Dickinson College
1. Charter Date. Dickinson was chartered Sept. 9, 1783, just six days after the Treaty of Paris officially concluded the American Revolution. Thus, Dickinson is the first college or university in the United States established directly out of the Revolution.
2. Founder. Dickinson was founded by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and by Col. John Montgomery of Carlisle, who was convinced by Rush to help build a college on what was then the American frontier. Dr. Rush was the country’s first professor of chemistry, an abolitionist and a reformer, who advocated women’s education and modern-language instruction.
3. Namesake. Dr. Rush named the college to honor his friend, John Dickinson, who drafted the Articles of Confederation, signed the United States Constitution and was elected president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Dickinson also became the first chair of the college’s board of trustees.
4. Sister College. Princeton University is Dickinson’s 18th-century sister college. Dr. Rush was a Princeton graduate. Old West at Dickinson and Nassau Hall at Princeton both were designed by Benjamin Latrobe, the primary architect of the U.S. Capitol.

5. Early Donors. After an earlier red brick building caught fire, donors to the construction of Old West included President Thomas Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, Secretary of State James Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall, Consul General of France Baron Louis-Andre Pichon and Spanish Ambassador Marquis De Casa Calvo. A plaque listing these names and others is displayed in Old West.
6. Bingham’s Porch. One summer day in 1782, Col. John Montgomery was at the home of William Bingham to raise funds for a grammar school in Carlisle. Rush also was there on Bingham’s porch, and he suggested establishing a college instead. With that, the founding of Dickinson College began. The words “Bingham’s Porch!” were used by Rush as a rallying cry for the college during times of hardship, like financial challenges and the burning down of the first building.
7. Seal. Dickinson is the first college or university in the United States to have a symbol of liberty on its official seal—the liberty cap. Conceived by Dr. Rush and John Dickinson, the device on the seal includes a liberty cap over a telescope and an open bible. The college motto, Pietate et doctrina tuta libertas, which means “Religion and learning, the bulwark of liberty,” appears below the device. Around the circumference is written Sigillum Collegii Dickinsonii, meaning “Seal of Dickinson College.”
8. School Colors. Dickinson’s red and white originate from early student literary societies: the Belles Lettres Society, founded in 1786, and the Union Philosophical Society, founded in 1789. Belles Lettres members wore a red ribbon, and Union Philosophical adopted a badge bearing a Maltese cross and a wreath of white roses.
9. National Leadership. Dickinson is the only college or university to have had two alumni serving simultaneously as president and chief justice of the United States; James Buchanan, class of 1809, and Roger Brooke Taney, class of 1795.
10. Beyond the Classroom. Professor Spencer Fullerton Baird, class of 1840, introduced field trips into American higher education in the mid-nineteenth century when he made them a part of his regular instruction in the natural sciences at Dickinson. This educational innovator left the college to work for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., later becoming the institution's influential second secretary.
11. First Female Student. Zatae Longsdorff arrived at Dickinson in 1884 as a transfer from Wellesley College. Graduating in 1887, she went on to become a physician, the first female president of the American Medical Society, a New Hampshire state legislator and the first woman to preside over a state party convention.
12. Joseph Priestley. Dickinson’s Archives and Special Collections hold some of the valuable scientific equipment once owned by Dr. Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen. The college purchased this equipment in 1812 through the intervention of then-Professor of Chemistry Thomas Cooper. A significant prize is given each year by the college in Priestley’s name to honor an outstanding scientist and “revolutionary” for contributions in his or her field.
13. Andrew Carnegie. This industrialist contributed to Dickinson in many ways, but his largest gift led to the building of Conway Hall, dedicated in 1905. Carnegie contributed the entire construction cost of $63,480 to honor his friend, Moncure Daniel Conway, class of 1849, who was a renowned minister, intellectual and abolitionist.
14. Romper Room. Dickinson’s education department served as a consultant to the much-loved children’s program, Romper Room.
15. GE Academic Bowl. In 1965, a team of Dickinson students went undefeated as competitors in the popular General Electric College Bowl, a fact-based television contest among America's colleges and universities. They won against Saint Francis College, Loyola University, Mississippi College, Adelphi University and the University of Redlands.

 
1. “Gotta-Get-In” Schools. In Atlantic Monthly (October 2004), Gregg Easterbrook named Dickinson, along with Bowdoin, Colby, Kenyon, Middlebury, Vanderbilt and the universities of Virginia and Michigan, as a prestigious school that is an admirable alternative to the likes of Williams, Swarthmore and the Ivies.
2. Top Management. In University Business (September 2004), Ed Seville wrote about challenges faced by colleges and universities in balancing marketplace demands with the values of higher education. According to Seville, “The few that can, like Dickinson College and NYU, survive as winners. The rest of us lose spectacularly.”
3. Workshop Science.Change magazine (September/October 2004) examined new ways to design facilities for science education and noted, “The story of workshop physics at Dickinson College illustrates how … programs co-evolve with their space, particularly as the space comes to embody insights about the way students learn the benefits of active, hands-on learning …”
4. Global Leadership. NAFSA: The Association of International Educators (2003) selected Dickinson as the nation’s leading example among liberal-arts colleges for internationalizing the curriculum in all areas of study, stating, “In many respects, no college is more internationally minded than Dickinson College.”
5. Alumni. Dickinsonians are living the mission of the college—they are citizen leaders, engaging the world. Jack Stafford ’59 is the retired chairman and CEO of Wyeth and John Curley ’60 is the retired CEO, chairman and president of Gannett Inc. Margaret Lindsay ’73 is the executive vice president of Fiduciary Trust Co. International, and Sylvia Smith is a principal at Fox & Fowle Architects P.C. Scott A. Beaumont ’75 is the CEO of Lilly Pulitzer clothing company. Andy MacPhail ’76 is president and CEO of the Chicago Cubs. Adam Katz ’81 is a lawyer and agent for sports stars including Sammy Sosa. Rena Ronson ’83 is co-head of William Morris Independent and senior vice president of the motion pictures department. Chad Mirkin ’86 is the youngest tenured professor in the history of Northwestern University and a world leader in nanotechnology research. Jennifer Haigh ’90 won the Hemingway/PEN Award for Best American First Novel in 2004. And that’s just to name a few.
6. Print Recognition. A chapter of the 2004 Harvard University Press book, Shakespeare, Einstein and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education, by David Kirp, was devoted solely to Dickinson College. Other chapters treated NYU, the University of Chicago, MIT, the University of Virginia and USC.
7. Hot School. In October 2001, The Wall Street Journal named Dickinson one of the country’s 16 “hot schools … poised to be players in the new landscape.” Only three other liberal-arts colleges were included—Carleton, Occidental and Middlebury.
8. Rave Reviews. The Princeton Review, 2004, ranked Dickinson number one on the great college library list, and in the top 10 for great campus food, based on students’ assessments.
9. Leading the Charge. “The Education of Lloyd Thacker,” in the November issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, recognized Dickinson as being on the leading edge of colleges that want to revamp the admissions process. Dickinson’s vice president of enrollment management submitted an essay for Thacker’s book: College Unranked: Affirming Educational Values in College Admissions, a collection of essays by counselors, deans and college presidents about what ails the admissions system. The book assails the status quo, combining critiques of the College Board, a vivid portrait of nausea-inducing hysteria among students at a college-recruitment session and recommendations for easing pressures on applicants.
10. Rising National Profile. Change magazine, in its September/October 2003 issue, praised Dickinson’s efforts to strengthen its distinctive characteristics and raise its national profile. “Now Dickinson, chartered as a college just six days after the Treaty of Paris was signed, calls itself the first ‘revolutionary college.’ What Benjamin Rush proudly described as his ‘petulant brat’ is defining itself as a school with ‘attitude’ and ‘spunk.’ ”
11. Media Hits. During the last year, Dickinson staff and faculty have been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Seattle Post Intelligencer, The Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Newsday, The Washington Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Cleveland Jewish News, The Times (London), Guardian Unlimited, Toronto Star, Irish Independent, The Hindu, AllAfrica, The Gold Coast Bulletin (Australia), Pravda (Russia), Arab News, U.S.News & World Report, Sports Illustrated, Investor's Business Daily, The Chronicle of Higher Education, University Business, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Wilson Quarterly, CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, Today Show, National Public Radio, British Broadcasting Corp., The Associated Press, Newhouse News Service and Reuters.
12. First-Generation Students. Dickinson traditionally has attracted a high percentage of first-generation students. The first-year class contains 20 percent students whose father or mother did not attend college.
13. Student Applications & Enrollment. From 2002 to the present, international student applications rose 103 percent, and applications from California and Florida jumped 164 percent and 112 percent, respectively. Since 1999, enrollment of students of color has risen from 7 to 15 percent.
14. Financial Aid. Forty-eight percent of Dickinson students receive need-based grant or scholarship aid from the college, while another 10 percent receive scholarships totally based on merit.
15. ALLARM. Dickinson is home to the student-engaged, award-winning Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring, which partners with communities and individuals to monitor, protect and restore the quality of Pennsylvania’s water. These volunteers have gathered data at more than 550 sites in 96 percent of Pennsylvania’s counties.
16. Archives. The Dickinson College Archives in the Waidner-Spahr Library houses a collection of rare books and original manuscripts that is truly exceptional among American liberal-arts colleges. Moreover, the archives make portions of this collection—currently numbering more than 35,000 individual pages—available via the Internet for the use of students and scholars around the world.
Dickinson College, PO Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17013, 717-243-5121