Gender-based Education: Study On The School-running Characteristics Of Wellesley College In America

Wellesley College is a famous women’s college of arts and sciencesin America, which was established in1875. It is located in the small townWellesley at the west of Boston, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, it is one ofthe “seven sisters” colleges of America. The quiet Waban Lake haswitnessed the vicissitudes of more than130years of history of suchcollege. The founders of the college Henry and Pauline Durant had writtendown the maxim of “Non ministrari sed ministrare”in Latin, which hasbecome the eternal motto of the college. Wellesley College has neveradmitted male students since its establishment, which always adheres tothe school-running philosophy of “Providing prominent well-informed andrefined education to females who are going to change the world”. At thebeginning of20thCentury, the development of American women’s collegeshad met great challenges, thus its quantity had exhibited the trend ofsharp decline. Just as lots of women’s colleges chose to executeco-education due to the progressive decrease of enrollment number,Wellesley College, which is the strong performer among women’s colleges,achieved everlasting fame under the conditions of abiding by itsschool-running tradition and characteristics. The source of students ofWellesley College maintained steady growth, thus it has always come outtop among American universities and colleges. Wellesley College hascultivated a large batch of outstanding female talents for America, whichis the successful school-running paragon of American women’s colleges.Starting from the historical route of the development of Wellesley College,this paper shall focus on summarizing its school-running characteristicsand understanding its way of successful school-running, so as to providesome inspirations and suggestions for Chinese women’s colleges to createthe own characteristics in school-running practice.This paper mainly consists of four parts, and the main contents ofeach part are as follows:The first chapter shall mainly introduce the topic selectionbackground of this paper and its research significance, comprehensivelyreview the domestic research summary targeting at this issue, and try todefine the concept of “school-running characteristics”. On such basis,it analyzes that the core features of school-running characteristics are:uniqueness, superior quality, stability, and expansibility. In addition,it points out that characteristic school-running is the most effectiveway for women’s colleges to resolve development bottleneck. The final part of this chapter shall illustrate the research thought and mainresearch method adopted in this paper.The second chapter shall trace the historical development ofWellesley College. Wellesley College was established at the prosperousdevelopment period of American women’s colleges. It had developed intoa community with solid discipline basis and rigorous academic atmospherefrom a little known general education institution just within threedecades after its establishment. Moreover, Wellesley College has beendeveloped into a cradle for cultivating world elite females under theefforts of successive college governors one century after itsestablishment.The third chapter shall mainly summarize the school runningcharacteristics of Wellesley College, which is mainly embodied in the fiveaspects, i.e. school-running philosophy, curriculum setting, educationand teaching, management system, and campus culture. Adhering to theconcept of liberal arts education, Wellesley College lays particularemphasis on offering opportunities to enable students to fully come intocontact with extensive knowledge, so as to cultivate their criticalthinking, curiosity, creativity, and lifetime enthusiasm in study.Meanwhile, Wellesley College always fulfills the cultivation on femaleleadership, taking the cultivation of future female leadership talentsas its school-running objective. Wellesley College has provided arigorous and yet flexible comprehensive curriculum system, aiming atenabling each student to study the suitable courses. High standard andethnic group diversified faculties, low student-teacher ratio, theimplementation of small class teaching, and powerful academic supporthave offered forceful guarantee for students to smoothly finish educationprogram. In management, Wellesley College executes presidentaccountability system under the leadership of board of directors; thecomprehensive participatory management mode of teachers and students; andmeticulous boarding system management to students. Elegant, delicate,exquisite, perfect, and modern campus material culture as well as rich,colorful and time-honored campus behavioral culture have composed theunique campus cultural characteristics of Wellesley College.The fourth chapter shall expound on the school-running status ofChinese women’s colleges and point out its existing problems. Moreover,it shall propose the suggestions on promoting the characteristicschool-running of Chinese women’ s colleges via referring to theschool-running experience of Wellesley College and combining with thepractical situation of the school-running of women’s colleges.