Rosemary Park was an American scholar, academic leader, advocate for women's education and the first American woman to become president of two colleges and vice chancellor of a major university.
11 Facts About Rosemary Park
2.
Rosemary Park, the youngest of four children, was born on March 11,1907, in Andover, Massachusetts, into a family of educators.
3.
From an early age Rosemary Park showed an interest in academia, studying German in high school, a field which at the time was mainly dominated by men.
4.
In 1953,6 years after assuming the Presidency, Rosemary Park eliminated a number of vocationally oriented programs including home economics and clerical skills which she felt were not up to the standards of a rigorous liberal arts education.
5.
Rosemary Park sought to bolster the college's standing as an "intellectually pure" institutional through the addition of courses in English composition and literature, American and European history, government, laboratory sciences, philosophy, religion, foreign languages, music and art, and mathematics and logic.
6.
In 1962, after 30 years at Connecticut College and 15 as President, Rosemary Park made the decision to resign from her position and to accept the position of President at Barnard College, at the time the sister college to Columbia University.
7.
Rosemary Park focused heavily on curriculum reform, reviewing existing courses and reducing requirements with the intention of improving the quality of student work.
8.
In 1966, a year before Rosemary Park left the institution, these reforms were officially put in place thereby reducing the five course minimum requirement to four per semester and mandated 32 required courses overall.
9.
In relation to student welfare, Rosemary Park heavily encouraged female participation in the sciences, working to obtain a laboratory for the College independent from Columbia's facilities.
10.
Rosemary Park married only once in her life at age 58 to Milton Vasil Anastos a professor of Byzantine Greek at the University of California Los Angeles.
11.
Rosemary Park, who died on April 17,2004, at the age of 97, is survived by her stepson as well as a number of nieces and nephews.