student majoring in visual arts can concentrate on graphic design. According to the Princeton Review, the most popular majors at Pine Manor are business administration, communications, and psychology.
PMC also offers a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing known as the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program. Solstice students may concentrate in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, comics & graphic narratives, or writing for children and young adults.
Athletics
Pine Manor is a Division III member of the NCAA.
The College's athletic teams compete as NCAA independents. Most recently its women's teams competed as memembers of the Great South Athletic Conference (GSAC) before the conference disbanded in 2016. Before joining the GSAC in the spring of 2013, Pine Manor was a member of the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) from 1995 to 2012.
PMC sponsors women's in the sports of basketball, cross country, softball, soccer, and volleyball. The college also previously fielded teams in women's tennis and lacrosse. The school started sponsoring men's programs in 2014 with the addition of men's basketball and soccer teams. In 2015, the school added men's cross country. The men's volleyball team started varsity competition in 2017. Pine Manor will add its fifth men's sport, and tenth sport overall, in 2017-18 with the addition of baseball.
The school sports mascot is the Gator.
Notable people
Notable alumni
- Wallis Annenberg (1959), socialite
- Wendy Diamond (1992), television personality and founder and editor-in-chief of Animal Fair magazine
- Meg Gallagher, actress
- Busty Heart (1979), entertainer
- Leslie Hindman, founder of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers
- Kristin L. Kahle, basketball player; the only person to have over 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds at Pine Manor College, Founder and CEO of NavigateHCR
- Karyn Kupcinet, actress
- Dorothy McGuire (1937), Academy Award-nominated actress
- Heather Nauert (1992), former news anchor for Fox & Friends and current Spokesperson for the United States Department of State under the Trump Administration
- Hillary B. Smith, Daytime Emmy-winning actress
Pine Manor College presidents
- 1930-1952 Marie Warren Potter
- 1952-1955 Alfred Tuxbury Hill
- 1956â€"1974 Frederick Carlos Ferry, Jr.
- 1976â€"1996 Dr. Rosemary Ashby
- 1996â€"2011 Gloria Nemerowicz
- 2011â€"2012 Alane K. Shanks
- 2012â€"2013 Ellen Hurwitz (interim)
- 2013â€"2015 Dr. E. Joseph Lee
- 2015â€"2016 Dr. Rosemary Ashby (interim)
- 2016â€"present Thomas M. O’Reilly
References
Notes
Sources
- "Report on Pine Manor College". The Princeton Review. Retrieved 15 December 2010.Â
- Zezima, Kate (30 May 2010). "Chestnut Hill Journal: Women’s Colleges Shift Gaze to Less Well-Off". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2010-05-30.Â
External links
- Official website
- Pine Manor Athletics
- Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program