150W Berkeley Project
October 3, 2020 marks the 150th anniversary ofthe UC Regents’ unanimous approval of a resolution by Regent Samuel F. Butterworth: “That young ladies be admitted into the University on equal terms in all respects with young men.” The first women were admitted in 1870, and Rosa Scrivner became the first woman to graduate in 1874 with a Bachelor's degree in Agriculture. Since then, countless women have graduated from UC Berkeley. They have made invaluable contributions to the campus and the world beyond.
The Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) has long been involved with documenting and researching the history and current situation of women at Berkeley. Anne MacLachlan has been leading the 150 W Berkeley project. She writes the history of women in doctoral education from the first Ph.D. granted to a woman at Berkeley in 1898 and place Berkeley development in the context of graduate education at Berkeley and in the US.
This 150W collection highlights untold narratives and efforts to archive historical information. It is one of the most extensive efforts undertaken in the last fifty-five years to record and share UC’s history. It is not only the largest to concentrate on women’s history but also the first to explore many of the major institutional changes that took place in the wake of the 1960s.
The collection is divided into the two large categories. The first consists of essays on major developments and eras in UCB women’s history, arranged chronologically under five headings. 1. An overview of the first hundred years; 2. Undergraduate student life, campus experience, organizations, and political movements; 3. Graduate student education and professional training; 4. Women faculty, researchers, and administrative leaders; 5. Women staff; and 6. Women benefactors and philanthropists. These essays are individually authored and chronologically arranged according to the historical periods covered.
The second section of the collection contains PDF copies of many of the webpages created by campus academic units under the 150W umbrella, which contain essays, reflections, narratives, and profiles about women in various academic disciplines. There are substantial essays by and about individuals as well as explorations of the overall intellectual developments in the fields. Consequently, the material in this section is even more extensive and varied than the number of individual PDFs listed in the Table of Contents might imply. Users are invited to open the individual documents to discover the great variety of voices, themes, and perspectives within. The documents are arranged under the headings of the academic disciplines covered, which are alphabetically ordered.
For more information, please visit https://150w.berkeley.edu/home