Editing Wellesley College (section)

==History==
[[file:Wellesley College 1881.JPG|thumb|left|200px|Campus of Wellesley College as it appeared {{Circa|1880}}]]
Wellesley was founded by Pauline and [[Henry Fowle Durant]], believers in educational opportunity for women, who intended that the college should prepare women for "great conflicts, for vast reforms in social life".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/About/briefhistory.html |title=A Brief History of Wellesley College |publisher=Wellesley College |year=2007 |access-date=November 24, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120622094214/http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/About/briefhistory.html |archive-date=June 22, 2012 |url-status=live }}</ref> Its charter was signed on March 17, 1870, by Massachusetts governor [[William Claflin]]. The original name of the college was the "Wellesley Female Seminary"; its renaming to Wellesley College was approved by the [[Massachusetts General Court|Massachusetts legislature]] on March 7, 1873. Wellesley first opened its doors to students on September 8, 1875. At the time of its founding, Wellesley College's campus was actually situated in [[Needham, Massachusetts|Needham]]; however, in 1880 residents of West Needham voted to secede and in 1881 the area was chartered as a new town, [[Wellesley, Massachusetts|Wellesley]].

Wellesley College was a leading center for women's study in the sciences. Between 1875 and 1921, Wellesley employed more female scientists than any other U.S. institution of high education.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rossiter|first=Margaret|title=Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|year=1982|pages=25–26}}</ref> After [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]], it was the second college in the United States to initiate laboratory science instruction for undergraduates. In early 1896, [[Sarah Frances Whiting]], the first professor of physics and astronomy, was among the first U.S. scientists to conduct experiments in [[X-ray]]s.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Cameron|first1=John S.|last2=Musacchio|first2=Jacqueline Marie|date=2020-08-01|title=Sarah Frances Whiting and the "photography of the invisible"|journal=Physics Today|volume=73|issue=8|pages=26–32|doi=10.1063/PT.3.4545|bibcode=2020PhT....73h..26C|issn=0031-9228|doi-access=free}}</ref>

[[Image:JudgeMagazine17Jun1922.jpg|thumb|left|170px|1922 cover of ''[[Judge (magazine)|Judge]]'' depicting a Wellesley graduate]]
The first president of Wellesley was [[Ada Howard]]. There have been thirteen more presidents in its history: [[Alice Freeman Palmer]], [[Helen Almira Shafer]], [[Julia Irvine]], [[Caroline Hazard]], [[Ellen Fitz Pendleton]], [[Mildred H. McAfee]], [[Margaret Clapp]], Ruth M. Adams, [[Barbara W. Newell]], [[Nannerl O. Keohane]] (later the president of [[Duke University]] from 1993 to 2004), [[Diana Chapman Walsh]], [[H. Kim Bottomly]], and current president [[Paula Johnson]].

The original architecture of the college consisted of one very large building, College Hall, which was approximately {{convert|150|m|ft}} in length and five stories in height.  It was completed in 1875. The architect was [[Hammatt Billings]]. College Hall was both an academic building and a residential building. On March 17, 1914, it was destroyed by fire, the precise cause of which was never officially established. The fire was first noticed by students who lived on the fourth floor near the zoology laboratory. It has been suggested that an electrical or chemical accident in this laboratory—specifically, an electrical incubator used in the breeding of beetles—triggered the fire.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Palmieri |first=Patricia Ann |title=In Adamless Eden: the community of women faculty at Wellesley |date=1995 |publisher=Yale Univ. Pr |isbn=978-0-300-06388-2 |location=New Haven, Conn. |pages=235}}</ref> 

A group of residence halls known as the Tower Court complex is located on top of the hill where the old College Hall once stood.

After the loss of the Central College Hall in 1914, the college adopted a master plan in 1921 and expanded into several new buildings. The campus hosted a [[Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps|Naval Reserve Officer Training program]] during the [[World War II|Second World War]], and the College President Mildred McAfee took a leave of absence to lead the Women's Reserve of the U.S. Navy. She received the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=College History |url=http://www.wellesley.edu/about/collegehistory |access-date=2022-07-21 |website=Wellesley College |language=en}}</ref> Wellesley College began to significantly revise its curriculum after the war and through the late 1960s; in 1968, the college began its exchange programs between other colleges in the area such as MIT.<ref name=":1" /> In 2013 the faculty adopted an [[open-access policy]] to make its scholarship [[open access|publicly accessible]] online.<ref>{{cite journal |url= http://roarmap.eprints.org/561/ |title= Wellesley College |journal= ROARMAP: Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies |date= December 15, 2014 |publisher= [[University of Southampton]] |location= UK |access-date= July 24, 2018 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170714090848/http://roarmap.eprints.org/561/ |archive-date= July 14, 2017 |url-status= live }}</ref>

The school has admitted transgender, non-binary, and genderqueer students since adopting an inclusive admissions policy in 2015.<ref>{{cite web |title=Reaffirmation of Mission and Announcing Gender Policy |url=https://www.wellesley.edu/news/gender-policy |website=Wellesley College |language=en}}</ref>