September 9, 1970

The ad hoc committee of trustees, administrators, members of the faculty and students, working since May under the chairmanship of Constance Dimock Ellis ‘38 on the proposed cooperative graduate institute on engineering and technology, submitted a modified report to the board of trustees. Called “The Vassar Proposal for a Graduate Center of Science, Technology and Human Affairs,” the report called for a graduate center composed of four divisions: Human Values, Science and Technology; Natural Sciences and Mathematics; Engineering and Industrial Administration and Technology Systems and Information Science.

President Simpson described the proposed center’s design in The New Vassar: 1964-1970, Report of the President, issued to the college community in December: “Division No 1—the bearer of the humanistic message—was to have a pervasive influence over the whole center…In its organization the center would be a division of Vassar College, with its own faculty, reporting through its dean to the president and trustees of Vassar College. Syracuse and Union would participate in the instruction and administration of the center, and award degrees in their appropriate fields, until such time as the center could stand alone.”

The board of trustees discussed the proposal at their meetings on October 10-14. Resistance from faculty and students led to the its abandonment in December, 1970.