June 19, 1912

Lucy Maynard Salmon, professor of history at Vassar, received the first Colgate degree to be awarded to a woman, the doctorate of humane letters. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Salmon had come to Vassar after postgraduate study at Bryn Mawr College with the explicit charge to found the college’s history department. Earlier in her career, as a teacher at the Indiana State Normal College at Terre Haute, she had taught Elmer Burritt Bryan, who, as president of Colgate, presented her with the honorary degree.

Chara Haeussler Bohan, Go to the Sources: Lucy Maynard Salmon and the Teaching of History